The Do’s & Don’ts of Amazon Reviews 

84% of online shoppers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.

And at the same time, 91% of consumers read online reviews occasionally or regularly.

This means – over 91% of your prospects and consumers will head over to the “Customer Reviews” sections of your product listings to decide whether they’d like to proceed forward with the purchase or not.

Additionally, Amazon’s A9 algorithm heavily focuses on delivering a rock-solid user and customer experience, which is why it seriously takes into consideration a product listing’s ratings and reviews to determine its placement on Amazon SERPs for the desired keywords.

From helping you improve your Amazon rankings to allowing shoppers to gain insights into your customer service, reviews can heavily influence your audience’s purchase decisions and help you build trust.

However, as an experienced Amazon seller, you may find yourself getting pretty frustrated over your customers not leaving their valuable feedback despite delivering world-class products and services. 

According to experts, only 3% – 10% of online consumers actually go through the trouble of writing a review.  

While you can take the much-needed steps to boost this number, there are a couple do’s and don’ts you should keep in mind in 2022 – which we will be discussing throughout this blog post. 

The Do’s & Don’ts of Amazon Product Reviews in 2022

We know you like to have a quick and spicy read. That’s the reason we’ve taken it upon ourselves to make things interesting for you. We’ll be approaching our do’s and don’ts on an alternate basis. 

Let’s dive straight into it.

Do – Use Amazon’s Request a Review Feature

Most Amazon sellers are under the impression that they will get in trouble if they ask their customers to leave their valuable feedback. And if you have been thinking the same, we have some good news for you. 

Amazon encourages Amazon sellers to ask customers to leave reviews. But while doing so, the retail giant expects Amazon sellers to equip the right set of tactics. 

Firstly, Amazon’s internal system automatically requests customers to leave their valuable feedback. But as we mentioned, only 3% – 10% do – to improve this number sellers can tap into Amazon’s “Request a Review” feature – which they may find on the Order Details page. 

Upon using this feature, Amazon will request both product review and seller feedback for the orders in the same email. Also, one of the big plus points of using this feature is that the requests that you send via this feature will use standardized language. This means – if your customers are based in Japan, the request will automatically be translated into your customer’s preferred language (Japanese).

Don’t – Buy Amazon Reviews

We did a quick search of “Buy Amazon Reviews” and here are the results:

Also, you’ll find a number of freelancers on sites like Upwork, Fiverr, or many others offering their review-writing-and-posting services – which is clearly against Amazon TOS.

On top of this, Amazon doesn’t allow the following types of reviews:

Do – Ask for Reviews

While Amazon allows sellers to tap into its “Request a Review” feature, it’s not the only way to request feedback. You can personally reach out to your customers either via email or buyer-seller messaging but make sure you ask for a review in a neutral way (no leading language) and do not offer any incentives.

You can drop a simple email like:

“Hello {Name of Buyer},

Thanks for purchasing our {Product Name}.

We hope you are having a great time with it.

Your feedback is extremely valuable to us and our future shoppers. Also, it allows us to constantly ace our products and services.

Every review counts.

Click HERE to leave your valuable feedback.

Best Regards,
{Your Team Name}”

Or you can drop a simple message via Amazon’s buyer-seller messaging service.

Don’t – Copy & Paste Your Review Request

One of the big mistakes most Amazon sellers make is copy and paste their review requests. 

Something like this doesn’t work – 

“Hello,

Thanks for purchasing our product.

Your valuable feedback would be appreciated.

Thanks!”

 No – that’s the worst approach ever.

We understand that it can get really hard to write a personalized review request for every single order you receive. But – we’d advise you to build a template.

Like you can spice things up by adding your buyer’s name and the product he/she purchased. Personalization is always key and will increase your conversion rates!

Instead, here’s how a review request should be:

“Hello Seth,

Thanks for purchasing our Leather Bag for Men product listing.

We hope you are having a great time with it.

Your feedback is extremely valuable to us and our future shoppers. Also, it allows us to constantly ace our products and services.

Every review counts.

Click HERE to leave your valuable feedback.

Best Regards,
Stack Influence.”

Personalization can have a serious impact on the number of people leaving their valuable feedback. 

Another good approach is to leave a personalized “Thank You” note along with the product you deliver. However do NOT offer any incentives in the note. Below is an example of note you could send but what they did wrong is saying “after you leave a review you can use the following code” which is somewhat of an incentive. You can offer people a discount code but don’t tie it to the review.

Do – Review Amazon’s Terms of Service Regularly

Amazon updates its TOS regularly. And it’s really important to make sure that you are playing by the rules all the time. 

One day, rolling out a feedback email to your customers is allowed. Another – it gets banned. And if you don’t keep yourself updated with the TOS, you may find yourself getting in trouble. 

Visit Amazon’s “Selling Policies & Seller Code of Conduct Page” to learn more. At the same time, they have a general page comprising help for Amazon sellers. 

Lastly, they have a “Community Guidelines” page in place to further help you gain insights into their Do’s & Don’ts.

Keeping yourself updated with the latest rules and information is the way to go.

Don’t – Ask for Positive Reviews

If you thoroughly review Amazon’s TOS, you’ll understand that asking for specific kinds of reviews, especially positive reviews, isn’t allowed at all. 

You can’t go ahead and text your customers – 

“Thanks for purchasing our product.

Leave us a 5-star review.”

Also, it’s not a good practice to send the same text via email. 

Doing this may get you in serious trouble. 

Instead, you need to be neutral while asking for reviews. Your message should comprise text like:

“Your feedback is extremely valuable to us and our future shoppers. Also, it allows us to constantly ace our products and services.

If you have the time, drop us your valuable feedback.”

Conclusion

Not many people leave their valuable feedback or review after purchasing products on Amazon. And even after using the “Request a Review” feature and dropping them an email or text, not everyone will leave their reviews.

Instead, the Do’s mentioned in this blog post will help you increase the percentage of your customers dropping their valuable feedback. And at the same time, these Do’s will help you equip the right set of tactics and not violate any guidelines Amazon has in place.

By William Gasner

CMO at Stack Influence