The same audit of 2,241 US companies found 23% never responded to the test lead at all. This is the strongest number we have and it sits directly under missed call text back.
hbr.org/2011/03/the-short-life-of-online-sales-leads
Michael Luca used Yelp's rounding cutoff as a natural experiment. A 3.24 average displays as 3 stars and a 3.25 displays as 3.5, so businesses of identical real quality ended up with different displayed ratings. That is what makes it causal rather than a correlation.
Two caveats we would rather state than bury. The study covered Seattle restaurants, not contractors. And the effect showed up only for independent businesses, with no effect on chains. That second one helps you.
hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=41233
Average order value went up 9.2%, and lead generation pages saw bounce rates improve by 8.3%. This is also the honest answer to "my nephew already built me a site." The nephew's site is slow.
thinkwithgoogle.com, Milliseconds Make Millions
In Google's words, local results are based primarily on relevance, distance and prominence. This is Google documenting its own product, which is the entire value of the citation.
support.google.com/business/answer/7091
Numbers we will not use
You have seen these on every competitor's website. We traced them and could not find a real source, so we do not say them.
- "62% of business calls go unanswered." Repeated endlessly, always uncited, and it traces back to vendor marketing rather than research.
- "98% SMS open rate." Nobody can measure whether an SMS was opened at scale. The number is folklore.
- "We analyzed 4.2 million calls." A figure that appears with no methodology attached.
- Any dollar figure for what missed calls cost you. It depends entirely on your job value and close rate. Anyone quoting one number for every contractor made it up.
If we ever quote you a number, ask where it came from. We will have an answer.
Ask us a hard question
Bring the number you are suspicious of. We would rather argue about evidence than dodge it.