Does your product attract embarrassingly few Amazon product reviews? Do you struggle to get more positive reviews, or even just your first one? Even customers who are satisfied with your product may not necessarily leave a positive review.
If you don’t understand what drives customers to leave their feedback, you’ll never be able to get many great reviews. That means potential customers will end up spending their money on your competitors, limiting the growth of your business.
The good news is, if you want to know how to get more Amazon reviews, beat your competition, and make more sales, you’ve come to the right place. In this post, you’ll learn why reviews on Amazon matter, what customers drives to leave a review, as well as the best strategies to get more positive Amazon reviews.
Why Amazon Reviews Are Important
The answer to this question is quite simple: more reviews lead to more sales and increased revenue.
Reviews are crucial for earning the trust of potential customers, as most people read them before buying online. According to the 2023 PissedConsumer survey, 84% of customers check out online reviews, and 75.5% trust these reviews enough to let them influence their buying decisions.
If your products have few reviews, or mostly negative ones, it can make customers skeptical that your products are better than those of your competitors. So establishing your brand’s credibility is super important. Along with this, reviews are also beneficial in two other key ways:
You Get More Visitors
Another reason why reviews are important is that you get more visitors to your Amazon product listing. Amazon’s algorithm determines a product’s ranking by evaluating its chance of selling and making a customer happy.
To do this, Amazon first checks if a product is 100% relevant to a given search query. Following this criteria, they examine the frequency of product sales over time and subsequently, they consider more specific factors such as click-through rate, conversion rate, and customer reviews.
So if you have more positive reviews than your competitors, Amazon will automatically rank your product higher. As you can see on the following heatmap, you can make the most sales if your product ranks between positions 1 and 3:
The bottom line is, Amazon reviews are excellent social proof of a product’s value. More Amazon reviews will give your listing a powerful traffic boost, and that alone can significantly impact how much a product sells.
You Get More Sales
This gets back to the trust and credibility mentioned above. Positive reviews let potential buyers know that past customers were happy with your product, and that makes them more confident to also buy your product.
Customers are more likely to buy from you if you have more reviews. This increases your sales on a first level and also your ranking on a second level (if you sell more now, you’ll sell even more in the future).
You may also find valuable information to skyrocket your sales with the Amazon Seller courses from My Amazon Guy. There is extensive data, in addition to the statistics cited above, that prove the power of reviews for increasing sales and revenue:
- Data from the Spiegel Research Center shows the purchase likelihood for a product with 5 reviews is 270% higher than for one with no reviews.
- This is especially true for high-priced products, which showed a 380% conversion rate increase when reviews are available.
- More reviews boosts sales, even if those reviews aren’t 5-star. Businesses that have more than the average number of reviews earn 82% more annual revenue compared to those with fewer reviews than average.
Hopefully this helps you understand how important it is to get reviews on Amazon. Now, it’s time to understand how to get Amazon reviews.
What Drives Customers to Write Reviews on Amazon
Not every satisfied customer is going to leave a review. The desire to review a product is often driven by a strong emotional reaction.
This is why upset customers are more likely to leave a review unprompted than those who are simply satisfied with the purchase they made. Anger and frustration are much more powerful emotions than the mild satisfaction of receiving what you paid for.
Why Buyers Leave Reviews
Understanding why people write reviews can help you to get more of them. The most common reasons customers give for leaving a review are:
- To say “thank you”: Customers write reviews because they are satisfied with their service and want to express their appreciation. If you have ever received fantastic service, you probably know this situation.
- To help others: A common reason for writing reviews is that people want to help other consumers make good purchases (and avoid bad ones).
- To help companies: Customers want to help companies by pointing out a problem or showing them how to improve their service.
- To be heard: People want their opinions to be heard and respected by the masses.
- To be part of the crowd: It’s nice to feel included and like part of the conversation, and leaving reviews is one way to do this.
Most people will give you a positive review if your product convinces them. That’s because customers want to reward excellent service.
Here’s a graph showing results from a survey on Why Do Consumers Leave Reviews? by GatherUp.
The Kano Model of Customer Needs
The Kano Model is an analysis tool that helps sellers understand how to measure and leverage the emotional reactions of customers to drive sales or improve products. This model outlines five types of attributes that influence customer satisfaction:
- Must-be Attributes: Basic features that customers only become aware of when they’re not fulfilled. If you can’t provide them, customers won’t be satisfied. However, if you provide them, they also won’t feel much satisfaction.
- One-directional Attributes: These are desirable features that customers want but don’t necessarily expect. They’re called “one-dimensional” because they increase satisfaction, or decrease dissatisfaction, when they’re present.
- Attractive Attributes: These features delight customers, and give them value not offered by competitors. They also provide satisfaction when achieved, but do not cause dissatisfaction when not.
- Indifferent Attributes: Features that aren’t desired or disliked by customers, that have a minimal impact on their satisfaction in either direction.
- Reverse Attributes: These are things customers absolutely don’t want, which lead to dissatisfaction if present and customer satisfaction if absent.
The best way to motivate a customer to leave a positive review is by selling a product that has One-Directional or Attractive Attributes. These are the attributes that really force customers to engage with your brand and get them to reward your business.
You also should pay attention to Must-Be Attributes. When these are absent, they are the most likely to result in negative reviews. This includes things that you may have no control over, like shipping and delivery.
If you use Amazon FBA, Amazon will handle shipping for you. You can’t influence this process, but customers will still be unsatisfied if they don’t receive products on time or in good condition. Fortunately, Amazon does a good job when it comes to shipping, so let us assume that customers receive their product on time.
This can help stave off a negative review. However, according to the Kano Model, these customers won’t feel much satisfaction because on-time shipping is a Must-be Attribute. Always aim for One-Directional and Attractive Attributes.
But how do you get those? The answer is pretty simple: you’ll need a better product. Good or bad reviews depend on whether you sell a high-quality product or a low-quality product that sucks. Let’s go one step further and take a look at what customers do after they’ve received a product:
After engaging with a brand, customers go out and tell other people about their experiences. This also serves as a source of new inspiration for other people to engage with your brand (or not). You can see that about 15% of satisfied customers are going to a retailer’s product page to leave a review.
In the end, it’s relatively simple. Nearly all customers share their experiences with others after they’ve bought a product, and some of them do this by leaving a review. So, if you want more reviews, all you’ve to do is sell a great product on Amazon. This has more impact than any other strategy.
How to Optimize Your Product to Get More Reviews
If you sell the best product in your niche, you’re going to sell more items to customers who will be satisfied with their purchase. As we’ve already mentioned, that will naturally lead to more positive reviews.
Bear in mind, this doesn’t only mean that the physical item is well-made. It also means that it delivers the features customers want from that type of product. To find out what those are, you need to do some market research. Study the strengths and problems of other products in your niche.
If you can deliver all the desirable aspects, and fix all the problems, you will get many positive reviews. Here’s how to do that:
1. Sign up for a free Helium 10 account
2. Download Helium 10’s Chrome Extension here
3. Head over to Amazon and choose one of your competitors’ products
4. Start Review Downloader
5. Set up Only Verified Purchase and only choose reviews with a three-star rating or less
6. Go through all these reviews, find all the problems, and fix them with your product
You can also use these insights for further optimization, e. g. for listing creation.
So now that you have the best product in your niche, you can focus on increasing your sales. To do so, I highly recommend checking out this article about how to increase your sales on Amazon.
Top Strategies to Get More Reviews on Amazon
Even if you need to focus on product quality and increasing your sales on Amazon, there are several strategies to get more reviews from your orders.
Firstly, it’s best to get honest reviews. If you get fake reviews, your Amazon account may be suspended.
Here are the strategies that pay off. If you use these strategies, you’ll be able to get more reviews than 90% of your competitors:
1. Use Helium 10 Follow Up
Helium 10 Follow Up is an Email Automation Tool for Amazon Sellers.
With this tool, you can automate asking customers for reviews. It’s similar enough to the Jungle Scout Review Automation Feature so that you’ll want to use one or the other, but Helium 10 is an excellent option.
All you need to do is set up an email autoresponder that contacts each customer after a sale, asks them if everything is okay, and to leave a review. You will not only get more customer feedback on Amazon, but you can also reduce the number of negative reviews. Here’s how to use it:
1. Sign up for Helium 10 and get 50.000 emails for free
2. Head over to Follow Up
3. Set up Amazon MWS API Access
4. Set up your campaign. You have a variety of options that you can check out here.
Finally, get more positive feedback and make more sales.
Also: Helium 10 offers 21 tools to help Amazon sellers succeed on Amazon and they also – unlike most other Amazon seller tools – offer a free plan. You can sign up here for free, or you can use this 20% discount code for the first 6 months:
2. Use Jungle Scout’s Review Automation Feature
This tool is an easy way to request reviews from your Amazon customers. Jungle Scout’s Review Automation feature is the first of its kind to be approved by Amazon’s ToS. By sending automatic review requests to customers who purchased your product, it streamlines the process of encouraging customer reviews.
The Review Automation dashboard lets you see the status of review requests. You can also track how much time you’ve saved and see other helpful info. This dashboard also has customization options, like if you want to skip or delay a review request. Delays can be set at 3 levels:
- Marketplace: Change the send time for all ASINs and orders.
- Product: Change the send time for all orders of a specific product.
- Order: Change the send time for an individual order.
This feature can be useful for products that need more time for a consumer to use and evaluate. With review automation, you’ll never miss an opportunity to earn a review — simply turn on the feature, and you’re good to go.
3. Use Amazon’s “Request a Review” Button
Amazon sends automatic follow-up emails to customers asking them to leave a review and report any issues they had.
In general, Amazon only sends one follow-up email. You can expand on this by clicking on the “Request a Review Button” in Seller Central. This option is available any time between 4 and 30 days after the purchase.
This is an incredibly powerful feature that can exponentially increase your chances of receiving a review. Want proof of just how valuable it can be? Here’s some data straight from Amazon.
The “Request a Review” button was added on March 8, 2020. Prior to this, the average review increase from Amazon review requests was 3.6 reviews. After the addition of the button, the average review increase was 25.9 per order. That’s an increase of more than 700%!
Clicking this button for every order can be very time consuming. Luckily, Jungle Scout’s Chrome Extension lets you request reviews in bulk to streamline that process.
Here’s how to do that:
1. Sign up for Jungle Scout’s Chrome Extension
2. Head over to Amazon Seller Central
3. Request reviews in Bulk
4. Join Amazon’s Vine Program
If your brand is registered in Amazon’s Brand Registry and you have fewer than 30 reviews, you can join Amazon’s Vine Program. With this program, trusted Vine Voices reviewers receive your products for free in exchange for a review.
These reviews are often quite thorough, including specific product details and pictures, which can make them very valuable for building customer trust. Vine Voices reviewers are also expected to be honest, so the feedback isn’t guaranteed to be positive. They typically won’t hold back on criticizing or pointing out issues they experience.
As of October 2023, Amazon charges a one-time fee per parent ASIN, based on the total number of units you enroll. These fees are:
- 1-2 units: $0
- 3-10 units: $75
- 11-30 units: $200
You can enroll in Vine through the Advertising tab on Seller Central. The fee will be charged 7 days after the first review is published. Once you enroll, Vine Voices reviewers from your niche will get a link to your product page where they can “purchase” your product for free to review it.
Only products with fewer than 30 total reviews are eligible for the Vine program. Once your item reaches 30 reviews, it will automatically be unenrolled. According to Amazon, 25% of reviews occur within five days, and 99% occur within 35 days.
Amazon Vine can be an excellent opportunity for you to get Amazon reviews fast. You can learn more about the Vine program in this blog post.
5. Build an Email List
As long as customers buy your products on Amazon, they’re Amazon’s customers. And Amazon has strict rules that you have to follow if you want to contact customers.
A great way to do something about this is to build your email list. If you build your list, you can request reviews directly from your email subscribers. An email list is also helpful for new product launches since you can email your subscribers and send them to a promotional landing page.
Fortunately, there’re lots of ways to do so. Here are only a few examples:
- Social media
- Blog posts
- Product inserts
Building your email list often goes hand in hand with building your brand outside Amazon, which is incredibly important for your business.
6. Utilize Product Inserts
An easy way to get reviews on Amazon is to use product inserts. However, there are several things to keep in mind if you use this strategy:
- You can ask for reviews, but always stay neutral. Asking people to give a five-star review, or even showing a five-star image, is against Amazon’s guidelines.
- Tell people to join your email list and follow you on social media. As mentioned above, this will help you get more reviews and also help increase sales for future product launches.
- Give helpful information about your product and make sure people find a way to contact you if an issue comes up.
One major advantage of this strategy is that it costs almost nothing and can deliver long-term results. This makes it one of the most cost-effective review building strategies on the list.
7. Run Promotions
This is actually a strategy to promote your products. Sellers usually launch products on discount marketplaces to make more sales right from the start. A great tool to use for this strategy is Jungle Scout Launch.
If you sell highly discounted, high-quality products, chances are good that many customers will leave a positive review because they want to reward you. Remember that many buyers leave reviews for exactly that reason.
I recommend doing a giveaway when you launch a new product. Once sales start to increase, you shouldn’t do giveaways anymore unless you’re really not selling enough.
8. Request Reviews From Customers Who Have Left Positive Seller Feedback
Buyers who have left positive feedback for the seller are often more inclined to leave a product review as well. It’s a good practice to regularly check your seller feedback and reach out to those buyers via email.
In your message, thank them for their feedback and kindly ask if they would also consider leaving a review for the specific product they purchased. This approach helps increase the number of product reviews you receive.
Conclusion
To wrap up what we’ve covered, here are the key takeaways:
- Positive reviews significantly benefit your Amazon business.
- There’s no shortcut to getting more reviews on Amazon.
- Selling a top-quality product — and lots of it — is essential to garner more reviews.
The strategies outlined in this article can boost your review count, but that’s contingent on your product meeting customer expectations. If there’s one crucial lesson to remember from this article, it’s that to attract more positive reviews, the first step is offering an outstanding product.
One useful tool for this is the Helium 10 Review Downloader, which can help refine your product into something customers are excited to review. Ultimately, the real “secret” to more Amazon reviews lies in customer satisfaction. When customers love your product, they are naturally more inclined to share their positive experiences in the form of reviews.
