By 2022, 48% of consumers said they made at least one weekly purchase on Amazon, and 61% of consumers said the product with the top ratings and reviews had the greatest influence on their decisions. We are aware of how critical reviews are to consumers’ purchasing decisions and how much sellers cherish them. In reality, obtaining product evaluations is one of the most frequent problems faced by Amazon sellers. We’re giving you the most recent information on how to increase your product reviews in 2nd half of 2023 as a result.
A new Amazon FBA seller can succeed or fail based on customer reviews about the products. The majority of consumers are motivated to buy a product that has the top reviews and ratings, according to our Consumer Trends Report. You must understand how to swiftly and compliantly obtain Amazon reviews when you launch a product. We’ll review the best strategies in this article for getting Amazon product reviews. This covers off-Amazon tactics that third-party merchants might employ to look for and acquire evaluations, in addition to Amazon programs and features.
Why Are Product Reviews On Amazon Significant?
Positive Amazon product reviews directly affect other purchasers’ purchasing decisions, beyond just being a metric to increase the listing’s SEO ranking. The Spiegel Research Centre found that 95% of consumers check reviews before making a purchase. With more favorable product reviews, the conversion rate likewise rises rapidly. How significant is this distinction? Customers are 270% more likely to purchase a product with five ratings than one or no ratings.
It is abundantly clear that customer decision-making is greatly influenced by Amazon product reviews. This is because customer reviews are one of the finest sources of social evidence. Most customers, psychologically speaking, will seek out the opinions of other customers to support their choice. Nobody likes having buyer’s remorse. Making sure that previous customers who have purchased the product are satisfied with it is the greatest method to avoid regret! Many times, a positive review will persuade buyers who are debating to buy in their minds. This holds even for typical brick-and-mortar establishments. Nowadays, a lot of customers research products online before purchasing at a nearby retail store. Word-of-mouth recommendations frequently outperform any marketing tactics that a brand may use.
This implies that review quality is crucial. Greater reviews do not automatically mean greater sales unless the reviews are favorable. Because of this, Amazon considers the reviews’ quality rather than merely their quantity. Your product will be more relevant, thanks to quality reviews, which will boost its position in Amazon’s search results.
How does Amazon decide which Products to Rate?
The formula Amazon uses to determine a product’s rating has been more complicated ever since it eliminated reviews that were given incentives and created verified and non-verified reviews. Not all ratings and reviews are given the same weight. Amazon calculates a product’s average rating using a sophisticated weighted-average algorithm. A product could have a rating ranging from 0 to 5 stars if it only has one review with five stars.
How does Amazon determine Review Scores?
The product should have a mathematical rating of 4.0 stars, but Amazon has given it a weighted rating of 4.1. Although Amazon withholds the details of the variables used in this method, it is widely acknowledged that the following elements are crucial:
- Evaluate age
- Reviewer information (such as the number of reviews and the overall rating of the comments)
- Duration of review
- the number of positive votes
- Whether it is verified or not
- Reviewing versus rating
- The exception to the average rating
In essence, a recent lengthy review of a product on Amazon written by a reviewer with a good reviewer profile and receiving a lot of positive votes would probably be near the top of your reviews and will also influence your overall rating more.
What Is the Difference Between Product Reviews & Feedback Ratings?
Feedback Ratings
Product Reviews
Before learning how to get reviews, you must understand the precise distinction between a review and feedback as a seller. Amazon gathers two different types of reviews: Seller feedback and Product reviews. Product reviews are about the items you sell, and feedback is like your business’s report card. Just beneath the title on the product page, reviews are displayed. Feedback isn’t specific to any one listing; rather, it’s used to track a seller’s past performance. They become crucial when numerous sellers are in direct competition with one another.
How To Get Reviews On Amazon Products In 2023?
1. Boost The Sales A Little
Reviews affect sales, and more sales result in more positive reviews. You might have the most intriguing, advantageous, and practical product. But you still need to make sure that people hear it. Most individuals won’t just come across your product by accident. Giving it a little push will enable you to witness its takeoff. You can run advertisements for your goods on social media platforms and through Amazon PPC.
2. Set Up A Mailing List & Ask Customers To Post Reviews.
Sending a post-purchase email is an easy technique to increase the number of product reviews. Sending emails to your clients asking them to leave evaluations for you is completely acceptable. After a suitable amount of time has passed after the order, the email should be sent. The key thing to remember is to avoid coming out as pushy, rude, or irritating in your emails.
3. Social Media Usage
The amount of client opinions can expand thanks to social media. For instance, you can occasionally launch campaigns on Twitter and Facebook asking followers and supporters to share their opinions and experiences.
4. Amazon Vine
All merchants on Amazon received access to the Vine program in December 2019. You must enroll your goods in Vine through Seller Central’s Advertising option. Then you distribute your product to Vine Voices users (those who have a reputation for writing insightful evaluations). Enrollment will cost $200 for each package as of October 2021. Although it was free before October 2021, the $2500 it once cost Vendor Central clients makes it still a good deal. Only products with fewer than 30 reviews can be enrolled. Vine is a fantastic way to gather some early evaluations, but with the drawback that they tend to be more negative than usual. Reviews with 1-3 stars are prevalent.
5. Use The Button To Submit A Review.
Amazon introduced the Request a Review button in 2019, as was already mentioned. According to our testing, pressing this button raises the rate of reviews by 10% to 20%. The most crucial thing you can do to raise the number of reviews is to enhance the likelihood that current customers will leave one. More information on the orders you can use this button for and what occurs when you push it is provided below:
- Must be applied to orders placed between 4 and 30 days after delivery of an order.
- Requests for seller feedback and product ratings will be made in the same email.
- The message cannot be changed
- You are still permitted to ask for a review if you use it.
6. Implement Product Inserts
Including physical inserts in the product packaging is an effective way to ask for reviews from your customers without technically breaking any guidelines provided by Amazon. Although you must be careful not to include any assertions in the inserted language, such as “If you leave us a review, we will give you a 30% discount on your next purchase”. Also, keep in mind that when urging customers to submit an Amazon product review you cannot directly ask for a “positive” review, or else it will be taken as breaking Amazon guidelines.
Another way to use the product insert is to ask the customer to register with an email ID to get an extended warranty on the product. After you get their email, you can ask them to leave a review. Amazon warns vendors in a menacing email not to use inserts to solicit positive reviews.
7. Promotional Offers & Discounts On Products
You can enhance sales of your products and the chance of additional Amazon product reviews by offering substantial discounts. Launch all of our prices at a 25% discount to encourage more instant purchases. There are also rebate and discount clubs that go beyond accepted white hat strategies while still adhering to the TOS as of the time of writing. One of these services with the most users is RebateKey. These businesses frequently focus more on obtaining sellers’ full credit for sales than on reviews per se, but many customers do submit evaluations.
8. Contact Critical Reviewers Through Amazon
Before recently, it was practically hard to identify the purchaser of a critical reviewer, making it impossible for you to get in touch with clients who gave you a bad review. However, Amazon began contacting customers who had given a product a rating of 3 stars or less in 2021. You can now get in touch with customers who have given a review on Amazon that is 3 stars or lower. With the use of this function, you can approach consumers who have written unfavorable reviews and perhaps win them over and convince them to change their opinions. However, there are a few significant points about this buyer contact feature.
9. Amazing Packaging
In e-commerce, appealing product packaging encourages customers to overlook problems while unappealing packaging forces them to notice flaws. The first impression a consumer has of your goods is its packing, and this is frequently the basis for their review. Below is an illustration of the packaging for one of our former brands.
Spending a little more time and effort on your product packaging will help you create a 4.5- or 5-star product. Therefore, plain boxes and plastic bags are prohibited. When possible, use boxes in full color. Even for the most basic products, include sufficient use manuals and other product inserts to give your product a professional appearance.
10. Request Testimonials From Clients Who Have Given The Seller Positive Feedback
The majority of Amazon customers don’t comprehend the distinction between product reviews and seller feedback. Most of us have probably at some point seen Seller Feedback comments made on Amazon products. Reviewing your seller feedback regularly is crucial.
Send an email to every client who has given a seller positive feedback, in particular those who have reviewed products, asking them to do the same for you. To further clarify how to post product reviews, I even attach a document similar to this to my emails. Few customers ever provide any feedback, and those who have given feedback to the vendor are more likely to do so for the product.
What Not To Do In Amazon Product Review?
Let’s look at what you shouldn’t do to advance now that you understand how to earn reviews:
1. Don’t Ask Friends Or Family For Recommendations
Reviews on Amazon should be as truthful as possible. Reviews are designed to weed out the bad apples and provide customers with enough information to make an informed selection. This is the reason Amazon limits getting reviews from friends and family. The least reliable informational sources for other clients are probably your parents! If Amazon notices “unusual” behavior, they may potentially ban product reviews. According to Amazon, “To preserve the integrity of Community content, content and activities consisting of advertising, promotion, or solicitation (whether direct or indirect) are not allowed, including creating, modifying, or posting content regarding your (or your relative’s, close friend’s, business associate’s, or employer’s) products or services.”
Similarly to this, you shouldn’t deliberately try to harm a competitor’s listing by adding phony bad reviews. It exhibits bad sportsmanship, to start with. Additionally, it is against Amazon’s rules.
2. Avoid Using Bogus Review Sites From Outside Parties.
On Amazon, fake reviews are a problem. It is no secret that. There are a lot of services offered for a nominal price—by nominal, I mean cheap—on marketplaces like Fiverr that tout phony 5-star ratings and reviews. Similar to buying followers on social media, but with a drawback. The massive retailer is actively fighting against bogus reviews. Are they performing well? That is questionable. Amazon is aware of the issue and working to find a solution.
While purchasing phony reviews might seem alluring right now, it occasionally backfires. The seller may choose whatever action they want to take, but I will never advise putting your company in danger in exchange for phony ratings. If you are discovered to be fabricating reviews, your account may potentially be suspended. You don’t want that, I assure you.
3. Facebook Groups for Reviews
There are A LOT of review groups on Facebook where you can offer your goods out to group members and then reimburse them once they publish a review. Here is an illustration of a Facebook discussion group. You can find a tonne more if you search for “review group” on Facebook. You give out things in Facebook review groups in exchange for 5-star reviews.
One of the offenses that might result in the most suspensions on Amazon is the explicit exchange of a refund for a review. It is tough to trace as the entire transaction occurs outside of Amazon, but Amazon will immediately become extremely suspicious if just one client messages you through Amazon to request a refund.
4. Targeting/Contacting Customers Using Email Append Services
Amazon is renowned for taking every precaution to prevent vendors from getting customer information. They conceal phone numbers and email addresses. Email appending providers use Big Data databases to compare Amazon shipping information to get a customer’s email address and/or phone number. Some services advertise a 40% success rate, however, the majority have much lower rates. Once you have their email, it’s not a good idea to get in touch with them directly, but you can use these services to efficiently remarket to them on Facebook, Google, and other websites with little risk of getting discovered by Amazon.
How To Get Bad Amazon Reviews Taken Down?
Contrary to popular belief, Amazon will occasionally delete unfavorable reviews. Reviews with abusive language (swearing, racial slurs, etc.) or URLs are the simplest to get removed. However, as of late, Amazon is also prepared to delete reviews for products it has completely fulfilled. Simply file a case in Seller Central, include a link to the review, and explicitly specify the reason you are requesting removal if you are requesting this kind of removal. Even though Amazon dislikes to erase reviews, it’s worthwhile to try despite the low success rate.
Despite your best efforts, you cannot win everyone over. Negative comments and reviews will inevitably surface from time to time. Negative reviews won’t go away, but you can fix them by taking the following actions:
- You can attempt to fix the problem by either contacting the customer right away or by leaving a remark on the review itself.
- Simply offer the customer a refund or replacement if you have their order number and can get in touch with them.
Remember To Adhere To The Rules
Product reviews on Amazon are taken seriously. In fact, because of review manipulation, many merchants had their accounts suspended. Understanding the distinction between ethical means and illegal ones is crucial when trying to obtain reviews on Amazon. Illegal methods might result in the suspension of your company. You should be aware of and adhere to the following fundamental Amazon product review guidelines:
1. Review Incentives Are Ineffective.
In exchange for a product evaluation, you might sell goods as recently as 2016 for a discounted price or even for free. Numerous sellers were able to build up their reviews and increase their popularity thanks to this tactic. However, Amazon found that this frequently resulted in exaggerated reviews. As a result, Amazon outlawed this practice in 2016 since far too many products were obtaining 4-5 star ratings that weren’t justified. Giving back-end discounts in exchange for favorable evaluations will probably result in suspension.
2. Review Selection Is Not Allowed
“Cherry-picking” reviews are another practice that Amazon banned in the past two years. In other words, vendors are unable to solicit feedback just from clients who they know to have had positive experiences while disregarding those who have had neutral or unfavorable ones.
Final Conclusion
In the past year, the environment for getting reviews on Amazon has dramatically shifted. Product launches have become much more difficult, yet this can benefit many sellers because it keeps out a sizable chunk of the competitors. Use Amazon’s techniques, at the very least, as they are entirely devoid of any “grey areas.” And always remember to follow Amazon’s guidelines. Keep in mind that risking the integrity of your entire seller account is not worth a few extra sales obtained through the use of a black hat strategy.
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