Get Started Selling on Amazon: The Complete Step-by-Step Guide (Part 9 of 12)

Part 9: The Magic in Positive Ratings & How to Get Them

In Part 8, we were all excited about Shipping Your First Amazon Order!

Now you need to scale up and get more orders but you’ve noticed that ugly “Just Launched” badge might be hindering you. Or maybe you screwed up on that first order and now you have a nasty 1-star rating on from a buyer!

We know how important ratings are especially to online sellers so don’t worry I got you covered.Watch movie online John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017)

A study back in 2013 found out that;

• 85% of consumers say that they read online reviews for local businesses
• 79% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations
• 73% of consumers say positive customer reviews make them trust a business more

A short decade ago, e-commerce was nowhere as huge as it is today. The thought of COMPLETELY TRUSTING a stranger online posing as a trustworthy merchant with all your financial information in exchange for goods/services via the internet was something hard to attain.

However, companies like eBay and Amazon completely changed that game. They found a way to recreate how we shop offline via recommendations from family or friends and transferred that experience online by allowing buyers and sellers to provide feedback and reviews for good and services online.

For the sake of simplifying this post, I’ll refer to both feedback and reviews as ratings. I’ll be honest, I hadn’t thought much about this until I started working on my Private Label product and that’s when the distinction became clear!

This is specific to Amazon.

• Seller’s Feedback: Reviews left buy a buyer on specific to your store/seller account describing their experience buying from you. It’s rated from a scale of 1–5 stars.
• Product Reviews: Reviews a buyer leaves about the specific product they bought. This becomes extremely important especially when you launch your own Private Label. You as many reviews as possible and preferably rated as high as possible.

Monitor your buying process next time and note how huge reviews are as part of your buying process- I know they are to me.

Though I don’t have exact numbers yet, I know it’s something like 9/10 people are more likely to buy your product over a competitors if yours has more positive ratings compared to your competitors- wouldn’t you agree.

This is especially the case when selling products on Amazon that are being offered by other sellers. Let’s take the example below, who would you rather buy from?

If you’re like me (and most people I believe) you’d go for #1 with 100% rating, option 2 would be #2 I doubt I would consider #3 with 0% feedback.

The thing is, when you’re starting out until you start getting feedback from buyers, your seller account will display the “Just Launched” notice which sends not so welcoming signals to potential buyers.

The only time I think this works in your favor is when you have the lowest price compared to other competitors. I believe buyers see that and go “oh this is a newbie so they have their price low to attract more buyers” instead of your low price signaling bad quality.

In any case, you want to get rid of that notice/badge and preferably replace it with several 100% ratings.

The reason for for this is simple- the more positive feedback you have, the more buyers will trust you, and the more buyers trust you, the more you sell…you catch the drift!

Not only will you be able to sell more, you will also be able to price your items higher compared to other competing sellers that have lower ratings.

So, let’s talk about how to get positive ratings for your seller account.

I wish I had a huge secret to reveal to you but honestly I don’t. From my experience, there’s only one effective way of positive feedback on your account- offer great products and great customer service and request buyers to leave you feedback- that’s it!

Again, I don’t have the exact numbers but I have read that you will only get 1 feedback from every 100 orders bought- that’s 0.01% -sad stuff. So that means, to get 100 people to leave me feedback you’d need to make 10,000 sales! That’s nuts!

So let’s assume you have part 1 & 2 of this down- i.e. selle quality products and provide awesome customer support. That means the only part left is request your buyers to leave feedback.

It’s important to know that Amazon automatically does this for you, so it’s not advised to bombard your buyers with after-sales emails asking them to leave feedback- in fact this might annoy them and result to them leaving bad ratings on your account.

When I started, I used to manually email buyers as a gentle reminder to leave me feedback- however I found this to extremely time consuming and ineffective. I learned one thing though…

When emailing a customer requesting for feedback, don’t send them the “Feedback Request” email sample. I found out that most people (myself included) will just ignore these messages. I don’t blame them, I mean what’s in it for them? Nothing!

Instead, send them the “Order Information” email with a nicely written email.

I learned about this when my account got suspended. During the review period, Amazon asked me to contact my customers and request feedback because they will weigh than in when considering whether or not to reinstate my selling privileges.

So, I sent a bunch of emails and sorta A/B tested the two email subjects and the one with the most opens/responses was the “Order Information” one which made sense.

Here’s are two sample emails I actually sent to customers that day. I think I sent like 33 and ended up with 15 reviews, that’s a 45.45% conversion rate, not bad!

“Feedback Request” email did not convert at all for me!

Same email as above but with “Order Information” subject converted well over 45%

So that’s one way of doing it.

But there’s a smarter way

So, not too long ago, I found (and love) a new way that helps you automate the whole process. Yes, it’s free but you have to pay for it at some point. However, in my opinion is absolutely worth it.

This is not a full review of these tools but I hope to do that soon.

So, to automate your this process, check out;

Developed by Chris Guthrie and Norbert Hendrikse, Salesbacker is a really simple tool to automate your product review and seller feedback emails. They have a set of campaigns you can copy and use to get setup quickly.

You can also monitor both positive and reviews and feedback right from your dashboard.

Although I feel like this tool is meant for sellers with private label products on Amazon, I think other sellers can use it too and just focus on the “Feedback Campaigns” they offer.

You can also set up your own campaigns.

Salesbacker has a free plan, so you can use it until you start making money and then upgrade to a paid plan for more features.

URL: Salesbacker

This one is developed by Seller Labs who also have 3 other Amazon Seller tools that are useful for serious Amazon Sellers.

Feedback Genius does the same thing Salesbacker does but their new UI feels a lot better. I’m huge on design and user experience so this one is more appealing to me.

Feedback Genius also has a free plan, although at this moment seems to be a bit more expensive compared to Salebacker.

URL: Feedback Genius

Removing Bad Reviews

Sometimes you do everything you can to make the customer happy but you just can’t make some people happy. Or it maybe an honest mistake on your end, but it doesn’t matter now because you have a bad rating on your account.

Here are some things you can do to get it removed (no guarantees)…

Chill out

Negative reviews suck and your first reaction might be to lash out at the customer. This is a bad idea for many reasons. Take a few hours or a day to cool down and then reassess the situation with a clear mind.

You might find helpful information from the review that will help you improve so approach it with an open mind and see if there’s anything you can learn from the criticism.

Amazon gives you the option to respond to every review left by a buyer, however before responding publicly consider contacting the buyer directly via the internal messaging system.

There’s 2 Types of Ratings You’ll Deal with;

3rd Party Resellers Feedback: Closely take a look at the situation and ask yourself– can the problem be fixed? Consider offering refund or replacement. Most buyers can remove feedback for up to 60 days after a review is posted, so there’s usually a chance of redemption.

True story;

Last week, a buyer posted a really bad review (I don’t have a screenshot of it because Amazon deleted it) but it was insane. This lady bought a product and put in the WRONG ADDRESS. The item was shipped to the address listed but returned as undeliverable.

BEFORE the expected delivery date was even past, they were prompt to leave a nasty 1-star rating on my account. Then contacted me saying they didn’t receive their item and that they noticed that they put the wrong address and if I can resend it.

Fine, I agreed to pay another $16 do have this item shipped back to the new address and requested that they remove the bad review because it wasn’t my fault. Silence- from their end. I shipped the item anyway.

I kid you not, about a week later, got the package pack as undeliverable and another nasty email from this mad woman threatening that she wants a full refund blah blah blah.

So I calmly reached out to Amazon explained the situation, showed them all the screenshots of our communication with the buyer including the 2 attempted deliveries that failed.

The quickly deleted the review and close that A-Z Guarantee Claim- win!

So do what you can to resolve an issue with a buyer and always keep communication in case something like this happens generic cymbalta. I’m glad Amazon handled this case fairly, I know sometimes their decisions are too irrational and end up wrongfully favoring the buyer over the seller.

But what do you do? #TheStruggle.

Amazon Product Review: First things first, if the reviewer is becoming blatantly disrespectful, Amazon might be able to remove the rating. Check out their help guide involving privacy violations or obscene language, however these situations aren’t that common.

Be careful when responding publically because this may add further damage to the already bad situation, especially if others take the side of the reviewer.

Focus on getting many more postive reviews in the near future and bury this negative one.

Additional Resources

About Comments, Feedback, & Ratings: http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_left_v4_sib?ie=UTF8&nodeId=537806

As always, if you have any questions or get stuck and need help completing any of the steps outlined here, leave me a comment below or email me and I’ll be happy to help.

Keep Reading

Up Next, Part 10: Improving Your Seller Ratings & Ensuring Your Account is Not Suspended

This post is a part of the ongoing Get Started Selling on Amazon: The Complete Step-by-Step Guide series, follow the links below to read them:

Part 1: Creating Buyers & Sellers Accounts for Selling on Amazon

Part 2: Researching Hot & Profitable Products To Sell on Amazon

Part 3: Finding the Right Suppliers for Your First Amazon Inventory Batch

Part 4: Getting Ungated on Restricted Amazon Categories

Part 5: Listing Your First Product on Amazon

Part 6: Testing the Market Before Making the Big Purchase

Part 7: Purchasing Stock to Sell on Amazon

Part 8: Shipping Your First Amazon Order, YAY!!!

Part 9: The Magic in Positive Ratings & How to Get Them (Current)

Part 10: Improving Your Seller Ratings & Ensuring Your Account is Not Suspended

Part 11: Moving Up to Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) (Coming soon)

Part 12: Scaling Up Your Amazon Operation (Coming soon)