Amazon’s dominance in ecommerce isn’t just fueled by their vast selection and speedy Prime delivery. It’s built on familiarity and genuine customer trust, nurtured by the prominence of online reviews. Those star ratings and written testimonials are a data-driven dialogue that shapes consumer decisions and drives conversions.
So, how can businesses who aren’t retail giants – or even in the ecommerce space – tap into the magic of Amazon’s review strategy? Let’s dive into seven of their most effective tactics and harvest some key takeaways to get more customer reviews.
1. Crystal-clear Value Proposition
We know, we know – who doesn’t understand the importance of a defined value proposition for any business? But this essential step helps attract target audiences in the first place, while ensuring they’d be ready and willing to interact with your brand (and review your products or services).
In Amazon’s case, they don’t just sell products – they sell certainty. Their value proposition is a carefully crafted promise: find what you need, at the right price, delivered efficiently. This commitment to predictable, positive experiences forms the foundation of trust that underpins their review system.
Transparency goes both ways, fueling positive reviews for great experiences, while still inviting honest feedback when things fall short. Both reactions stem from the same principle – a customer’s expectation being met or unmet. By presenting a clear value proposition, Amazon empowers their customers to hold them accountable, fostering valuable dialogue that drives improvement over time.
And, by prioritizing consistent clarity, reliability, and value, any business can turn buyers into invested stakeholders. This level of intentional customer focus is the key to unlocking the true power of reviews, turning feedback into valuable insights for improvement.
Now, let’s move towards the more concrete tactics Amazon employs to create a vast array of trust signals and invite more customer engagement.
2. Verified Purchase System
Amazon’s verified purchase system is designed to ensure authenticity and credibility by ensuring that only customers who’ve actually purchased a product can leave reviews. When reviews are marked with “Verified Purchase”, prospective customers know they’re tapping into the wisdom of real, fellow shoppers, not just random internet voices.
Looking to collect your own verified reviews? You don’t have to sell on Amazon to do so, or be an ecommerce business. Reviews and reputation management platforms like Jabio can help any kind of business with an online presence source authentically certified reviews. Relevant features include:
- Proof of purchase: Businesses can require that reviewers upload proof of purchase with their review submission. This could be a photo of a receipt, screenshot of their order confirmation email, and so on. Submitted items are not publicly uploaded and are only reviewed by an internal team, ensuring customer data is kept private.
- Automated post-delivery email: In a nutshell, this convenient method automatically sends buyers a “delivery confirmation” or “completion of services” email that includes a request for feedback – with their order ID or booking number attached. Naturally, any reviews collected this way will be from verified buyers.
3. Multiple Review Prompts
Review requests aren’t a one-and-done thing. Amazon prompts customers to leave reviews at various touchpoints throughout the shopping journey.
- After receiving product: Amazon’s delivery confirmation emails include a simple, one-click thumbs up or thumbs down button to rate their delivery service. This reflects part of their value prop as covered above – efficient deliveries.
- In a user’s order history: Whether in-app or on their website, Amazon includes a “How’s your item?” section for each order. The prompts here are “Write a product review”, “Create a video review”, and “Leave seller feedback”. Having these CTAs helps Amazon collect different types of valuable feedback for both purchased products and individual sellers.
- After customer service interactions: Customer service representatives (both via phone and live chat) may ask customers for feedback on their experience and encourage them to leave a review.
With this approach, Amazon effectively increases the likelihood of capturing valuable customer reviews at various stages of the buyer experience. While their specific prompts and strategies might not be directly applicable to every business, the underlying principles of personalization, convenience, and multi-touchpoint engagement can be adapted by any business to build a steady flow of trust-building reviews.
4. Invite-only Review Programs
The Amazon Vine program provides free products to trusted reviewers in exchange for their honest feedback. This helps generate early reviews for new products and helps promote a diverse range of perspectives.
Of course, there’s some fine print: Only a limited number of reviewers are selected for the Vine program based on their track record and past review quality. Also, disclosure statements within the review text are mandatory for all Vine members. Amazon’s review disclosure template reads, “I received this product as part of a product review program.”
How can businesses adapt this into their own review strategy?
- Identify and cultivate a “Vine-like” community: Look for passionate advocates and early adopters of your brand. These could be loyal customers, active social media followers, or industry experts. Build relationships with them, offering exclusive access to new products or early prototypes in exchange for detailed and honest feedback.
- Foster transparency and trust: Provide clear prompts and questions that guide reviewers to share specific experiences, insights, and suggestions for improvement. Make it clear to both reviewers and readers that such reviews are part of a special program, entrusted with providing an early look at the product or service. Implement designations or disclosures to distinguish their reviews from others.
- Address concerns proactively: Anticipate potential concerns about bias or unfair advantages. Focus on rewarding genuine feedback, not just positive reviews. Be open about the program’s purpose and selection criteria.
Remember, it’s not about replicating Amazon’s exact model, but about capturing trusted voices to build initial momentum – and gather valuable, actionable feedback to drive a business forward.
5. Spotlight on the Most Helpful Reviews
Customer-centricity requires that everything presented is as useful to potential buyers as possible. When faced with thousands of reviews for a single product, sorting through the noise can feel daunting. Amazon’s solution involves three main aspects:
- Community-powered upvotes: The wisdom of the crowd reigns supreme. Reviews that receive the most helpful votes from fellow shoppers rise to the top. This organic process ensures the most valuable insights get the limelight, reflecting a target audience’s collective voice. Because of this, sorting reviews by “Top Reviews” is set by default, but shoppers can also choose “Most Recent” if they prefer, and use various sorting filters.
- AI summaries: A relatively new feature, Amazon’s “customers say” section shows up at the top of the reviews portion of any product page. It uses AI to crawl reviews and create – you guessed it – a summary of what reviewers mention most. Perspectives can skew positive, but it does often include a line about “mixed reviews” if people’s opinions vary on certain aspects of the product.
- Keywords with sentiment: Below the AI summary, customers will find highlighted keywords that show up frequently in reviews. Clicking each one will display how many reviews mentioned that word, as well as bring up full review text for further details and context. They will also display how many instances were mentioned with positive vs. negative sentiment.
Businesses can do something similar by:
- Managing their listing on reviews sites with an upvote or “like” feature (like sitejabber.com)
- Creating AI-generated reviews summaries using readily available API options like Google Cloud, Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools like NLTK or spaCy, or AI models like Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA)
- Using reviews widgets to highlight the best and most helpful reviews
6. Strategy Against Fake Reviews
Fake reviews harm both buyers and businesses, misleading the former and damaging reputations for the latter. Amazon takes the following measures to identify and remove fake reviews, ensuring the integrity of its review system:
- Algorithmic sleuthing: Sophisticated algorithms constantly scan reviews for suspicious patterns and red flags. Sudden bursts of praise for a new product, unusual language patterns, or suspicious reviewer profiles all trigger deeper investigation.
- Customer collaboration: Shoppers themselves play a crucial role. The “Report” button under every review enables users to flag suspicious content, giving Amazon another layer of defense against review fraud.
- Human moderation: While the exact size and structure of these teams are not publicly known, Amazon employs trained content moderators to scrutinize flagged and potentially fake reviews.
How can businesses replicate this vigilance? Internal teams, particularly those responsible for reputation management, must be proactive and regularly monitor all the reviews sites and platforms where their brand has a presence. They should encourage customers to report potentially fake reviews as part of a collaborative brand culture.
To streamline this process, leverage technology. An all-inclusive reputation management platform like Jabio offers features like review aggregation, real-time monitoring, automated alerts, and convenient flagging for suspicious content. For more on dealing with fake reviews, check out this post.
While Amazon’s vast reach rests on more than just reviews, it offers valuable lessons for any business. From establishing a rock-solid value proposition to wielding AI to highlight the most helpful voices, their playbook is brimming with actionable tactics. Remember, the magic lies in adapting these methods to your own unique brand and audience. Embrace authenticity, make leaving reviews effortless, and actively manage your online reputation. After all, empowered customers, armed with genuine feedback, are the key to maintaining sustainable growth and lasting trust.
