Top 4 Tips for Using Online Reviews to Boost Your Restaurant Businesses

No matter what industry you belong to, online reviews is an unavoidable part of your business? 

And as a restaurant owner, you must know how a review can affect your entire business. This is why now restaurants have started to embed Google review widget into their website. 

Imagine you decided to visit a newly opened restaurant but before you could visit; your friend badly criticized the same restaurant. Will it affect your decision to visit the restaurant?

Obviously, yes! 

This is what reviews do to your business. Before you even have a first-hand experience with your target customers, reviews will either make or break your game. 

Bright Local has revealed that 82% of netizens read reviews before they make a purchase. And Only 53% of people would consider going to a business with less than 4 stars. 

Therefore in this blog, we are going to discuss 4 tips for using online reviews to boost your restaurant business. 

4 Tips to Use Online Reviews to Boost Your Restaurant Business

In this digital era, it has become easy for people to find out about any business they’d like to visit. But even before investing their money, they like to spend their time making an informed decision. We are providing you with 7 tips that you can use to grow your restaurant business. 

1. Regularly Monitor Your Review Platforms

Many businesses make the mistake of not checking their review platforms on a regular basis. When you monitor your review platform, you get to know about the grievances that your customers are going through. As a restaurant owner, one should always keep an eye on major review platforms like Google reviews, Yelp reviews, etc.

Once you start monitoring these platforms, this will also help you to improve your service. As this will allow you to fill the gap between you and your customers.  

2. Reply to All Reviews

Someone said it right, it is better to be the talk of town rather than being not talked about. 

When you are present on online review platforms, you must be open to all types of opinions. Even when your customers are posting negative reviews about your restaurant business. As a business owner, you should see negative reviews as another feather in your hat. These reviews help you to connect with your upset customers in a better manner.  

For example, if a customer had a bad experience with the food they had ordered, you can reply to them like this; 

Dear Ferb, 

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. We are extremely sorry that we could not meet your expectations. We appreciate your feedback and we want to make it right. Can you please connect with us on this contact number? To compensate for the mistake we have made, we would like to send you a complimentary gift. 

Thank you 

3. Take Measure for Negative Reviews

While dealing with negative reviews, it is important that you maintain your sanity. We know that you put your blood and sweat into your business. Any negative review can belittle that hard work. It is also possible that many people just leave negative reviews to malign your reputation in the market without even trying your food.  In such a scenario, you can spot fake reviews and remove and block them from your website forever.  You can spot fake reviews in the following ways; 

• The posted reviews are unrelated to your business.
• Lots of reviews are published at the same time. This can be spam or a bot.
• Overuse of ‘I’ and ‘me’.
• The author’s name is made up.

4. Show the Reviews on Your Website

As a business owner, irrespective of the industry you belong you must have a website. On this, you should have a welcome note, easy ways to reach your restaurant, and bestsellers of your menu. This enables your target customers to know more about your restaurant in just a glance. 

Apart from these basic things, you should embed a Google review widget on your website. In this Google review widget, you can showcase the good things about your business. This helps you to meet the customers at the other slide of the sales funnel. You can embed Google reviews using any social media aggregator tool. These tools help you to remove the reviews you do not want to showcase on your website. This way you can show the best version of your website. 

The best part about these tools is that they are code free. This means you do not have to hire any developer to manage this tool. 

Showing positive reviews on the website encourage the customers to make more content for you. This makes the customers feel heard and loved by the business. This way you can encourage them to create user-generated content for your business. It will boost your business in no time. 

Wrapping Up

We are at the end of this blog and we hope that this blog will help you use online reviews to grow your restaurant business in a better manner. 

We assume that by now you must be aware of the impact of reviews on your business. It is very obvious that if your target customer finds you through the internet, they will check your restaurant reviews. It is a better option to serve them with a customized set of reviews on a platter. This helps them to make the decision as soon as possible. To eases this entire process, you can embed Google reviews widget on the website. A Google review widget also helps you to rank better on search engine result pages. 

So what are you waiting for?

Try the above-mentioned tactics, and let us know in the comments section below about your experience.