People write a lot of online reviews about the things they buy and the places they visit. There are an estimated 250M reviews on Amazon. [1] There are approximately 224M reviews on Yelp[2]. There are an astounding 884M reviews on TripAdvisor. That works out to about to about 4 reviews per person for every man, woman, and child in the US. That’s not including sites such as TrustRadius, G2, Google, Facebook, Expedia, OpenTable, Cars, Edmunds, and Glassdoor. And a lot of people rely on (90%) and trust (84%) online reviews.

With all those reviews, one might think everybody must be writing reviews. Not quite. In a study about online user behavior, Jakob Nielsen identified what he called “the 90–9–1 rule.” Put simply, the rule states:

• 90% of online users are lurkers (they read or observe, but don’t contribute)
• 9% of users contribute intermittently
• 1% of users participate a lot and account for most contributions

Does it mean that only 1% of customers are likely to leave a review of your business? No, the rule is a bit of an over generalization.

There are, in fact, 2 sets of motivating factors for people to contribute online[3]:

1. Intrinsic — When the customer is motivated by altruism. They had a good experience, or liked you personally, or simply want to help other “people like them” find something great. Aka “Love it. Hate it. Sharing is Caring.”
2. Extrinsic — When the user is acknowledged, rewarded, or compensated.

Within the two broad categories, customers tend to be motivated to leave a review if:

• They’re really frustrated
• They’ve been delighted
• They genuinely want to help others
• They feel passionate about the topic or product
• They are compensated or rewarded

Once motivated to write a review, customer reviews typically cover one or more areas:

• Personal experience with a product or service
• Characteristics and quality of a product or service
• Value for money
• Customer service and customer care
• Shipping times and quality

A recent study revealed the top reason consumers gave for writing an online review of a product was they thought the product was excellent (56%). This was followed by consumers who thought the product was unsatisfactory for reasons other than arriving broken (41%). The third most cited reason that consumers wrote an online product reason was that they wanted to help other buyers understand the product better (38%). But what of the vast majority of consumers who, despite the fact they find them trustworthy and helpful, do not write on-line reviews?

While the intrinsic reasons to write online reviews can be complex and varied, the obstacles to writing reviews are simple. There are primarily two reasons people do not write online reviews: lack of time and lack of incentives[4]. The lack time objection in often an indicator that what is asked of the consumer is not a priority. This should not be too surprising as a recent survey indicated 41% of people did not have enough time to do the things they wanted to do.[5]

Mathew Mandeltort
Co-Founder
ChefWorthy
www.chefworthy.pro

[1] https://review42.com/

[2] Statista

[3] Bill Johnson, StructureC3

[4] https://www.retailitinsights.com

[5] Statista