Why Amazon Reviews Are Important?
In the competitive world of online business, it is quite challenging to win the trust of your potential customers. Therefore, you must do something about it to make the best out of your business. Why Amazon reviews are relevant?
Customers who shop online don’t physically see the product that they are going to buy. With this, they depend on the reviews of other customers. So, you must have reliable reviews that can serve as a reference to your customers. With the reviews that they can see on your product page, you can have more chances to boost your traffic and increase your sales.
Even more important, you need helpful reviews to convince your customers to choose you over your competitors. If you want your online business to succeed, you can prefer Amazon Reviews Optimization. It will also help you to establish a solid reputation in your specific niche or industry.
What Amazon Doesn't Allow?
It's important to know about Amazon rules. The following ideas are the things you must prevent when it comes to getting reviews for your product or service.
- Providing discounts to get reviews.
- Giving away coupons to get reviews.
- Telling your family and friends to leave a review on your product's page.
- Encouraging people to leave a positive review.
- Offering a review for a product in which you have a financial stake.
If you want to win the trust of your customers, it is also necessary to provide truthful and reliable reviews on your page. With this, you can establish good communication with your buyers. Perhaps they will write information in reviews which will be interesting to other shoppers. It will save you from having to answer hundreds of questions. Therefore, you should strive to get honest reviews in every possible way.
About Amazon Verified Purchase Reviews
You may not know it, but you can use Amazon verified purchase reviews to attract more clients for your products or services. Amazon features the verified purchase tag to boost the trust level of your clients. You can get the tag if the purchase is confirmed by Amazon. The clients have nothing to worry about it being a paid fake review.
Another feature of the verified purchase reviews is that it can remove the cases wherein the client received a specific discount. The number is still unknown, but some estimated that it is about 50%. It does suggest that if you sell products at a bigger discount, it will be unacceptable for a verified purchase tag. Furthermore, the review can also be removed.
It cannot be denied that customers today are aware of online sellers who use fake reviews. Fortunately, with verified purchase tags in your reviews, you can have the assurance that your products can receive a great trust level from your target audience. With Amazon Reviews Verify, you can build the trust of the people with your business.
Is It Legal to Buy Amazon Reviews?
Sellers understand the impact of reviews on their business. So, you must keep ahead of the competition with Amazon Reviews. Meanwhile, are you curious whether it is legal to buy Amazon reviews? Paying for reviews is strictly prohibited in the Amazon Reviews Policy. The paid Amazon reviews can be divided into 3 categories:
- Providing the customer with a big discount
Giving your customers with great discount is fine if you don’t ask for reviews. Additionally, the reviews will also be invalid for the verified purchase tag.
- Paying clients to buy your product and make a review
It is illegal if you pay clients to buy your product for a positive review. Amazon can ban your account or remove your store if you do this.
‘Incentivized reviews’ is providing something to your customers to get a review. It is against the terms of Amazon. If this happens, Amazon will remove the review and possibly suspend your account.
To sum it up, any Amazon Reviews buying methods are illegal.
How to Get Reviews Legally on Amazon?
The following methods are directly allowed by Amazon.
1. Amazon Vine Program
Members of the program receive reviews from anonymous reviewers, which Amazon automatically selects in its database. Participation in the program costs $200, but not every product can take part in it.
To date, this is the only program that Amazon considers legal for receiving product reviews. Although you will have to pay to participate in it, you are guaranteed to receive reviews. If you're launching a new product, this is your real chance to get reviews legally.
Read more about how the Amazon Vine Program works to enroll in it.
2. Amazon Request a Review Button
To stop stimulating reviews bypassing marketplace rules, Amazon provides sellers with the option to request a review for a purchased item. This is a Request a Review Button, by clicking on which an official request from Amazon is sent to the buyer by email with an appeal to leave a review about the product and about the seller's work (Amazon Seller Feedback).
3. Emails
If you collect emails, you can use addresses to communicate with your customers. If you build a dialogue correctly, you can get 20-30% more reviews for the product.
4. Amazon Promotions
If you boost the discounts on your products, you can increase sales and get more reviews. This is an easy and simple way to increase customer awareness. It is very easy to arrange sales, and Amazon offers everything you need to launch Amazon Promotions.
5. Bundle Products
Customers always want to save more while shopping for their needs. You can offer bundled products to help your customers to save money. It may encourage them to leave a review if the product is of good quality.
6. Free Content and eBooks
Another way of getting a review is to offer your clients free eBooks or other useful content. It can be a great part of your customer service that they can appreciate. They may want to share their impressions and will be more willing to leave a review on the product.
"Grey Hat" Techniques
Sellers use different methods to get product reviews (including prohibited ones, which can lead to account blocking). We don’t recommend resorting to them so as not to get into trouble. But we'll tell you about the grey methods that are not directly prohibited, but also not officially allowed. You can use them at your own risk. But always remember that at any time Amazon may consider this to be something that goes against the rules and take action against you or your account.
1. Product Inserts
Amazon rules do not prohibit the use of Product Inserts explicitly, and many sellers use them successfully. However, it is important to arrange them correctly. You cannot offer a discount in exchange for a review, you cannot directly ask to write positive reviews, etc. On the insert, you can give thanks to your client for the order. You can also ask them if they are satisfied with your product and convince them to make a review. Meanwhile, you must be careful about the words you use to make sure that they will comply with the terms of Amazon. Ask for truthful reviews from your clients.
You can’t ask to leave only a positive review or offer any reward for the customer to leave a review. You also cannot directly tell the client that if he is not satisfied with something, he should only contact you, as a seller, and not leave a negative review on Amazon. Your task is to convince the client to write a true review after he has tried your product and evaluated its quality.
Use the following tips to make Amazon Packaging Inserts an effective tool for getting reviews.
- Include words of gratitude for the purchase of goods and make it clear that you strive to satisfy the interests of the client; therefore, his opinion is very valuable to you.
- Ask for an honest review; you can add brief instructions on how to do this.
- Say that you value true reviews, and if the client has any complaints about the product, you are always ready to quickly resolve them.
Another effective way to use Inserts is an offer with an extended warranty (if this option is possible for your product). Ask the buyer to register the product in return for receiving such an extended warranty. At the same time, you will have an e-mail address, where you can directly send a request for leaving a review on the product page.
However, Amazon may consider such inserts a prohibited technique at any time, because you urge the client to leave a review bypassing the site system. Therefore, use them carefully, understanding the possible risk of blockage.
2. Email Autoresponders
This method was very popular in the past until Amazon added the Request a Review Button option. Now if you want to send an email asking the buyer to leave a review for a product, you must use the Request a Review Button. However, no one prohibits the use of third-party services to remind the buyer that they can leave a review about the product. But you cannot use both the request button and autoresponders at the same time. Amazon allows only one request per order. If you use both methods at the same time and even bombard the buyer with letters, you can get a complaint and a ban.
Your chances of getting a review will be higher if you do not only remind the client about it in your letters. Make letters useful to the buyer and include the necessary information in them:
- how to use the product;
- how to extend its term of work;
- how to get an extended warranty (if possible);
- online books (e.g. recipes, if appropriate).
3. Request Reviews from Customers Who Have Left Seller Feedback
If the buyer left feedback but did not leave a review about the product, you can contact him and ask to do it. Many people simply don't know the difference between the two types of reviews, or they don't know that they can leave both a product review and a seller feedback. You can remind them about this.
But you should remember that any of the proposed methods, which are not expressly approved by Amazon, can lead to negative consequences, including blocking your account. The only legal way to get reviews today is the Request a Review Button. It can only be used once per order.
What Methods Shouldn't Be Used?
If you want to comply with Amazon reviews guidelines, you must learn the things to avoid in Amazon.
1. Freelancers on Third-Party Platforms
You can also request reviews from third-party platforms like Fiverr. The authors who will write the reviews are likely to write them very well. But this method is risky for any seller. If Amazon reveals that product reviews were written by people for money, your account may be blocked.
2. Facebook Groups
Facebook is one of the most commonly used social platforms today. You can take advantage of social media to get positive reviews about your product. Amazon Facebook reviews groups can also help you to communicate with a huge audience. However, if you look for groups in which people write reviews for money, this will not bring anything good. We know that in social networks it is easy to find those who are ready to write a good review for the product.
And if you place a free ad in such a group, you will probably very quickly receive a response to your request and will contact such people. However, there is no guarantee that they will leave reviews on Amazon. Besides, this method also contradicts Amazon's policy. So, we cannot recommend it.
3. Amazon Review Trader Sites
There are companies that can offer you services to get reviews. With Amazon Review Trader Services, your clients can leave positive reviews on your site. For this, you sell your product at a discount to the buyer. To use this service, you need to go to any similar site (Vipon, Snagshout, iLoveToReview) and register.
However, this method of obtaining reviews is also not legal. If you are suspected of bribing customers or using third-party resources to raise the rating, your account will be blocked.
4. Asking Friends and Family
Asking your family and friends to leave a review for your product is not advisable.
5. Using Zombie Accounts to Get Fake Reviews
Some sellers use zombie accounts to get fake reviews. People create fake accounts, redeem goods, and then write reviews about them. For this, they charge a fee. If you don’t want to lose the trust of your target customers, never make this method.
Conclusion
Amazon reviews are necessary to help you to establish a good name in your industry. It will help you to win the trust of customers. This will help you to increase your sales. But you shouldn't go against the rules of Amazon and use grey or forbidden methods to get reviews. After all, you want to build a serious, successful business, don't you? Then make sure that the options you use for this are approved by Amazon.