Amazon Feedback vs. Reviews: Defining Your Seller Strategy

Two of the metrics that impact all third-party sellers on the Amazon marketplace are seller feedback and product reviews. Since both of these metrics involve customers leaving a review describing their experience on the Amazon.com website, we want to take a closer look at how they impact sales performance.

Product Reviews

A product review is an opportunity for customers to describe and rate their experience with a product on a scale of 1 to 5. Product reviews do not represent buyer experience with fulfillment, delivery, or feedback to a seller. Product reviews are a reflection of what a buyer thought of the actual product.

Technically, anybody can leave a product review. However, customers who purchased an item on an Amazon site and left a product review will have their reviews marked as "verified purchase" right above the review. Amazon.com, Inc. ("Amazon") puts more weight on verified reviews, as it deems them to have more validity and relevance to the experience of other shoppers.

Product review counts and ratings are displayed right under the title name on a product listing. For product listings that have a parent-child relationship (such as an item that comes in different sizes, flavors, colors) reviews for each variation will show as a cumulative total number. For example, a product listing that has 4 variations with 10 reviews on each variation will show a total of 40 reviews regardless of which variation you are viewing on the product page. However, if you click "See all reviews" you are able to view the specific reviews for a particular variation such as color or size.

Product reviews are a very powerful factor in determining sales and the visibility of a product. Amazon prides itself on being very customer-centric. The prominent positioning of product review ratings on the top of each product listing right below the title is visual proof of how critical product reviews are in Amazon's search algorithm. With all other factors being the same, a product with a higher number of positive reviews will be placed higher in search results, thus increasing the likelihood of sales.

Product reviews are never linked to an individual seller, whether it is Amazon or a third-party seller. There can be multiple offers on a single product listing, and they will be equally impacted by positive or negative reviews. Product reviews become part of a product listing in Amazon's catalog. Sellers on a product listing can change, items may become unavailable (i.e. no sellers offering it for sale), but product reviews will always be connected to that product listing.

Seller Feedback

Unlike product reviews, seller feedback is given to a seller by the customer to evaluate metrics such as delivery, customer service, professionalism, and fair representation of the advertised product.

Seller feedback is an important variable in overall seller performance. You can look at it as a measure of your Amazon reputation in a similar way to a credit score that holistically represents your personal financial health and money habits. Seller feedback stays in your seller performance history even if your inventory or business model changes.

Similar to product reviews, buyers can rate their experience with a seller on a scale of 1 to 5. Amazon determines the overall percentage of seller feedback, with 100% being perfect seller feedback. The seller feedback percentage is displayed next to the seller name on the Buy Box or on an offer page.

To determine the positive percentage of seller feedback, Amazon considers feedback counts and feedback ratings over the periods of 30 days, 90 days, 365 days, and lifetime. It's important to note that recent feedback will be considered more relevant by Amazon, so a negative seller feedback within the last 30 days will bring your overall percentage down more than a negative seller feedback 6 months ago.

Every new seller will have a "just launched" badge displayed until they reach a handful of seller feedback and start establishing a track record as a seller. Amazon put certain limitations on brand new sellers and wants customers to know that a new seller does not yet have history with the platform. Additionally, "just launched" status sellers are not eligible for a Buy Box. This can be critical for sellers whose businesses model on arbitrage, wholesale, or liquidation, when sharing a Buy Box with other sellers is a common scenario.

Having excellent seller feedback improves a seller's chances of winning a Buy Box. While Amazon does not disclose its algorithm for awarding the Buy Box, it is known that seller performance is an important variable that goes into that decision. As mentioned earlier, the most recent feedback has the biggest impact on getting the Buy Box. With all other metrics being equal, a seller with a higher rating score and count will have a better chance of winning the Buy Box. If your business model involves competing with other offers on the same listing, this is an important variable to keep in mind.

Strategies to Increase and Improve Seller Feedback

• Sell popular items at a Buy Box price to generate more sales. For a new seller, this can shorten the "just launched" period and jump-start the establishment of a seller track record. For an experienced seller this strategy can help in the case of feedback repair. Creating higher than average recent feedback counts will decrease the impact of prior negative feedbacks.
• Send a message to a buyer asking for feedback. Making a message more personal and genuinely showing the importance of your customer's experience will help your request stand out and not be deleted from the customer's inbox. You might consider signing up for FeedbackFive, the leading feedback management tool built by eComEngine.
• Periodically review your seller feedback. If you are a high-volume seller it can be tempting to de-prioritize review of your seller ratings if your overall positive feedback percentage is high. However, as mentioned earlier, recent feedback can have a higher weight than older feedback, so working on any negative feedback on a regular basis will help keep your excellent ratings steady without any unexpected slides.
• Work with buyers on any negative feedback responses. Customers have 90 days to leave seller feedback and 60 days to remove it. Addressing negative responses in a timely fashion is not only the right thing to do from a customer service perspective, it's also a proactive approach to ensure your seller feedback rating stays positive.
• If you are participating in the FBA program, review neutral and negative feedback for any issues with delivery, fulfillment, or packaging. If your buyer had a bad experience due to fulfillment, you can request that Amazon remove that from your seller feedback. In these scenarios Amazon strikes through the negative feedback and does not count it in your seller performance evaluation.
• If you have a negative seller feedback that is actually a product review, you can submit a request for Amazon to remove it. Note that Amazon does not move a product review left incorrectly as a seller feedback to the product review section of a listing. Unfortunately, on the flip side, Amazon will also not move a great review for your product from your seller feedback to a product listing.

Strategies to Increase and Leverage Product Reviews

All sellers who carry their own brand or private label product know that gathering product reviews can be a challenge. Here are some tips for increasing product reviews:

• Use a service like FeedbackFive to automate and personalize product review solicitation for each order. Creating customized feedback requests increases your chances of buyers responding, and automating the process ensures that you leverage each opportunity to ask for feedback.
• Run promotions and discounts to increase your sales and thus increase your feedback. This can be especially critical in launching phases of a new product when gaining sales and great product reviews is the main focus.
• Leverage your existing audience, whether it's an email list, your audience on social media or your stand-alone website. This can be a powerful tool because an existing audience is usually more responsive, since they most likely already had a positive experience with your products. Offering a promotion to your audience is a great way to give your Amazon sales a boost.
• Leverage product reviews for market research, product development and keyword research. This includes both your own and competitor products. Buyers leave a lot of great information in their reviews that show which features they like the most, which problems product solved for them and what things can be improved upon.

If you're ready to take your feedback and reviews to the next level, I recommend trying FeedbackFive.