Page 39 - GS190801

Education

reviews, regardless of whether those reviews those with the same star rating on Facebook or Yelp saw revenue
are negative or positive. In fact, few marketing drops of 19 and 9 percent, respectively, compared to the average
efforts are more valuable. Womply's data shows business.
that merchants with more than nine reviews
posted within the last 90 days process 52 percent U.S. consumers are overwhelmingly positive online
more revenue than average. Merchants with 25 Womply's data shows that Americans are very positive in online
or more recent reviews process 108 percent more reviews overall, despite the common belief that most online
than average. reviews are negative. Eighty-one percent of online reviews for
a typical business are positive nationally, with some states and
Additionally, total review count matters. industries as high as 92 percent favorable. Agents who help
Merchants with more than the average 83 total merchants understand the incredible financial potential of being
reviews process 82 percent more annual revenue engaged with their customers online will see increased merchant
than merchants with review counts below that satisfaction, retention and revenue. For more surprising insights
average. And those lucky merchants with over and vertical-specific data broken down by state, you can access
200 reviews process twice as much revenue Womply's full Impact of Online Reviews on Small Business Revenue
compared to the average. Again, this holds true report at www.womply.com/impact-of-online-reviews-on-small-
overall whether reviews are positive or negative. business-revenue/.

Bad reviews may not be bad news Peter Shenk is vice president of partnerships at Womply, a leading software part-
If merchants fear that working to get more ner to the payments industry and the top provider of front-office software to small
reviews will result in more bad reviews, you can businesses. Contact him at pshenk@womply.com.
assure them it's not a big deal. Womply found that
negative reviews don't have as much impact on
revenue as we have been led to believe. The data
shows that even merchants whose reviews are 35
to 50 percent negative still earn almost as much
as the average business. It's the total number
and "freshness" of reviews that correlates with
greater revenue.

Five-star merchants process fewer
transactions

Another potential bombshell coming out of
the study is that working to maintain a perfect
five-star rating may not be the best use of a
merchant's time. The data shows that five-star
merchants process less average annual revenue
than one-star merchants do. There are likely
multiple reasons for this. For example, five-star
businesses are often newer, with fewer total
reviews. Also, when people search for businesses
online, they might be expecting to see a certain
amount of negative feedback. A business with
zero bad reviews may seem "too good to be true."

Womply's report shows the sweet spot for
revenue to be a rating of between 3.5 and 4.5
stars.

A bad star rating on Google hurts most
Despite many small merchants' love/hate
relationship with Yelp, Womply's research shows
a poor business reputation on Google to be more
potentially damaging than similar ratings on
any other major review site. Merchants with an
average Google star rating of 1 to 1.5 brought in
33 percent less revenue per year than the average;

39