Reviews are critical to the success of your Amazon business. But getting those reviews can be a challenge. Once you’ve got them, you’re going to want to make the most of them.
Sure, you know that reviews impact your product’s visibility in Amazon searches and that getting more reviews is one of the best tactics you can use to increase conversions for your listing.
But when is the last time you conducted an Amazon review analysis for your top sellers and worst-performing ASINs?
In this article, we’ll discuss ways to get reviews along with why and how to analyze your reviews to help your Amazon business succeed.
Requesting Reviews
Amazon allows sellers to send proactive messages to request product reviews. There are three ways to do this:
- By using Buyer-Seller Messaging in Seller Central
- Clicking the Request a Review button on the Order Details page in Seller Central
- Automating review requests via API, typically with software that is available in the Amazon Appstore
Requesting reviews manually can be very time-consuming with little reward since not every request will result in a review. Many Amazon sellers choose to send automated review requests with Amazon review software such as FeedbackFive. This allows you to work smarter by setting up a repeatable process for requesting reviews based on your specific parameters and timing preferences. For example, you can choose to exclude certain ASINs from requests or always send your message a certain number of days after the item is delivered. This is a good strategy for products that people need to spend more time with.
Automating review requests is a smart first step towards getting more reviews. In addition to sending automated review requests, you might want to consider enrolling your products in Amazon Vine or including a review request on a product insert. Keep in mind that your insert must comply with Amazon’s guidelines for communicating with buyers.
Once you’ve started getting reviews, you’ll want to have a plan in place for monitoring what customers are saying.
Why Monitor Your Reviews?
Regular Amazon review analysis can reveal valuable information that is otherwise hard to find. Where else do you get to learn what your customers like and dislike about your product, straight from the customers themselves?
To stand out in a competitive space, you’ve got to stay at least one step ahead of everyone else in your niche. Your reviews are a great place to get inspired to do just that! From recommendations for new product features or improvements to potential bundling ideas, your product reviews provide everything you need to make your products exactly what your customers will want to buy. You might even find ideas for developing new products.
You can automate the review monitoring process with FeedbackFive. This allows you to focus on other tasks and then quickly assess your reviews since the information is gathered for you. You can also choose to receive email or text alerts for new reviews as they arrive or in a daily summary.
You can also learn from your fiercest competitors. Consider monitoring their ASINs to get even more insight into what’s working and what’s not…and then update your listing accordingly. This can be a fast way to discover how your product stacks up. To be clear, we’re not saying you should copy your competition. The idea is to find ways to make your product superior based on honest thoughts from buyers. Make it shine where others fall short!
Reviews vs. Ratings
When Amazon introduced the Request a Review button in 2019, one-tap ratings also made their debut. Before this, buyers had to leave a written product review in addition to their selected star rating when reviewing a product on Amazon. With one-tap ratings, buyers can choose the star rating and opt not to leave a written review. This feature makes it much faster for buyers to leave reviews, so it’s no surprise that we’ve seen an increase in ratings since Amazon rolled out this feature.
However, it can be challenging for sellers to track average ratings for their products on Amazon accurately. Amazon one-tap ratings seem to affect the search algorithm similarly to written reviews, so if you find that your review requests generate more ratings than written reviews, you have nothing to worry about!
However, it’s essential to understand how all of those one-tap ratings affect your listings, so we’ve made it super simple. FeedbackFive provides a detailed view of your total ratings, written reviews, and seller feedback received on the Campaign Analytics page. You can filter this information in the software or export the data to a CSV file.
Amazon Review Analysis
Want to keep increasing sales and growing your business? It would help if you had a regular Amazon review analysis practice in place. Every business has different objectives, but generally, you should make sure to look at the following:
- Top-performing ASINs
- Low performers
- Suspicious review activity
- Steady sellers
If you only sell a few products, it shouldn’t take long to analyze your Amazon reviews. But if you have a more extensive catalog, you’ll want to consider using software like FeedbackFive to do the heavy lifting for you. Having the ability to sort, filter, and export your data in one place makes it much easier to identify trends and compare product performance across your catalog.
Top-Performing ASINs
These are your best-selling products. If you sell seasonal items, this list might change slightly each time you analyze your Amazon reviews.
Based on recent five-star reviews, what do customers love about these products? Compare these reviews to your listings. Are you explaining product features and benefits in a way that buyers understand and relate to? Are there other opportunities to enhance your A+ Content to address common questions or highlight your products’ value?
What can you learn from these top-performing products? How do they compare to the other products you sell on Amazon? Understanding what’s working for these items is smart to apply best practices for other products to boost sales.
By evaluating your reviews, you get direct insight into why buyers love your products. You can also identify opportunities to continuously improve existing products or get ideas for adding other products based on what is working for your business.
Low Performers
Negative reviews are inevitable, but if most reviews for a product are poor, you’ve got a problem. The question is, what do you do about it? Maybe it’s time to drop a problem ASIN or two, or maybe you need to get on the phone with your manufacturer to discuss a quality issue.
Negative reviews for your Amazon products offer more of that awesome unfiltered perspective from buyers, but this time they’re telling you that you’ve got more work to do. Sometimes it’s as simple as updating your listing to provide more accurate images and item descriptions. A common issue here is color variations. If your listing describes an item as red and it appears on a buyer’s doorstep looking more like a bright magenta, you’re probably going to hear about it. Using detailed descriptions such as Pantone color codes can help alleviate this type of buyer concern.
If your products are not performing because they just aren’t getting any traction in search rankings, consider advertising on or off Amazon to help drive traffic to the underperforming listings. You’ll want to keep your profit margin and advertising budget in mind, but this can be an effective strategy to help jumpstart a listing.
If you’re having trouble getting reviews but think your product is worth investing in, this is a good time to consider working with an influencer or enrolling in Amazon Vine.
Suspicious Review Activity
Getting into the habit of Amazon review analysis provides many benefits for your overall business strategy. It’s also a smart way to help safeguard your business from fraudulent reviews. Evaluating your review trends regularly makes it more likely that you’ll notice suspicious activity early on.
If you start noticing a flurry of negative reviews that seem questionable, report the issue to Amazon. The same goes for an influx of positive reviews that are clearly not about your product. Both of these actions could be competitors attempting to get your account flagged for suspicious activity. It’s important to know how to spot a fake review.
Steady Sellers
You can almost predict daily or weekly sales volume for these products. They sell steadily, perhaps with a slight boost during certain times of the year. Something is clearly working! If you don’t already know what that something is, take some time to figure it out. Are there strategies here that you could replicate for other products? What opportunities do you have to increase sales? Would it make sense to bundle any of these products with other items you sell?
Start Analyzing Your Reviews
Putting an Amazon review analysis practice into place can help you capitalize on working and fixing what isn’t. You’re getting excellent market intelligence directly from customers every single day. Using review software like FeedbackFive allows you to easily see your review requests’ impact and identify trends that can help you continue to grow your business and increase sales.
If you have any questions about your Amazon review strategy, we’re here to help. You can sign up for a free product review strategy session to learn more about getting reviews while complying with Amazon guidelines.
About the Author
Becky Trowbridge is the Content Strategist at eComEngine. Her mission is to empower Amazon sellers with the information they need to succeed in a competitive market. When she’s not creating content, she enjoys spending time outdoors, trying new recipes, and reading.
