We all know that most consumers read reviews. But how many are willing to actually leave reviews? In the U.S., over the past 3 years of conducting our survey, consumers willingness to leave reviews has consistently increased.
Survey Results
Consumers reporting that they never leave reviews dropped almost in half over the period and those reporting that they wrote reviews infrequently reported a 1.5 times increase. Most significantly the category of reviewers that wrote the most reviews showed a 2.3 times increase in the number of people reporting having written more than 6 reviews per year.
This change has been consistent and regular over each the 4 surveys given over the timeframe.
After purchasing from a local business, how often will you take the time to leave an online review for that business?
Survey details:
We conducted consumers surveys on Apr, 2017, Aug, 2015, Nov, 2014 and Jul, 2014 using Google Surveys. The sample sizes were large averaging 1300 consumers.
In each of the surveys we asked “After purchasing from a local business, I will take the time to leave an online review for that business:
We offered the following choices of answers:
- Never
- Almost never -less than 1 review per year
- Occasionally -1 to 5 reviews per year
- Somewhat frequently -6 to 11 per year
- Very Frequently -12 reviews or more per year
In the chart above we consolidated answer groups to allow for easier reading of the data but the trends are quite clear; U.S. consumers are ever more willing to leave reviews and some are willing to leave them very frequently.
Review Frequency Breakdown
Here is the detailed breakdown for our most recent survey taken in April with a sample size pf ~2056 US adult internet users.
Full survey detail for US consumers April, 2017
Review Frequency Growing In Younger AND Older Consumers
When analyzed by age we see that 25-34 year olds lead the pack with frequent and very frequent review writing. But surprisingly (or maybe not) those over 65 were close behind.
While the willingness of consumers to leave reviews has dramatically increased and that is true across all age groups, reviews are not spread across all industries equally. Some businesses like restaurants, hotels and jewelry get reviews easily. While others, particularly those in the service industries find it much more difficult to get consumers to write reviews.
While expectations as to how many reviews you can receive should be adjusted to accommodate the industry you in and to some extent the age of your clients, we think that the tactics should remain the same; run a great business and ask every customer.
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