It’s one thing to go after Amazon feedback hard, but you’ve also got to monitor your product reviews to make sure you’re staying on top of potential problems. One common issue is negative feedback — one of the best ways of dealing with it is to nip it in the bud as early as possible instead of allowing it to stay up and hoping nobody notices. eDesk will show you how you can monitor your Amazon product reviews and how they can benefit your site.
Why You Should Be Monitoring Your Amazon Product Reviews
- Feedback deserves a response, whether you’re dealing with a positive or negative review. If it’s the former, say a quick and polite thanks to your buyer.
- Reviews are like free advertising in that buyers are spreading the word over the awesomeness of you, your products and your service. Monitoring reviews regularly can let you know what exactly you’re acing.
- On the flip side, (semi) negative reviews can be insightful into what you need to change. Look for common themes as a sign that you could improve in an area or two.
Along with monitoring your own reviews, you should also be looking at your competitors’ reviews. Why? Because shoppers aren’t purchasing exclusively with you and you can see, directly from the horse’s mouth, why they’re happier going with someone else — and how you can apply those practices to yourself. You can also see where their frustrations with your competitors lie and make notes to avoid that on your own page.
How Often Should You Be Monitoring Your Amazon Product Reviews?
Monitoring product reviews isn’t exactly like watching for pricing changes — you don’t have to have an app watch for it round the clock, as you can take more of a hands-off approach.
When it comes to product reviews, knowing when and how often to monitor them depends on a few things:
- How many reviews you have. If you only have a handful of reviews, you’ll want to pay closer attention to them because each one carries more weight. But as you start to accumulate more feedback, you can look at them in fives or tens.
- Which star number has the strongest percentage? If the overwhelming majority of your reviews are 5-star ones (or 4- and 5-star reviews), then you can afford to take a bit more of a backseat to monitor them. But if the biggest cluster is around 3 and below, you’ll need to spend more time on it.
- The combination of both number and quality. Let’s say you’ve got a total of 150 reviews, and 70% of them are 4- and 5-star ones. If you get some negative feedback here and there, the strength of your positive ones will drown out the negative ones. But if the numbers are reversed, then the negative feedback speaks louder than the positive and you’ll have to monitor more closely and more often.
- If you drop a total star rating. You know how we said you could look the other way on a couple of negative reviews? That’s only the case until it affects your overall star rating. If your total rating drops below 4, it’s time to take immediate action. Having a low star rating means your products drop lower in the overall search ranking, you could lose out on a lot of visibility, traffic and conversions, and your account could be entering dangerous territory where you’ll have to focus a lot of your time on improving instead of selling.
- The strength of your competition. How stiff your competition is will determine how often you should be monitoring reviews. If you stand relatively alone in your product or category, you can let more time pass by. But if competitors are constantly clawing at you, then each review holds that much more importance.
- When new products come in. Once you’ve been selling something for a while, it can be easy to sit back and coast a bit because you’ve developed solid patterns for selling that item well and efficiently. But when it comes to new products, you’ll need a bit of time to develop those new habits and that’s where reviews can be incredibly useful.
- If you suspect your competitors of dirty play. For the most part, your competitors are just trying to increase their sales and profit, just like you. But every now and then, you’ll encounter rogue sellers determined to upset the apple cart by any means necessary. If you’ve noticed a sudden dip in sales around the same time a new competitor has joined the group, take a look at their reviews section. They just might be loading up their page with fake reviews at a quicker rate than Amazon can deal with; if this is the case and you’re certain of it, notify Amazon right away.
- To ensure posterity for products. There’s no guarantee that Amazon will live forever, or that you’ll always be selling on it. Maybe you’ll open up your own site once you build up a certain level of success. Or maybe you want something to show the grandkids one day. Whatever the reason, archiving your Amazon product reviews can be really handy for future use, whatever that may be.
