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A recent study found that 50% of consumers believe that website design is a fundamental factor in a business’s brand. Website design showcases your business’s style, attitude, and aesthetic. However, small business websites aren’t forever. They need to be updated and redesigned just like any part of your business. To help you, we’ve investigated everything you need to know about redesigning your website. That way, you can decide if your website needs to be redesigned or if it’s perfect the way it is. Now, are you ready to get started? Here’s an in-depth look at website redesign: Why Is Redesigning Your Website Important? Redesigning your website helps improve viewers’ impression of your overall business. If the load time is slow or not mobile-friendly, some viewers may get frustrated. Do you want your viewer’s first thought in relation to your company to be one of frustration? No, you want viewers to be intrigued, curious, and engage with your brand. So don’t give viewers something to dislike before they get to your page. Redesigning your business website will help it stay trendy and up-to-date. That way, customers see your brand for what it has to offer. When To Redesign Your Website Are you questioning whether your website needs a redesign but aren’t sure it’s the right time? Don’t worry; below, we’ve listed a few signs that your website is due for a redesign: Website Loading Speed Is Slow or Isn’t Mobile Friendly If your website has a slow loading speed, that’s a sure sign that your website is out of date. Visitors expect the loading speed to be a maximum of 2 seconds ; any longer will cause frustration and may lead visitors to exit the page. If you want visitors to stay on your website, you must have a responsive and mobile-friendly design. Your website should automatically scale its content, photo and video graphics, and navigational buttons to the visitor’s phone screen size. If your website fails to do this, the visitor will not only be annoyed but think your company is outdated. Thus, first impressions matter, especially when it comes to website design. Studies have shown that it only takes a visitor 0.5 seconds to decide if they will stay on the page. So, if your website suffers from slow loading time or doesn’t have a mobile-friendly design, a redesign is needed immediately. Your Website Lacks On-Page SEO Even if your website is responsive and professionally designed, it won’t benefit you if you lack the proper optimization. Your website needs to have search-engine-optimized keywords that will pull your website to the forefront of google searches. If you don’t, you’re making your website hard to find, decreasing traffic, and reducing customer conversion. A redesign is crucial for the success of your website. When redesigning, make sure you update the landing page to have optimized keywords and always have a call to action. You Have Low Conversion Rates If your website continues to receive traffic but has a low customer conversion rate, there’s a problem. Your website is obviously easy to find, but somehow, it’s lacking something visitors want. Whether it be a clear understanding of your product, more payment methods, or interesting photos, there’s a reason why visitors aren’t converting to customers. Keep in mind that a good website achieves your marketing goals. Meaning that your website should motivate visitors to explore your services, purchase your products, or contact you. If your website doesn’t fulfill your marketing goals and isn’t converting customers, a redesign is a must. Content Is Not Relevant When was the last time you updated the content on your website? If the answer is over a year, then your website is due for a redesign. Studies show that over 71% of business owners redesign their websites after a year or two. After all, your website is only as good as the content it displays. If you’ve recently changed your business address, business hours, or prices, they should be accurately reflected on your website. Not updating your website will confuse visitors and make the purchasing process that much more difficult. The Website Design Looks Outdated Trends come and go, and as such, what’s seen as sleek and modern changes with the year. If your website utilizes a chunky or older template, then it’s time for a redesign. Lately, websites that use negative space, intriguing transitions, and simple layouts get the most views and page time. So, you’ll want to update your website to adhere to these new standards if you want to increase your views, page time, and customer conversion rates. You’ll even want to be creative on your website and introduce your brand in a way that pulls the customer in rather than just stating facts. A good web designer can help you do just that. Is it Time to Redesign Your Small Business Website? Redesigning your website is often a hard decision. However, it’s important that your website is updated for visitors to look at and engage with. If your website is not mobile-friendly, lacks proper optimization, or is not relevant anymore, a redesign is needed. Thankfully we can help you redesign your small business website, so you can successfully reach more customers. We do it all, whether it’s helping you refresh the design or giving your site a complete overhaul. If you’re still unsure if you need to redesign your website, contact us today for a free consultation, and we’ll help you decide what’s best for your website.

According to a recent survey, about half of all American small businesses lack a solid marketing plan. Not having a plan in place is one of the biggest marketing mistakes that any small business can make. If you're not marketing your business enough at this time, it could eventually lead to its demise. You're going to struggle to spread the word about your company without using small business marketing to your advantage. There are also some other marketing mistakes that you might be making as a small business owner that can come back to bite you. Learn about eight of them below. 1. Failing to Create a Website for Your Small Business These days, there is really no excuse for small businesses not to have websites. Websites are no longer an exception, they’re the expectation. Yet, one recent report revealed that about 27% of small businesses are still operating without websites. These small businesses are likely hurting their bottom lines in a big way by failing to create websites. If your small business is still operating without a website, you should do something to change that immediately. With sBiz Web Solutions, you can get a website for your company up and running in no time at all (usually within a week). Even if you don't know the first thing about web design, we will help you get started on your website right away. Your website will quickly become one of your best marketing tools. 2. Ignoring the Importance of SEO When It Comes to Your Company's Website It isn't enough to simply set up a website for your small business in this day and age. Once you create a website, you also need to make sure that you understand how important search engine optimization, or SEO, is. SEO is a process that involves incorporating certain things into your website to make it easier for others to find it. By adding the right keywords, links, etc. to your site, you can help it to rank much higher on search engine results pages and ensure that plenty of people visit your site each month. If SEO isn't a big part of your small business marketing strategy, you'll be making one of the worst marketing mistakes. You'll be missing out on an opportunity to bring in so much more traffic on a regular basis. 3. Forgetting to Establish a Social Media Presence for Your Small Business While it's important for small businesses to set up websites and use them for marketing purposes, it's just as important for them to establish social media presence these days. Your company should have accounts on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc. Social media has provided small businesses with a brand-new way to connect to customers. It's also made it possible for them to create unique voices for their brands that separate them from the pack. 4. Misidentifying the Target Audience for Your Small Business Who is the target audience for your small business? You can have the best small business website in the world and a wonderful social media presence, but if you don't know who your target audience is, all of your marketing efforts might miss the mark. Before you begin trying to employ any marketing techniques on behalf of your small business, you should make sure you know who your target audience is. It'll enable you to cater your content to them to increase the chances of them patronizing your small business. 5. Letting Negative Online Reviews for Your Small Business Linger Whether you like it or not, people who patronize your small business are typically going to leave reviews for your company. They'll do it through any number of review sites, and their reviews will impact your reputation. If you're able to rack up almost nothing but positive reviews, that's awesome. You won't have to worry about doing anything other than thanking those who have taken the time to leave reviews for your small business in the first place. But if you find that you've received a lot of negative reviews online, you should do something about it. You will either want to look into having these reviews removed if you don't feel as though they're legit or respond to these reviews to show that your company cares about input from your customers. Whatever you do, you don't want to allow negative reviews to stick around for too long and make it seem as though your company doesn't care about them. 6. Spending Too Much Money or Not Enough Money on Small Business Marketing To carry out your small business marketing plan, you will need to be prepared to spend some money on it. You should come up with a marketing budget and use it accordingly. Just be sure that you're not spending too much money or not enough money on your small business marketing efforts. As a general rule of thumb, you will want to devote around 7% of your gross revenue to marketing to make the most of it. 7. Relying on Outdated Small Business Marketing Strategies Are you using some of the marketing strategies that you learned about when you attended college in the early 2000s to run a small business today? If you are, that alone is going to prove to be one of the biggest small business marketing mistakes that you're making. The marketing world has changed quite a bit over the last few years, let alone the last 20 years. So you should try to avoid using any outdated small business marketing strategies. You'll be asking for trouble if you take this approach to marketing. 8. Marketing Your Business Without Analyzing the Results Marketing your business is very important, but it isn't going to do you much good if you're not getting any positive results. It's why you should get yourself into the habit of analyzing the results of your marketing efforts all the time. If you find that some aspect of your small business marketing plan isn't working, you'll need to make adjustments to it accordingly. Otherwise, it could lead to you spending a lot of time and money on a marketing strategy that isn't doing you much good at all. Try Not to Make Any of These Crucial Small Business Marketing Mistakes Marketing your small business in an effective way isn't always going to be easy. You'll need to work hard to avoid making any of the marketing mistakes listed here. We can help you steer clear of at least some of them by providing you with affordable website design services and digital marketing solutions. We’ll set you up with the website you need to get your small business marketing plan off the ground. Check out some examples of our work and contact us today to learn more about getting a website for your small business.

There are over 5.07 billion daily Internet users in the world, so there's a large base of potential customers you can reach with your website. But before you can tap into that potential, you need to know whether your website is capable of attracting those visitors. Your website traffic stats are a good place to start. These are the numbers that show how many people visit your site and what they do while they're there. Web stats can help you see how well your marketing efforts are working. You can gauge whether they're generating traffic or not. But these metrics are only useful if you know how to interpret them. Read on for a breakdown of the most important website traffic stats and what they mean for your business. Why Are Website Stats Important? Your website stats will tell you a lot about how your business is doing. They can help you see if anything needs to be improved on the website itself. Maybe people aren't sticking around long enough to read an article or watch a video, which means they won't be able to discover other interesting content. These stats will help you figure out what needs to be done so your website can lead to more conversions. Website Traffic Stats Explained If you want to improve your website and attract more visitors, then understanding how it's currently performing can help you make the necessary adjustments. You can gather website statistics from various sources. The metrics below are among the most common. 1. Unique Visitors Unique visitors is a metric that shows the total number of new users who visit your site. It doesn't include repeat visits from the same person. If you visit a website 10 times over the course of one day, then that counts as 1 unique visit. Even if you visit the same site two or three days later, it would still count as one unique visit because unique visits are counted within a 30-day window. 2. Website Visits (Or Sessions) Programs count website visits when a user requests a page from the server. This will generate one visit. Every time someone visits your site and clicks on something to load another page, this counts as another visit. If someone goes to your site 48 times over the course of 30 minutes, you'll have 48 visits recorded. A session is the time a user spends clicking around on your website. This number is important for marketers because it helps them measure engagement. 3. Total Page Views Total page views are the total number of times that any page has been viewed from your site. This can include both single-view and multiple-view visits. If someone comes to your site and views 10 pages in one visit, they'll get counted as one visitor, but 10 total page views. 4. Pages Per Visit Pages per visit is a metric that measures how engaged your site's visitors are with your content. It's calculated by dividing the total number of page views by the total number of visitors. A high pages-per-visit (P/V) ratio is an indicator that people are spending more time viewing and interacting with the content you've created. That's good news for you because it means your website is effective at converting visitors into leads or customers. 5. Average Time on Site (Or Average Session Duration) The average time on site is the average amount of time people spend visiting your website. It's calculated by dividing the total time spent on your website by the number of visitors. A high average is an indicator that people are spending a lot of time interacting with your content and not just clicking through quickly. If a visitor spends an hour on your site, there's a good chance they'll be interested in what you have to offer as opposed to if they only look at it for 30 seconds. The average session duration is about one minute, regardless of industry. 6. Bounce Rate The bounce rate measures the number of visitors who leave a website after viewing only one page. It tells you whether people are engaging with your webpage's content. It's also an indicator of whether users are finding what they're looking for. A bounce rate under 40 percent is great and means that your website is attractive and engaging. 7. Mobile Site Visits When a user accesses your website using a mobile device, this is mobile traffic. Mobile traffic is important because it accounts for more than half of all internet usage. If you notice that your mobile site visits are low, check to see if the website loads fast on phones and is designed for small screens. 8. Inbound Links Inbound links are external hyperlinks that point to your website. Links from other sites to your own are a sign to Google that you're a reputable source of information. As such, you'll be rewarded with higher placement in search results. That being said, not all backlinks are equal. While each one counts toward your SEO ranking, not all inbound links will give you the same boost as others. 9. Traffic Sources Traffic sources are the channels that bring visitors to your website. They can be broken down into two categories, organic and paid. Organic traffic is free and comes from search engines like Google, social media like Facebook and Twitter, email campaigns, or anything else that's not paid for by you. Paid traffic can be anything from PPC ads on search engines to campaigns on social media platforms. Create a Website That's Designed to Attract Visitors Your website traffic stats are an important part of your SEO. If you want to improve your metrics, then it's important that users can easily navigate your website and find what they're looking for. To do this, you need to have a clean design with plenty of white space and clear navigation menus. As you can tell, creating a professional-looking website is not as easy as it sounds. Why take on the hassle when sBiz Web Solutions will do it for you? Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you build an impressive website that drives traffic.

A website is a vital component to a small businesses’ success. However not an website will do. About one in five small business websites struggle to generate traffic to their website. Meanwhile, 57% of users won't recommend a company with a poor mobile web design. If your website doesn't offer a positive experience, you could lose potential customers. With our affordable website design services, you can stand out from competitors, generate awareness, and attract fresh leads and sales. On the fence about investing in your business website this year? Read on to discover the top 7 reasons why a strong website is beneficial to your company's success today! 1. Keep Your Doors Open Most retail businesses only remain open for part of the day; not 24/7. Each day your brick-and-mortar store's doors close, you miss opportunities to make sales. Your business website can keep your virtual doors open at all times. Marketing your business around the clock will help you appeal to a wider audience of customers. Consumers can visit your website to learn about your business, mission, and offerings. If you have an eCommerce website, you can even make sales when your store is closed. You can maximize sales by using your business website as the foundation of your overall marketing strategy. For example, you attract visitors to your website using Google, social media, and other online platforms. Consumers can learn about your business from each touchpoint to decide if you align with their needs. Then, you can use a call-to-action on your website to turn those visitors into leads or sales. In addition to adding eCommerce abilities to your website, you can also use an online form or chatbot to boost conversions. Having a website benefits your overall marketing and sales objectives, allowing you to grow your business. 2. Generate Awareness If consumers don't have a way to discover or learn about your business, you won't generate sales. Small business websites allow consumers to learn about the different options available. As the foundation of your digital marketing strategy, you can use your website to generate awareness for your brand. Each time someone interacts with your brand, they'll have an easier time remembering who you are and what you do. However, it can take five interactions before someone recalls your business. Learning about your business can also help people feel more comfortable with your brand. In fact, 82% of consumers feel more positive about a brand after reading personalized content. Over 60% are more likely to buy from companies that deliver unique content, too. Consider working with our website design agency this year. We can infuse your visual brand across every page of your website. In time, brand awareness will grow until consumers can recall your brand or associate it with your products and services. The next time they need your offerings, they'll think of your brand first. Then, you can generate leads and sales to help your business grow. 3. Convey Your Expertise Remember, consumers feel more comfortable with businesses after reading personalized content. You can use your business website to share helpful, informative blog posts. It’s important to work with a website design agency that can design and optimize your website for search engine optimization (SEO). SEO can help more people find your website and content. Then, you can start communicating your experience and expertise. You could even position yourself as a thought leader in your industry. Becoming a thought leader can help you demonstrate your credibility. Gaining credibility could encourage more people to trust your brand. As people learn to trust your brand and expertise, they might rely on you for the products or services they need. You could have an easier time attracting new customers as a result. 4. Boost Your Rankings In order to reach more people online, it helps to create an SEO marketing strategy. SEO will help your business appear higher on search engine result pages (SERPs). When someone searches for your product or service, your website might appear at the top of a SERP. Appearing at the top of SERPs for different searches can help you rank ahead of competitors. In fact, small businesses can rank ahead of huge corporations using SEO. You can even the playing field to attract new people to your business. Boosting your rankings will also help you generate more website traffic. Remember, as people visit your business website, they can learn more about your brand. As you attract new visitors, you'll gain more opportunities to generate sales. Since SEO is a cost-effective marketing strategy, your ROI will improve over time, too. 5. Generate Loyalty As people begin to trust and fall in love with your brand, they might become long-term, loyal customers. Encouraging brand loyalty will help you generate repeat sales. You can spend less money on advertising and customer acquisition, allowing your ROI to improve. You can even use your business website to host a brand loyalty program to encourage more people to make repeat sales. 6. Show Off Products Consumers want to learn about your products and services. Our affordable website design services can help you show off your offerings. Consumers will have an easier time recognizing the benefits and features you offer. You could have an easier time communicating your unique value proposition to stand apart from competitors. If you accept online sales, you can even use your website to sell more products than ever before! For small businesses that book consultation appointments or reservations, consider using a scheduling app instead. Either way, you can customize your website based on your needs to grow your business. 7. Gather Helpful Data One of the top website benefits you'll experience is the data you can collect from your company website. You can use this data to learn: What demographics your customers fall under Which pages they visit When they leave your website What blog posts they read Which products/services they prefer The more data you gather, the more likely you can improve your digital marketing strategies. You can then generate more leads and sales to boost your ROI! Small Business Websites are Vital: Invest in Affordable Website Design Today Set your company up for success this year. Contact us to learn more about our affordable website design services for small businesses. With help from sBiz Web Solutions, you can reach more customers online than ever before. Leveraging our experience and expertise will help you save valuable time and energy. Eager to get started? We can't wait to help. Let us build a website for your business. Get started with a professional design today.

Does your company have a great reputation among consumers? If it doesn't, it could be hurting your business even more than you might realize. One recent report suggested that a company's reputation can account for more than 60% of its total value. As a result, your business might not be worth as much as it would be worth otherwise simply because of its reputation. With all of this in mind, reputation management is going to be of the utmost importance for your company. You need to keep a close eye on your online reviews, including both positive and negative reviews, to make sure your company has the best reputation possible. Today, we're going to talk at length about what makes reputation management and online reviews so important to your company. Learn all about it below. People Have Come to Trust Online Reviews in a Big Way Before people patronize a business, they will usually sneak a quick peek at its online reviews. It doesn't matter if they're looking for a good place to eat dinner or trying to find somewhere to buy a car. They'll use online reviews to guide their decision. People do this because many of them have come to trust online reviews as much as they trust their family and friends. One survey found that more than 80% of people currently trust online reviews as much as those in their immediate circles. This alone should illustrate just how important reputation management is going to be for your business. If you don't have great online reviews to show to people, it isn't going to bode well for your business since they may feel like they can't trust you to do right by them. Positive Reviews Will Make People Feel Good About Patronizing Your Business When people look up your business and read through the online reviews for it, what are they going to find? This should be the first question you ask as part of your reputation management push. If you see that they're going to come across nothing but positive reviews for the most part, it'll be a great sign. People are going to feel good about utilizing your company's products and/or services when it seems like you've provided other people with wonderful experiences. Your ultimate goal should be to rack up as many positive reviews as you possibly can over time. It's going to give your business a good reputation and make more people want to patronize it. Negative Reviews Will Make People Think Twice About Using Your Business If people don't see one positive review after another when they read through online reviews for your business, it could doom your company from now on. The more negative reviews that your business has, the less likely people are going to be to call on your company for its products and/or services. You will want to actively work to reverse this trend ASAP. You should put together a reputation management plan that will include addressing any negative reviews you receive and striving to get more positive reviews to push the negative ones to the bottom of the list. Negative Reviews Can Provide Your Business With a Big Opportunity If your company has received some negative reviews in the past, it's obviously not going to be a good thing for your business. But it's also not going to be the end of the world. You should look at these negative reviews as opportunities to show how much your company cares about its customers. It would be worth responding to as many negative reviews as you can so that you're able to make things right with unhappy customers. If nothing else, this will show other people that you run a company that does its best to make things right when customers aren't satisfied. This could yield positive results for your business reputation in the end. No Online Reviews Could Be as Bad as Negative Reviews for Your Business If you find that your company doesn't have many small business reviews at all, this could be almost as bad as having a bunch of negative reviews. It's going to make it appear as though you haven't done enough to give people a reason to leave positive reviews for you yet. It might also make it seem as though your small business is just getting off the ground, even if that might not necessarily be the case. You should start to encourage your customers to leave reviews for you so that you're able to build up a collection of them over time. It Doesn't Have to Be Difficult to Manage Your Business Reputation Reputation management feels like such a tall task to many small business owners. They aren't sure where they should start when it comes to monitoring their reputation and working to improve it. If you fall into this category, our firm offers reputation management services to small and medium size businesses. We'll work to get your business the online reviews that it deserves and ensure that your reputation is every bit as good as it should be. Call on Us to Assist You With Reputation Management Do you need a hand with reputation management? If so, sBiz Web Solutions can provide you with the services that you need to improve your business reputation by leaps and bounds. You'll be able to make your business reputation better over time by using online reviews to your advantage. It'll work wonders for your business and require very little effort on your part. Get started today by getting in touch with us to learn more about our reputation management services.

93% of surveyed shoppers make buying decisions based on online reviews. That's a huge percentage! If you run a business, your reviews are vital to your success. You may think that you're sure to only ever get positive reviews because your products or services are fantastic, so you shouldn't bother monitoring them. In reality, knowing how to track and how to respond to online reviews is a must. One bad review can make a huge negative impact. You need to have a reputation management strategy in place and you need to know what to do when good or bad reviews start popping up. Let's talk about it! Read on to learn all about responding to online reviews (good and bad). Why Is It Important to Respond to Reviews? There are many reasons that you, as a business owner, should be responding to both positive and negative reviews. That's right, even positive reviews deserve responses! While responding to positive reviews gets less valuable as time goes on, in the beginning, it will help you establish yourself as responsive and kind. Responding to negative reviews is important long-term. Here are a few (but not all) of the reasons why it's so important for business owners to respond when they get a good or bad review online. It Improves or Solidifies Your Online Reputation Your reputation is everything as a business owner. You could have the best products or services, but with a bad reputation, you still won't gain customers. Public opinion is a driving factor behind your success. Let's say you're not paying a lot of attention to your reviews and they're starting to lean negatively. Your star rating has gone down. Every low rating or negative review is a sign to potential customers that your business isn't worth using. When you respond to negative reviews, you show customers that you're making an effort to improve. Even if nothing needs improvement, you're clearing the air so that the commenter doesn't have the final word. When you respond to positive reviews, you're showing customers that you're listening to them. Both of these things will make huge improvements to the reputation of your business and online branding. You'll Build Trust and Relationships Part of owning a business is building relationships and trust with your customers. Responding to reviews (both negative and positive) is a great way to do that. When you respond to someone who's upset with your products or services, you're showing them that you want to make it right (or at the very least, explain the situation). Someone who was previously angry may calm down and see you and your business in a better light. You can regain their trust. You'll Give Yourself an Opportunity to Grow and Learn Reviews are gifts. Even negative reviews are opportunities for growth, so try to see them that way. They may feel like personal attacks (and in some rare cases, they may be), but they're learning experiences. When you actively engage with a negative review, you're letting an unhappy customer teach you something that may improve your business. At the very least, you're learning an important lesson in politely and respectfully communicating with others. Some Tips for How to Respond to Online Reviews Responding to online reviews is tricky. There are infinite possible responses you can give, but if you want to make a good impression, you have to be careful. Remember, you're representing your business. Your response will determine how customers see you, and it may sway them toward or away from your business. Here are a few helpful tips that can improve your responses to online reviews. 1. Respond Quickly It's important to respond as quickly as possible (without being too rash). When you let a bad review stay up for too long without responding to it, more people will see it. This is bad for your reputation. You may also forget about it. It's easy for reviews to slip your mind when you have so many other responsibilities as a busy business owner. Take a brief amount of time to decide how you're going to respond. While you should respond quickly, don't let yourself be careless. Give yourself time to cool off (if the review was inflammatory) and decide what the best response would be. Ignoring bad reviews won't make them disappear, especially if you don't have many reviews to start with. Even if you're feeling anxious, responding within a few days (if not a single day) is a good move. Get it over with. 2. Learn From Your Reviews When you get a review, try to take something from it. If the review is positive, keep in mind what you're doing right and make a note to continue doing it (or even expand upon it). If the review is negative, determine what you can change. In some cases, negative reviews aren't actually your fault, but don't jump to that conclusion right away. 3. Be Polite Politeness is key when you're responding to online reviews regardless of whether they're positive or negative. Even if a review is downright mean or inappropriate, you need to stay as professional as possible. You have your reputation to consider. While it's tempting to respond to negative reviews with the same energy the customer used, you're running a business. Consider how that would look to other people. Your response is public, so it's best to take the high road. This can also help you diffuse the situation. Often, people who leave negative reviews just want to know that someone is hearing their concerns. When you respond with kindness, their motivation to "fight it out" may dissipate and they may open themself up to a rational and calm interaction. Use restraint . Some brands can get away with "sass" in their responses, but this is a risky move and that sass has to be part of their preexisting brand image. It's also carefully crafted, not just an "off-the-cuff" remark. 4. Keep It Brief For both positive and negative reviews, it's best to be brief (while still being thorough). For positive reviews, a quick "thanks!" and perhaps a CTA of some sort (such as asking the customer to tell their friends or check your shop later for new products) is more than enough to make an impact. Most people don't expect responses to positive reviews at all, so you will stand out. For negative reviews, you will need to go into more detail, but not too much. Make sure you address the problem, apologize, and give your customer steps to take. It's often best to save the longer conversations for private messages or emails so you don't draw too much attention to the review but you still pay enough attention to the customer. If you are defending your business against a troll comment, you may have to go into more detail, but just offer enough information to clear the air. Remember that most people won't sit and read long comments, so you don't gain anything from writing several paragraphs in response. 5. If It's Negative: Make It Right If someone leaves a negative review (and the review is legitimate, of course), you're being given a great opportunity to make things right. How will you do that? Again, it's often best to take this conversation into private messages or emails to make sure you can fine-tune your next steps to the disgruntled customer's needs. Sometimes being heard is enough and the customer won't want anything else. Telling them that you're going to make changes to ensure the problem never happens again can be comforting. In other cases, you may want to offer a coupon, replacement item, or service (depending on what it is your business offers). Note that discounts, replacements, or "freebies" might seem bad for business, but this isn't the case if it means salvaging your reputation and making a customer happy. 6. Be Authentic and Empathetic Customers value honesty and authenticity . While you should be professional in all of your responses, you should also be human. Many customers respond negatively to responses that seem too "corporate" because they seem inauthentic. Connect with your customers and you'll gain their trust. Responding to Online Reviews Is Essential Learning how to respond to online reviews is tough, and it will be a trial-and-error process. As you progress, you'll discover the best ways to communicate with both happy and unhappy customers while maintaining your professionalism and your reputation. Speaking of your reputation, are you in need of a reputation management strategy? We want to help. Learn more about our services so we can start working together today .