Product Reviews – How & Why You Should Respond to Positive or Negative Reviews on Your Product Listings

The Importance of Product Reviews

Builds Trust

Seeing reviews on a listing proves that real people have bought the product in the past, and had a positive experience with it. Even having neutral or negative reviews on your listings help customers build trust in your company, as 95% of consumers suspect reviews are fake if no negative ones are visible.

People are Reading Them

Over 80% of consumers will read the online reviews before using a local business. Furthermore, they read an average of 10 reviews before feeling able to trust a business.

Additional Information From Another Voice

When customers leave a review, they will often share their personal experience with the product and customer service, opinions on the products look and usability, photographs and details they feel are relevant. Consumers looking at your listings may rely on these reviews more than they would your description, as the review was left by someone who has extensively tested and used the product in real-life settings.

Rich product reviews also contain a lot of keywords about your product, which can help with SEO and rankings.

Increases Conversion Rates

Having product reviews on your listings is another driving force for making potential customers decide to purchase your product, for the reasons stated above. Overall, having public reviews increases total conversions by around 3%. The effectiveness of reviews increases with their quantity, but even having as few as 30 reviews can lead to a significant improvement in conversion rates, exceeding 25%.

Why Should You Respond?

Customer Retention

Responding to product reviews is a great way to show your customers that you value their feedback.  When you respond to a review, you are showing your customers that you are listening to what they have to say and are taking it in, reassuring them that you will continue to improve.  Over 50% of customers except a reply from their reviews. By not responding to reviews, you are ignoring around half of your customers, which may result in a decrease in customer retention.

Customer retention has various benefits:

• Increases Repeat Purchases – customers already trust your product from the first time they purchased it, and will prioritise getting yours again if they like the brand.
• Reduces Costs of Customer Acquisition – less needs to be spend on running ad campaigns if your customers already know where to look.
• Opportunity to Sell More – depending on the type of product you offer, more products / services can be offered to the customer once they have bought the first one (for example, Apple suggest additional products such as phone cases and earphones once you add an iPhone into your basket).
• Increased Loyalty & Recommendations – Customers may tell their friends and family about your product if they’ve had a significantly positive experience. A friend’s recommendation will secure the purchase for any potential customers who are on the fence.

Brand Reputation

Providing meaningful responses to customer reviews improves your brand reputation, even if the review is not the most positive. It demonstrates your commitment to customer satisfaction and continuous improvement as a business. Having a good brand reputation is what builds your branding as a whole – and customers are much more likely to purchase from an established, branded company rather than a generic one.

Keyword Opportunity

Responses to customer reviews are another space available to you for putting relevant key terms and phrases in, helping with SEO and ranking for Google search results.

How to Reply to Positive Reviews

Letting your customers know that you are grateful for their kind words and appreciate their time and business will help encourage them to purchase from you again, as they now trust you as a brand who cares about their customers. It also helps potential customers to make a purchase now that they’ve seen a personalised response from a genuine company.

When responding to positive reviews, there are a few things you could consider including:

Thanking the Customer

When a customer takes the time to write a positive review about your product, it’s important to express gratitude. By thanking them, you demonstrate that you value their feedback and take the time to read and appreciate their comments.

Short & Brief

Lengthy responses to reviews can come across as over-enthusiastic and often lack in professionality. Keeping your responses short and to the point help you to remain professional and genuine.

Add Key Terms

As mentioned earlier, the review section of your product listing is another area that is searched for high ranking key terms for SEO. As well the comments left by reviewers, your responses to those reviews can include relevant keywords that you may not have been able to fit into your product description. Including some key phrases about your product in responses can help your page to climb the organic ranking ladder of search results for certain key terms.

Furthermore, you can include some subtle advertising within your response to promote other products to existing customers. Because they’ve already had a positive experience with one of your products, they are more likely to buy form you again than to risk trying out a competitors.

Example: “Hello [customer], thank you for your amazing review! We are pleased to hear that your expectations have been exceeded! If you require any further assistance, please feel free to contact us via the Amazon Messaging Service!”

Responding to Negative Reviews

We strongly recommend that you respond to any negative reviews you may receive, or at least as many as possible. Doing so demonstrates to everyone that you value your customers and care about their feedback regarding your product. Here are some tips for responding to negative reviews:

Apologise to the Customer

Even if you believe the customer’s review is wrong, you should remain professional and polite, and apologise for any inconvenience in their purchasing experience. Replying to negative feedback can be useful for future customers, as it provides a platform for you to include more information about your product.

Provide a Solution

To truly help the customer who left a negative review, you need to take action and either provide a solution to their problem or fix an error. For example, you may receive negative reviews for a worn product being too small / not true to the size guide on the listing. After assessing the size guide and the number of reviews mentioning sizing issues, the solution is to alter your size guide. Once this change is made, you would reply to the review to thank the customer for bringing this issue up, and state that you have made alterations to the product sizing. This clears the air for any potential customers who may read their review and assume your sizing is still off.

Respond Promptly

Failing to address reviews promptly gives the impression that you don’t care about the customer, or their experience with your product. We suggest a creating a schedule for checking your reviews to ensure you are always responding promptly.

Avoid Generic Responses

It’s frustrating as customer to receive a generic copy-and-paste response to a genuine complaint, especially when it should receive a solution. Simple additions such as the customers name or the product they’ve purchased help to personalise your response and show that you are listening to what the customer has to say. Having personal responses to negative feedback also reduces the chance of more one-star reviews; customers will see there is a reasonable person running this business.

Example: “Hello [customer-name], we are sorry to hear that you are dissatisfied with [product-title]. We would appreciate the opportunity to learn more about your issue and find a resolution. Please contact us through the Amazon messaging service at your earliest convenience.”

Conclusion