How Amazon Reviews Impact Your Bottom Line – Complete Analysis, Guide & More   

By Becky Trowbridge

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Product reviews are always a hot topic for Amazon sellers. After all, these ratings directly impact everything from buyer opinion to search rankings.

Reviews can increase sales or warn shoppers to seek a different product.

Let’s explore how reviews affect your bottom line and what you can do about it.

How Amazon Reviews Impact Your Bottom Line?

Product Reviews or Seller Feedback

Before we get started, though, it’s important to clarify the difference between reviews and feedback, as they are frequently confused. Both are rated on a five-star system, with five stars as the highest rating.

Reviews are about your product, typically including details about the buyer’s perception of the item’s qualities or uses. Seller feedback concerns you and your reliability as a seller: Was the order fulfilled on time? Were you responsive if an issue arose?

In either case, positive ratings are desirable. Both feedback and reviews affect the health of your Amazon seller account. You can request these ratings from buyers, but it’s important to understand that Amazon has strict communication guidelines that you must follow.

Now that you have some context, we’ll focus on reviews for the remainder of this article. If you’d like additional feedback information, check out this guide.

Building Buyer Trust

Product reviews are the eCommerce version of word of mouth. Buyers frequently read reviews when evaluating products to make a purchase decision. Building buyer trust starts with offering a great product.

Your Amazon product description and images should provide an accurate and helpful overview to help shoppers understand what you sell. Ensuring that you are setting reasonable expectations increases the odds that you will receive mostly positive ratings from satisfied buyers.

That said, negative reviews do happen from time to time. You should be monitoring your reviews on Amazon regularly (or using a third-party tool like FeedbackFive to get alerts when you receive a negative review) and responding professionally.

This may not make a difference for your current review, but it shows future shoppers that you are paying attention and providing customer service after delivery if necessary. After all, they notice. Many shoppers look at the most helpful positive and negative reviews for a product based on other buyers’ votes.

Having a short and helpful note from your business on a negative review that shows that you are aware of any issues and attempting to resolve them can make all the difference when it comes to getting the buyer to click “Add to cart.”

Reviews and Rankings

It’s no secret that Amazon advertising is growing by leaps and bounds. While it can be difficult to compete with paid ads, you have a better chance if your product is listed on the first page of Amazon’s search results for your key terms. The number of reviews for your product is a factor that directly influences the Amazon search algorithm.

If you are paying to advertise your products on Amazon, reviews are still very important. As previously mentioned, buyers rely on these ratings when purchasing.

Amazon also allows you to include your product’s average star rating in ads if your product has at least a 3.5-star average and a minimum of 15 customer reviews. This can entice shoppers to click on your listing.

Tip: Use shortened links to get more traffic on your content.

Getting Reviews

You know reviews are important, but getting them can prove to be a challenge. Let’s take a look at a few ways to get reviews for your product.

Amazon offers two different programs to help merchants get reviews. Sellers can pay to enroll products in the Amazon Early Reviewer program. Amazon will request reviews from buyers and provide a small reward for those who share their opinion. You can generate up to five reviews with this program. The Amazon Vine program is for vendors who can enroll their products to be reviewed by Vine Voices, who are trusted, reviewers.

You can send a product review request message to buyers using a template in Buyer-Seller Messaging, but this process can quickly become tedious. We developed FeedbackFive to automate this process in an intelligent way, with rules that allow you to decide when to send a message.

You can customize your message by-product to include an image of your product or additional information about the product that may be useful to the customer, such as warranty details.

As mentioned above, Amazon has strict guidelines that you must follow. As an Amazon seller, you are responsible for understanding and following the Terms of Service. There are changes from time to time, so be sure to make time to reread them regularly.

When it comes to sending a product review request, you cannot incentive a buyer to leave a review in any way. This includes discounts, coupons, and other financial incentives.

You are not allowed to include marketing messaging in your message, and you cannot link to your storefront or third-party websites.

Your review request must use neutral language (don’t ask for a positive review) and cannot include if/then messaging intended to divert an unhappy customer to a different action.

We encourage sellers to pay particular attention to the following: Buyer-Seller Messaging Service Guidelines, Customer Product Reviews, Customer Product Reviews Policies, Answers to Questions about Product Reviews, and the Amazon Seller Agreement.

Reviews are essential for increasing sales and keeping your Amazon business running smoothly. Best of luck!

Are Amazon Product Reviews Really That Important? 

The reason why many Amazon sellers stagnate or start to see a decline in their bottom line is that they don’t pay attention to product reviews. 

Not only are product reviews one of the pillars that keep your Amazon business standing, but they can also be a useful tool to determine what could be improved. 

A study shows that 84% of shoppers trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation from a friend or a peer. This makes sense as online reviews are also written by everyday users. 

That same study said that 91% of shoppers occasionally or regularly read online reviews. Oftentimes, these people don’t even read these reviews with the intent of buying the product at that particular time. 

However, it’s a great way for them to browse through brands and determine which product is most suitable for them. 

In this digital climate, where consumers immediately flock to see what other customers have to say about a product, the importance of product reviews cannot be understated.

In other cases, a person may look towards the product reviews for your product if they are on the fence about buying your product. Hence, the user reviews will ultimately be the reason that customer makes a purchase from your brand or goes to one of your competitors. 

It makes sense that product reviews have grown so much in popularity. They have genuine information about the product that isn’t just a sales pitch from the brand itself. It allows potential buyers to make a much more informed purchase.

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