It might sound like a silly question, but do the reviews you share on your website appear genuine to the prospective patients reading them?
Bright Local has studied how impactful customer reviews are on purchasing decisions for years. In 2010 they found that less than 7 out of 10 consumers trusted reviews as much as a personal recommendation. However, in 2019, they since found around 91% of consumers say positive reviews make them more likely to choose one business over the competition.
As the importance of reviews grows, unfortunately, so has the trend in companies posting fake reviews to get ahead of the game. Shockingly, 74% of consumers claim to have read a fake review, despite them not always being easy to spot.
Often the reviews displayed on a website are those cherry-picked to give the best impression. While this is understandable, if they are displayed with no social proof, how are readers to know if they are real or fake? As far as they are concerned, this could be about your hygiene appointment from last Thursday or it could have been completely fabricated.
Now, this isn’t to say we think you are doing this on your dental clinic website (we trust all of our clients completely!). Chances are your current patients do too, but can we say the same for a complete stranger to your business?
The best way to make sure your website builds more trust and increases the number of patients through your door is to put as much proof behind the post as possible. One great way to do this? By adding a responsive review widget to your website.
Image Source: elfsight.com
Widgets like the ones provided by elfsight.com help promote authenticity and realness in reviews by revealing the author behind the comment. Pulling in automatically from platforms like Google and Facebook, they will also help keep your site up to date with the latest patient feedback.
By being completely transparent with your website visitors, you will prove how trustworthy you are as a business. The header of the widget displays your overall star rating, the total amount of people who have recommended your business and the profile picture of the people who have left the reviews if they have that setting enabled. Should you wish, you also have the ability to show reviews of a certain star rating or above.
With each of these elements being clickable, it takes the reader directly to the review where it was posted on the original platform. This further cementing their authenticity.
What’s more, with a fully flexible interface, the review widgets can slot into your website in numerous ways to complement the design. From sliders to grids, full-page layouts to compact badge options, we can adapt these to enhance the look and feel of your website considerably.
Image Source: elfsight.com
With the option to include a prominent call to action to leave a review, most clients utilising the widgets have seen an increase in the number of reviews they receive.
Contact your account manager today to discuss the best way to have these review widgets incorporated into your website.
For more on the importance of online reviews during COVID-19, click here.