Product reviews are the lifeblood of your Amazon strategy, which is why a good Amazon product review software will be vital for your entire enterprise.
Amazon’s Marketplace has quickly grown into something of a behemoth. According to Marketplace Pulse founder, Juozas Kaziukenas, there are estimated to be more than five million sellers on Amazon and these numbers continue to grow, adding more than a million each year. The number of products being sold by Amazon’s sellers now outnumbers those sold by Amazon themselves.
This creates challenges for everyone. Amazon must decide which products it should list first; sellers want to get their listing seen and buyers want to know which products and sellers they can trust. So how do sellers get their product seen and how do buyers know who to buy from? The answer is relatively simple: product reviews.
How product reviews work
Product reviews are crucial – both in your relationship with Amazon and your customers. According to Bright Local’s 2018 Consumer Review Survey, more than 90% of buyers read reviews and 84% of people say they trust product reviews as much as they trust personal recommendations from friends.
As a buyer, it can be hard to know what you are getting seeing as how you cannot touch, feel, or try the item. Shopping used to be easy. You’d go to the store and examine a product in person. Today, it requires a leap of faith. An online purchase means handing money over to a seller for something you haven’t even seen. Of course, you need reliable information about the product and the buying process from people who have purchased first.
Product reviews do this. Many buyers will immediately look at the star rating of a seller. Some of them will even restrict their searches to sellers with a rating beyond a certain level. Even if a product has a good rating, customers will actively seek out the bad reviews so they can get a better picture of your business practices.
How Amazon product reviews work
Product reviews are crucial to your discoverability. With multiple sellers selling similar items, the Amazon search algorithm needs to know how to sort results. One of the things they use to determine this is the number and quality of your product reviews.
It’s not certain whether reviews have an impact on bestseller ranking what they do impact is whether or not you will appear in search results. If a seller has relatively fewer reviews, they will be listed lower down the product categories. More reviews will see them given a place of a bit more prominence.
Amazon, generally, looks for each seller to have a reasonable number of reviews for each product. This usually works out to be about 2% of all buyers. That means even more established sellers need to keep an eye on how many product reviews they receive. If it slips below a certain level, these sellers will find themselves slipping down the page of search results.
What To Watch
Both Amazon and buyers will go beyond the star rating level of a product and take a look at the content of each review. Every seller might have an unsatisfied customer from time to time, but certain words and phrases are likely to set off warning signs across the board.
For example, if phrases like ‘fake’ or ‘not as advertised’ crop up repeatedly, your legitimacy as a seller may be called into question. These phrases hint at someone who is not trustworthy and may trigger an account investigation from Amazon and dwindling sales.
More than helping buyers determine value, the content of reviews can also help you as a seller. Think of this as a chance to receive some constructive feedback. Complaints will tell you where your products or service is under-performing. If you see the same issue cropping up time and time again, it’s a clear sign that something needs to change. If you look at your reviews regularly, therefore, you’ll be able to learn lessons and improve as a seller.
Managing reviews with Amazon product review software
Whether you’re new to Amazon or have been at this for a long time you really need to stay on top of your reviews. Unfortunately, this can be easier said than done. Your time is precious and you may simply not have enough working hours to wade through all the reviews you’ve got coming in, which is where review management software can save you time and money.
There are many different platforms out there. Some are generic and can work across several different areas, and others are specific to Amazon. These tools can offer a level of specialist detail that can deliver enhanced insights. Let’s look at one of the most popular tools on the market: FeedbackWhiz.
FeedbackWhiz helps you to manage all your Amazon orders and product reviews in one place. It fetches reviews for any ASIN in your inventory every four hours, delivering these back to your main seller dashboard and review management page. This allows you to monitor all your reviews, and respond to them if you wish. You’ll be alerted to any negative reviews almost immediately, giving you a chance to reply and promptly and, if possible, resolve the customer’s complaint. This will increase the chances of them deleting or amending the review.
These negative reviews can also prove beneficial. FeedbackWhiz provides a keyword review feature that lets you analyze the content in your negative reviews, identifying trends and helping you to improve your product. In some cases, it may even help you to spot fake reviews and report these to Amazon.
The keyword search tool can also help with your search optimization. By searching for keywords within the reviews and analyzing the content you get a clearer idea of what people are searching for, which can help with your future optimization strategies.
It is important to have as many reviews as you can get and, unfortunately, most people will not leave reviews if they are happy. It’s only when they are unhappy that they will take action. FeedbackWhiz enables to you send automated emails at the time of shipping and delivery so you can say thank you, contact me if there are issues, and encourage the customer to leave a review, letting you know how you did.
But a word of warning: be careful how you interact with buyers. Be sure to follow Amazon’s terms of service to the letter. For example, Amazon forbids incentivized reviews which means you can’t offer a reward for leaving a nice comment or deleting amazon a negative one.
Again, these interactions with buyers can be automated and programmed to go out at different times, allowing you to maintain a relationship with the customer. It minimizes administration time and makes it faster and easier to increase the number and quality of reviews you receive.
There is no way around it. Whether you are new to Amazon or been selling full time for years, product reviews play a crucial role in your success. To give yourself the best possible advantage, an Amazon product review software tool can help you manage your reviews, repair negative feedback, rank higher, and reduce your workload so you can focus your efforts on making more sales!
For more information about FeedbackWhiz check out the great tools over at fitsmallbusiness.com or check out the FeedbackWhiz advantage for yourself by signing up for a free trial.
1 Comment
With Dignity
I love it when people come together and share opinions, great blog, keep it up.