The three most-reviewed tattoo listings someone searching around Shakopee is shown hold 2260, 380 and 333 Google reviews. The median across the 20 studios we read is 72, which means half of them sit at or below that figure. The depth in this trade is not spread evenly across the set.
Two of the studios we read had replied to every one of their most recent reviews. Ocean Blue Tattoo & Art Studio answered 10 of its last 10, on a listing holding 380 reviews. Crazy Lady Ink LLC & Records answered 10 of its last 10, on a listing holding 291. InkHeart Tattoo, with 269 reviews on its listing, answered 5 of its last 10. Those two kinds of number are measured over different windows: the reply counts are drawn from each studio's most recent reviews, while the review totals are the whole listing.
Across the 48 businesses we measured in what someone searching in Shakopee is shown, a typical one answered 78% of its recent reviews. That figure describes the businesses we measured and not this trade in particular. In the same catchment the behaviour varies a long way by trade. None of the 20 cafes we read had answered any of their recent reviews, and the same was true of the 20 coffee shops and the 20 pet grooming businesses we read. The cafes carry a median of 475 reviews and the coffee shops 315.5, so the quiet is not a shortage of people writing.
We read 460 businesses in all around Shakopee, a town whose population is 45002. The median rating for the tattoo studios among them is 4.8. A median is one figure for a whole set: it does not tell you which listing is which, and nothing here is ordered by stars in any case. What separates one listing from another on this page is how much of the recent writing came back with an answer.
What to do about it
The distinction worth holding on to is between the file and the window. InkHeart Tattoo's listing carries 269 reviews; the reply count we record for it covers its last 10. Whatever a total says, the work in front of an owner is the recent handful, and it recurs — catching up once and keeping up are two different jobs, and only the second one holds.
So work from the top of the list backwards, and include the good ones, not only the ones that sting. Write each reply differently. A run of answers that all open the same way is visible to anyone reading down a listing, and the detail that makes one worth reading — the piece, the artist, what was asked for — is exactly what a template cannot supply. The median rating across the 20 studios we read is 4.8, and a median says nothing about which listing is which. The replies underneath are written one at a time, and that is where a listing stops being a number.
Tattoo studios
| # | Business | Answered | Reviews | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ocean Blue Tattoo & Art Studio | 10 of 10 | 380 | 4.8 |
| 2 | Crazy Lady Ink LLC & Records | 10 of 10 | 291 | 4.4 |
| 3 | InkHeart Tattoo | 5 of 10 | 269 | 4.8 |