In days gone by, people were resigned to word-of-mouth referrals, but modern consumers are far more likely to read a handful of online reviews before deciding whether to buy a product. It’s estimated that two out of every ten customers are driven away by just one negative review.
As an Amazon seller, you may get a product review that shows up in your seller feedback as an Amazon cell review and wonder why the customer didn’t or couldn’t leave a product review.
By going into the “Feedback Manager” and selecting “Recent Feedback,” you’ll see precisely that – seller reviews. Perhaps there are many five-star reviews you’d like to display publicly. You can use a small trick to convert that cell review over to a product review for potential customers to see.
Trick and Treat
Every review counts, especially in the first few months of launching a product, if you don’t use any external traffic, rebates, or the like. To convert a seller review to a product review, click into the order and then on the top right select “Request a Review.” There are ways to automate this and do it en masse, but you don’t want to request a review from everybody. However, anybody who leaves a seller review will undoubtedly leave you a five-star product review, so it’s advisable to request in that instance.
Notably, you can’t request a review on anything that’s older than 30 days, so you’re going to have to do this, at the very least, monthly.
Review Threshold for Conversion
Getting an extra one or two reviews early in the first month can be hugely beneficial, considering there’s a threshold of around 25 reviews where your conversion rate gets roughly a one percent uptick. After that, there’s almost a nominal outcome – the review count between reviews 25 to 100 is titular. The next threshold is at 100 reviews and then again around 1000.
In summary, the first reviews you get on a product are critical, and so it’s worthwhile spending some extra time to try and leverage some of that seller feedback and convert them to product reviews.
Bad Actors
It’s somewhat confusing to customers as they can’t tell the difference between seller feedback and product reviews; however, it’s not their fault. The system is designed like that, and Amazon keeps it around because when somebody leaves negative feedback on a seller account, it’s a reliable way to catch bad actors. Perhaps the product was fine, for example, but the seller sent the incorrect product.
If you’re curious where seller feedback shows up, on the far right-hand side, underneath “Buy Now,” you’ll see” Ships From Amazon.” Below, it’ll show “Sold By (Brand Name), and by clicking the brand name, you’ll see all the account information as well as their products and seller feedback. At the top left, it’ll show a % Positive in the last 12 months and how many reviews dictated that.
If there were a bad actor out there, you would see less than 100%, allowing consumers searching for good sellers to make an informed decision.
