Impact Of Reviews And Ratings For Sellers On Amazon

A survey conducted by Dimensional Research stated 90% of the respondents say that positive reviews influence the purchase decision, while 86% said that negative reviews affect their buying decisions.

As per Alexa Traffic Rank – Amazon site is ranked 6th globally, and 3rd in the United States relative to other sites.

Considering the above, sellers on Amazon need to worry about reviews their brand and products receive.

In the previous blog(How to fight negative reviews on Amazon), we had discussed on ways to tackle with bad customer’s feedback on Amazon, today, we will highlight the effects of reviews and ratings when selling over the marketplace.

Role of reviews and ratings in Amazon search result

Rankings in Amazon search results is very different compared to other search engines. They obviously concentrate on the keywords and description, however, reviews and ratings also contribute a bit to keep your products up in the list.

Overview of product review and its impact on seller’s performance

Any customer who has purchased your product from your Amazon store can leave reviews for any given “ASIN(Amazon Standard Identification Number).” Amazon will then analyze whether the review is coming from a “Verified Purchase” or elsewhere.

Star ratings are then given to sellers from one to five, and, in case of multiple reviews from the same product- Amazon will display the average of those customer’s ratings which is highlighted on the product detail page, as well as, triggers in the search result too.

Excellent product reviews for any given “ASIN” improves ranking and considered to be an ideal aspect when selling on Amazon marketplace.

Overview of seller review and its impact on seller’s performance

Seller feedback is based on the purchase experience of a customer. Such feedback influences online shoppers about the overall brand and not just for a particular listing. Whenever an Amazon customer purchases a product from the marketplace, they are provided with a feedback form.

Sellers may think, not many customers would participate, however, every feedback affects the ranking, as the customers will be asked about their entire shopping experience and can also leave one to five-star rating and comments. Therefore, with those ratings and comments, Amazon will consider the seller’s ranking in search results.

Importance of reviews for sellers on Amazon

From offering a great customer experience to timely response to every customer’s concern- it takes a lot to earn a positive review for your Amazon store.

How to encourage more and more positive reviews?

Target the right customer

It becomes much easier to gain good reviews from customers who regularly shop from your site. Therefore, target the most loyal ones and request them to share some of their great experiences with your brand. To encourage your loyal customers to brag about your brand, you’ll have to first figure out the ones who can actually spare their precious time and come up with reviews for your brand.

Trick: Investing in a contact management system, will secure all customer’s transactions and make it easy to identify loyal customers and target them to earn positive reviews for your brand.

Take care of your operations

As you grow on Amazon, you need some sort of automation with respect to products under FBA shipping management. Automation is directly linked to higher customer satisfaction in online selling and an efficient tool such as Orderhive can take care of that.

From our experience, we have seen that sellers grow their monthly revenues and often start selling on other channels as well. This is when they look for Orderhive’s Amazon MCF integration to smoothly run their businesses.

Email your subscribers

Another powerful source to gain positive reviews is through your email subscribers. People who subscribed to your newsletters have already shown interest in your brand, therefore, it becomes easy to get more influential and informative reviews from such customers. But, how can you convince them to do so?

Trick: Frequently offering special promotional discounts in your email marketing campaigns will encourage more and more of your loyal customers to share their wonderful experiences and increase great product reviews for your brand.

Use your social media account

Lastly, targeting customers over your business social media accounts(Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter) can be the most powerful source to generate valuable reviews for your brand. Online users who follow you on your social media accounts will be the ones who frequently post feedback about brands and their experience.

Trick: Creating a contest and announcing a prize for the best reviews, will create a buzz among your users.This will automatically encourage more and more users to participate and come up with some great word-of-mouth for your brand, all in an effort to win the prize.

Quick wins of positive reviews for Amazon sellers

Increase CTR for your own website

A quality positive review on your Amazon store will no doubt help you achieve the above two benefits, however, at the same time, it automatically diverts potential shoppers to your brand’s website too. Positive reviews on Amazon are trusted recommendations by genuine customers, and sellers with great reviews reflect their brand image, which in turn, encourages more and more customers to visit your website and know more about services.

Increased “product” search and review visibility

The products for which you receive positive reviews increase visibility in search results. For instance, you sell laptops and receive a positive review for one of your make “Lenovo”. This will make it easy for your product to easily show up in search results, as modern customers usually look up for products having reviews. So, the customer will type “Lenovo”+”review” in their search results, which will automatically display the one that has great reviews.

Can seller’s review influence “Buy Box” win?

Every seller selling on Amazon will try to compete for winning the “Buy Box,” as it allows them to gain placement advantages for their listing on the marketplace. Seller feedback determines the chances of winning the “Buy Box” and sellers performance on Amazon. Such feedback consists the entire customer’s shopping experience, hence, in order to earn excellent ratings, it is important to focus on areas like inventory management, order management, customer service, and fulfillment prices too.

Weightage of seller ratings on Amazon

Amazon ratings are based on the customer’s overall purchase experience, that includes instant customer support, cancel orders, chargeback, and negative feedback. Amazon offers such rating to ensures sellers on Amazon enhance their customer service and improve ratings, as well.  The rating is scored on a scale of 0 to 100 (Example: 95.00/100). In case, “Not Yet Rated,” means you had the store has not received any orders in the past 365 days. Click to know more about seller rating calculation.

Can reviews and ratings lead to your account suspension?

A suspension is rare, and Amazon will not rusticate any seller’s account based on a single review. However, frequently receiving customer’s complaints that suggest poor item quality (or different items altogether), you will be flagged for an “account review.” Once in the manual investigation process, you’re at risk for suspension. Amazon can also ask for a seller account review in the following cases:

– Post feedback by yourself

– Abusive language used while replying back to your customers

Fake reviews: Amazon’s latest update 2015?

Amazon has filed a second suit this year over thousands who were illegally hawking customer’s reviews and continues the battle to eradicate fake reviews. This marketplace has already taken steps to revise the customer review process. Under this system, reviews that are recently written by the customers who have purchased the product themselves, or the ones that are marked as “helpful” by Amazon users. So, the best way for sellers on Amazon is to focus and encourage reviews from “confirmed purchasers” only.