The first thing I do when I land on a site I haven’t used before is to check their reviews. Good or bad, I want to see that it is a company which values feedback and is actively providing services or products.

We were really excited recently to sign-up Floradoor in Cairo as our first African client. This high-end florist delivers flowers locally for a global customer base and it has been a joy to read their reviews.

Nielsen’s latest Global Trust in Advertising report, which surveyed more than 28,000 Internet respondents in 56 countries, shows that 92% of people trust recommendations from friends and family, followed closely by 70% trusting online reviews.

Here are the highlight stats. Read the great piece about it over on Social Commerce Today.

We’ve been in the reviews business for quite a few years so we’re not remotely surprised by this data. But our experience over the past 12 months is that small businesses are now realising the importance of reviews and adding customer reviews solutions to their sites and Facebook. This is as true in rural Ireland as it is in Del Mar California.