News Courtesy of SearchEngineLand.com:
37 percent of men said they always read online reviews for businesses, but a comparatively small proportion of women (15 percent) do the same, preferring instead to “occasionally” read online reviews.
This means that if your customer base is skewed to the male side, it’s very important to be investing time and effort into securing high-scoring reviews. Star rating isn’t the only thing to focus on, though, as our original survey reports that a huge 40 percent of consumers don’t pay attention to reviews over two weeks old.
While it’s not my place to offer conjecture based on stereotypes, it is possible that the nature of goods and services purchased from local businesses by men, and their attitude towards shopping, affects how seriously they take a business’ reputation. Conversely, our survey suggests that women don’t seem to be quite as thorough in their research, something that’s potentially impacted by the age-old “impulse buy.”.
Ryan’s Take 
This study, conducted by BrightLocal, asked U.S. consumers a series of questions regarding their habits with online reviews. The main objective was to determine how men and women evaluate a business based off of online reviews. Perhaps the most interesting piece of information comes from the results of the frequency of reading reviews between both genders.
I consider myself one of the 37% of men who ALWAYS look for business reviews. It doesn’t matter to me if that business is local or national. I also take the time to read several reviews both on the positive and negative side. This helps to determine the overall legitimacy of a particular business’s reviews as well. Because, unfortunately, fake reviews are becoming way too common these days.
The fact that only 15% of women always check reviews is puzzling. I would expect that number to be greater than the male equivalent statistic. However, when the option of occasionally checking reviews was tallied, those results flip-flopped by an even wider margin. 45% of women to 29% of men to be exact.
One thing is for sure, If your business doesn’t have any reviews for potential clients to read, you’re missing out! A great looking website with a lot of bells and whistles doesn’t necessarily equate to consumer confidence. People want to see other’s experiences and base their decision off of that.
If your business is new, that doesn’t mean you necessarily need to chase after reviews. Rather, you should focus on gaining more visibility through digital marketing and SEO. I believe if you provide exceptional service, your customers or clients will write reviews without any persuasion. Conversely, if your service, customer support, products, etc. are awful — you’re very likely to get negative reviews which means big trouble for the future of your business!
