Online reviews are today used as means of advertisement; they are extremely powerful and have a huge impact on how people perceive a business or brand. According to Bright Local’s studies, which surveys consumers’ consumption of online reviews and how they influence our opinions and local businesses; most of us rely on online reviews just like personal recommendations.
We tend to read online reviews for local businesses and when we find some positive reviews on a business site, we entrust the business more.
When a trade gets five stars, it feels like much has been accomplished since positive reviews indicate that consumers like or are pleased with the products or services offered. From good reviews, an enterprise gets more traffic flow and referrals, which is good for business as this increases sales.
When a trade depends on Amazon reviews for sales; the more reviews, the better. Social evidence is some powerful tool, and the more proof we have, the more influential it wields and the more revenue it yields.
How To Get Positive Reviews on Amazon?
How do you get positive reviews most of the time, if not all the time? As owners of enterprises in Amazon, we need reviews to heighten sales. To get more reviews, we need a substantial number of sales with positive feedback as a bedrock.
So know that you know how important reviews on Amazon are, let’s dig into 5 best ways to get positive reviews on Amazon!
1. Ask for Reviews
The easiest way to get Amazon positive reviews is by asking new and existing customers to rate a product or service. A shopper will be pleased to leave a review if asked to. As a trade owner, I have noticed that Amazon, by default, can email customers and ask for reviews after them buying products.
To borrow from this, you can also ask for additional reviews by clicking on a request review button.
However, I like using the amazon feedback request system – good old email! Manually! Why? Because I precisely targets consumers that are likely to write positive reviews about a product or brand.
Make sure you do not ask your customers for the POSITIVE review! Asking for a positive review is prohibited by Amazon – just ask customers to leave an honest review and that is fine!
Tips for Sending Elegant Feedback Requests
There are some software’s out there that can help you with this matter, but let’s face it – NOTHING beats manually written email! Here are the best practices
Timing
I have mastered and target the perfect time and days for sending requests to customers when they are most likely to respond. I always consider time zones, national holidays, and other such factors that dictate customer unavailability.
I also ensure that I schedule my requests to reach the buyer at the time he or she has had an opportunity to use the product or before they forget about the product.
Do your testing, see what works best for you, if you get high open rates around 10AM in the morning like me, then send emails than!
Choose wisely who gets the feedback request
I am very selective when it comes to asking for reviews and I ensure that I get amazon reviews from customers that I am confident that they received top-notch experience of my products. But how do I ensure that they have a quality experience?
Factors that contribute to quality experience include timely delivery and ample support.
If customer often raises a support query, I choose to keep them out from my feedback requests since it means that they clearly haven’t understood my products and are likely not to give positive feedback.
Avoid Feedback Request on Fragile Products
When I am aiming for a feedback score, I am unlikely to request reviews from consumers who have bought fragile products; I only choose clients who purchase safe-to-transport products that boast of a good history review.
Otherwise, you might end up with bad reviews.
Surpassing Customer Expectations
When I am requesting feedback, I always go a step further into providing my customers with product resources that lure them to throw an additional star on the review button. Further, I sometimes include links to video tutorials to give them all the information they need about my product.
Anticipate Customer Needs
To attract positive reviews, I always ensure that I have addressed any usual query relating to my products and even ask my customers if they need any assistant getting started.
Reverse Negative Feedback
Negative reviews happen now and then. Luckily, Negative Review Notification Tool that we developed helps a lot with taking care of it!
2. Provide Quality eCommerce Customer Service
Customer service is key in every business, and quality customer support is a deciding factor between a one-time customer and a returning one. I consider every kind of communication I have with my customers important, which helps me to enhance their perceptions of my product.
I ensure that my customer support team is well trained in answering clients’ queries that range from how my products work to their orders’ shipping status.
When we give out good customer service, the chances are high that our customers will leave positive amazon reviews. Here are a few tips about how and when I offer excellent eCommerce customer service.
- When my customer team resolves a problem or answers a question successfully, my clients get delighted, and when they are still happy, it becomes the perfect time to ask them for a review. At this point, I always expect positive feedback.
- Sometimes a customer may return a product but still give a positive review, especially when the cause of the return is not based on the product’s quality. If my customer agents accept the product back calmly and respectfully, the customer may give a positive review on amazon of how helpful we were to them.
- If a customer reaches out to us before making a purchase, we ensure that we email them a week or two later to find out if they need any help. If not, I ask them to write us a review on Amazon.
Apart from getting their issues solved, another major factor consumers look for from our customer service is the time taken to respond.
3. Launch Products with Amazon’s Early Reviewer Program
Amazon boasts of an internal launch program known as the early reviewer program. In my case, I choose to launch my products with the program since it speeds up the process of getting reviews from consumers, especially for new products.
How does it work?
The program encourages customers who have already bought a product to leave a review.
Once a customer writes a review for a product, they can be rewarded with an Amazon gift card with values ranging between £1 and £5.
However, the early review program is only available to products with less than five reviews and a cost of more than $15. To cover gift cards’ costs to customers, Amazon charges a one-off fee of $60 once a product or service receives its first review.
This is a give-and-take program where the reviewer and business benefit from each other.
Although I like the early reviewer program, it has one main disadvantage: that is, it leaves you with no control over who reviews the products and whether they will leave positive or negative feedback.
The good thing; however, is that most shoppers in the program are often in favor of my products, and they tend to give me better reviews. The
Consumers are aware of how helpful amazon reviews are to many of us who use Amazon—they appreciate using the program which results in qualified and informative reviews for my product page.
4. Send your customers note in the packaing
Buyers are encouraged to leave a review just after buying a product. If they wait for too long after purchasing, they might forget why they choose or loved the product in the first place or the wonderful customer service we offered them.
Apart from sending my customers emails requesting reviews, I also give them a friendly push in the product packaging. I start by thanking them for buying my product, then make them aware of how reviews are crucial for my business.
I also provide guides of vivid instructions on how to write a review on Amazon. I include my customer care number for easier communication in case a customer needs to reach out to me.
5. Offer Unique Promotions and Discounts
“I don’t like promotions and discounts on products I’m buying,” Says nobody. Every customer always hopes to get some discount from time to time. However small it is, it makes them happy. I understand that it is vital I get my product pricing right. Most of the time, I find that my customers are more satisfied if my products are reasonably priced.
I can offer my customers discount codes as part and parcel of my normal promotion strategy as I also ask them to leave a review on Amazon.
Another method that works for me is by discounting my products often throughout the year, as I ramp up my review requests during this time to naturally generate positive Amazon reviews.
How NOT to Get Positive Reviews- Ways Prohibited By Amazon
Reviewing prohibited by Amazon could amount to getting banned from trading in the marketplace. It can even lead to prosecution by consumer protection agencies such as FTC.
Before trading in Amazon, it is wise to go through Amazon’s policy and the FTC’s endorsement guidelines to trade as per their regulations. Sometimes you can come across people who buy your products and write false reviews to captivate genuine consumers to spend their money on. This amounts to deception.
The following are reviewing that I have discovered can land one in trouble with Amazon and FTC.
Paying for Reviews
Amazon does not allow reimbursement for reviews a product or service gets. It prohibits:
- Giving out gift cards
- Giving refunds
- Buying outright reviews
- Giving out free products
- Providing discounts
Activities are going on the internet where people are outrightly buying and selling reviews on Amazon. Hundreds of freelancers offer such trading services via unsolicited emails, social media platforms, discussion forums, and private messages.
Some of these activities were traced on some freelancing sites, such as Fiverr before Amazon discovered and sued thousands of Fiverr users in 2015. As a warning to everyone who breached the set rules, Amazon took legal action against those selling reviews.
I have come across some Facebook groups that normally pay $2-$5 for a five-star review. The process usually begins with the reviewer buying a product from Amazon to get a “Verified Purchase” label.
Later on, the seller reimburses the reviewer via PayPal or sends them an Amazon gift card purchased from local stores but not directly from Amazon.
Sometimes, the seller adds some additional fees on top of the review fee to motivate the customer to email back the item. I have noted that some reviewers sent the package back to Amazon.com (the genuine address) to avoid using their real address so that they can’t get caught.
Such an act is identity theft, which we refer to as brushing.
Prohibited Reviewing involve malicious acts, which can include:
- Helpful upvotes to attain positive feedback
- Adding products to shopping carts to confuse Amazon algorithm search into thinking that a product is in demand
- Posting negative reviews to destroy a competitor’s business
The main aim is to puzzle and confuse Amazon and do anything that can change the game in favor of the seller. If Amazon notices you are paying for reviews, it traces packages of a particular product to identify whoever is buying fake reviews.
Giving Buyers Heavy Discounts and Free Products
For a long time, deal sites that requested reviews were many and famous before Amazon banned boosted reviews. I found the process of using such deal sites to be as follows:
- I could offer free products or give out very high discounts
- The reviewer would then accept the deal and agree to leave a review back
- Finally, I would request for the product to be reviewed
Many of the sites I used were reputable and always asked for objective reviews alongside written disclaimers. When the Amazon ban came along, I was only left with two options that included:
· Shutting down our business on Amazon.
· Carry on business without requesting reviews
As a result of this development, many businesses chose to close, and those that continued with business became unattractive to traders. Amazon reduced buyers’ discounts, and sellers received fewer reviews.
Today, we can barely give any incentives in exchange for a review because Amazon has banned that. To make their threat clear, Amazon specifically mentions prohibited deal sites, also known as review sites, that we should not dare approach.
However, we still can use Amazon reformed deal sites, although their value is now restricted as a way of getting Amazon reviews. The sales from Amazon give our product sales grade a boost, and sometimes we even get reviews on social media and blogs, which are still beneficial to us in some way.
We stay away from prohibited deal sites and review clubs that Amazon has banned to use for reviews. We stay away from them because they are high-risk projects that can bring our business down in a snap.
Reviewing Your Products
Reviewing my products is a no-brainer action: Obviously, I cannot sit in front of my computer and start reviewing my products.
Surprisingly, some sellers review their products by opening separate accounts that they use as buyers. They write a review, and it gets published and stays up on their page with no warning from Amazon for the first time. As they continue setting up more accounts and reviewing their products, Amazon catches up with them.
We all know that Amazon is good at tracing multiple accounts using various information to link up logins even when we register on different computers and browsers using different names and addresses. Sometimes, amazon may close such accounts instantly or it can take some time.
Asking Employees and Family for Reviews
Asking employees and family members for reviews on your Amazon products sounds like a good idea, but amazon strictly prohibits them from giving reviews. Amazon considers family and employees to have some sort of interest in the business and so it would be similar to reviewing your own product.
Sellers ask for family and employee reviews simply because they want and know they will get positive reviews from them. Nonetheless, it is the same as writing your review.
How does Amazon recognize employee or family member reviews? Amazon runs a set of modern technology that detects account connections. If I have several employees and close family members, there is a high possibility that some of their accounts are directly linked to mine.
For instance, let’s say that one of my employees once used Amazon to buy a product and sent it directly to my address, or onetime I logged into my Amazon account from one of my family members’ house. All these accounts eventually link up and establish a connection, which is proof enough to Amazon that I am related to those people in one way or another.
Amazon only mentions family and employees and does not rule out friends, which means that they may or may not be prohibited from writing your reviews. With this regard, you can ask one or two friends to give you favorable feedback about your product but with caution, because it is also risky.
Asking Non-Amazon Buyers for Reviews
Most of the time, we create good customer-seller relationships both online and in our brick-and-mortar stores. The customers entrust us with the shipping of their goods and after-sales service. They give us a go-ahead to contact them anytime via their phone, email, or physical mail about our product updates and marketing messages.
As per Amazon policy, when someone buys my product from Amazon, they don’t become my customer, rather Amazon’s alone. Amazon clearly states this, and its breach can lead to account closure and loss to your business.
Although Amazon customers may provide you with their contacts, it is only meant for delivery purposes, and you are prohibited from contacting customers using their phone numbers.
What about a customer’s email address? Amazon does not provide you with their customer’s real email addresses. Instead, they give us an encrypted version linked to the buyer-seller messaging service.
Amazon customers know that they are Amazon’s clients but not yours. According to their understanding, they buy products from amazon and not from you. It would therefore be a breach of policy for you to contact customers directly, which would raise eyebrows with Amazon.
There are no shortcuts to getting positive reviews on Amazon. Getting positive reviews is all about continuous hard work, persistence, and communication techniques. These are the keys to success in Amazon. Once we learn the art of trading right, and by observing the do’s and don’ts, you will get better reviews that translate to sales.
The growth might be slow but it’s worth it because eventually, you will scale up your monthly revenues without hacks and quick fixes that could land you in trouble.