Getting reviews on Amazon is pretty important. But can you distinguish the nuances between seller feedback and product reviews? Both are crucial to gaining visibility and being successful, so let’s take a look at what separates the two.
Differentiating Between Seller Feedback and Product Reviews
I recently bought a power bank on Amazon (that shall remain unnamed) and had a mixed experience with it. It arrived well before the delivery date I selected, but the product itself was a dud — I was able to charge and use it once before it pretty much died.
Because I know the importance of reviews — the difference between seller feedback and product reviews — I wrote separate things. I wrote that the seller delivered the item far quicker than I expected and that the item was well packaged for my seller feedback, then another review stating my unhappiness with the power bank not working.
Seller feedback has to do with a buyer’s experience of the seller, such as with issues like:
- How quickly and thoroughly the seller answered questions about the product.
- What the shipping process was like, i.e. did it arrive by the expected delivery date, was the item well-packaged, what was the customer support like and how (or how fast) did the seller respond to concerns.
Product reviews, on the other hand, tend to do with things like:
- The accuracy of the received product based on how it was described in the listing.
- The quality or usability of the product.
- Can be found on the product detail page.
In essence, feedback has to do with the seller, while a product review doesn’t and only concerns the product.
Although both are important, product reviews tend to have more weight because they’re what consumers see and use to make buying decisions and they affect the product’s search rank.
However, feedback also plays a big role, as it affects a seller’s account status and their ability to win a Buy Box. Lesson? Pay close attention to both.
A Few Amazon Rules Surrounding Feedback and Reviews
There are a couple of ways feedback and reviews can affect your status as a seller: how many positive ones you have, and if your feedback/reviews are better than your competitors.
When it comes to the latter point, you may be tempted to leave negative reviews on your competitors’ pages in a bid to drown out the positive ones, but Amazon expressly forbids it. And for the former point, if you’re thinking of bolstering your own score by reviewing your own products, you can’t do that either.
Amazon also lists other examples of product reviews, so make sure you’re clear of the following:
- Incentivizing reviews to buyers.
- Using a third-party service to garner positive reviews.
- Having family members leave reviews.
- Trying to offer a refund to a buyer if they remove a negative review.
- Directly asking for a positive review.
- Trying to divert unhappy customers to a different review service than the one on Amazon, and leading happy customers to Amazon’s feedback service.
How to Get Feedback and Reviews the Right Way
The easiest way is to use FeedbackExpress, of course, because it’ll automate everything for you in a professional, proven way. We’ll also follow Amazon’s rules so you don’t have to worry about getting in trouble. Plus, if someone leaves you a negative message, we’ll alert you right away so you can deal with it promptly and correctly.
But if you absolutely feel you want to do things on your own, here’s how you would go about it.
- Send a thank you message after they’ve placed their order, but don’t ask for feedback — yet.
- A few days after the product’s been delivered, email to say thank you again for their purchase, say you’re there if they have any questions or concerns, politely ask if they could leave a review (framing it in a way they’d understand it will help future buyers), and including a link to where they can leave their feedback.
- If they haven’t left a review, email a third and final time a week to 10 days after the delivery date, repeating the second email but using a different language.
Final Thoughts
Sure, you can take time out of your day to write multiple emails to buyers asking for their feedback and reviews, all the while having to keep track of which buyer and which email. Or you could take the simpler, more efficient route of using eDesk Feedback.
Not only are we 100% Amazon compliant, but we’re also available in many Amazon marketplaces so you can rest easy knowing buyers will get their emails in the language they speak.
