The Psychology of Amazon Customer Reviews and Why They're Necessary for Success

William Ferrer
Mar 4, 2019
4 min read

Updated: Mar 6, 2019

GUIDE OUTLINE

How Reviews Affect your Sales
Eliminating Buyer Fear or Doubt
The More Customer Reviews you Have, the More Sales You Will Get!
The Psychology of No Reviews

INTRODUCTION

Customer Reviews are one of the most powerful and effective marketing tools you will have at your disposal.

They can largely determine your business's success or failure because they have a tremendous influence on how your product is perceived by shoppers.

In fact, an online consumer habits study done by BrightLocal reveals some insightful findings of the behavior of consumers when they shop online.

79% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations from friends.

And 73% of consumers say positive reviews make them trust a business more.

As you can see, customer reviews play a huge role in a customer's purchasing decision. Let's get into why customer's reviews are so essential for success.

HOW REVIEWS AFFECT YOUR SALES

Customer reviews serve a variety of purposes, but the main ones are:

Persuades undecided buyers
Proof of good quality and trustworthiness
Eliminates fear or doubt
Persuades customers to choose your product over others

Let's look into the thought process of consumers.

Imagine yourself as a customer shopping online.

When you're shopping online, you have no way of physically evaluating a product on a computer, so what you do if you rely on customers reviews as a substitute.

Shoppers trust customer reviews because they come from other customers who have already risked their money and buying the product. After which, they voice their approval or disapproval with a review.

When another customer tells us about a product, we trust them because they're on the same side as us.

In other words, we're both on the same team. And as teammates, we look out for each other's best interest.

There is a lot of primal psychology involved which social psychologist refer to as a "herd mentality."

To survive and avoid risk, we follow and help one another to achieve safety in numbers.

Psychologist Dr. Robert Cialdini argues that when people are unsure, they'll refer to the actions of others to decide for them.

In other words, when we see people in the same position and circumstances, we follow what they do. It's a survival instinct and a shortcut for deciding what to do.

When your customers see other customers buying your product and leaving good reviews, they're likely to follow and buy your product as well.

This is how customers think when they see positive reviews: "that product and its seller has to be good if all these people have already bought it, the positive reviews are proof.

And proof it is.

ELIMINATING BUYER FEAR OR DOUBT

When customers shop online, they're always going to have some fear or doubt about making a purchase.

Here are a few examples of fears and doubts.

The product can be falsely advertised and not meet my expectations
The product can be defective
The seller can be a scam artist, not deliver as promised, and take my money and run

As you can see, there are a couple of big concerns that go through a customer's mind which can be a major obstacle towards closing a sale.

This is where customer reviews come in play.

Reviews are a form of social proof.

Positive reviews provide evidence your product works as advertised.

Positive reviews provide evidence that your product meets expectations.

Provide evidence that you have good quality control.

Positive reviews provide evidence that you're a trustworthy seller.

And most importantly...

Positive reviews provide evidence that customers overall like your product.

As you can see, positive reviews provide customers with a sense of comfort and security. This brings up my next point.

THE MORE CUSTOMER REVIEWS YOU HAVE, THE MORE SALES YOU WILL GET!

What you need to know: when customers are choosing between similar products, they're more likely to buy products with the most review count.

For example, assuming all things are equal such as price and content, customers are more likely to buy a product with an average rating of 4.5 stars from 500 reviews than they are to buy a product with a higher rating of 5 stars but from only 10 reviews.

Again, you'll see a herd mentality at play here.

This is what goes through a customer's mind they make their purchasing decision.

"This product with a 5-star rating looks good and has 10 reviews to prove it, but wait,

the listing beside it has a slightly lower rating but a lot more customers reviews.

Since more customers like this product, I think I'll like this product more as well. I'm going to buy this one."

As you can see, more reviews provide more evidence that customers will like your product which can be the deciding factor between making a sale or not.

That's why you should make it a priority to build up your positive review count.

Now I know some of you may be asking, what if I have no reviews?

Let's talk about the psychology of no reviews.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF NO REVIEWS

Imagine yourself as a customer, you're browsing through Amazon and see a product you like. You decide to click on it because it has an interesting title and a good photo.

You start looking through the photos and like what you see. You read through the description and you're further intrigued.

You're thinking of making a purchase but all of a sudden you hesitate because there are no positive reviews to back up what's advertised.

This is what the typical scenario looks like when you have no reviews.

When your listing has no reviews, customers will be reluctant to buy your product because they have no way of telling if your product is good or not.

As a result, you won't get any sales because customers will always be waiting for someone else to be the first one to take a chance on your unreviewed product and write the first review.

Essentially, nobody wants to be the test subject who has to risk wasting money on a potentially bad product.

This is one of the main reasons why it takes so long time for a new listing to land its first sale.

The only way to solve this problem is to build up a review count.

You should at least aim for 20 positive reviews in the beginning.

This concludes our short and simple Amazon listing optimization guide.

WORK WITH ME, CLICK THE LINK: https://www.fiverr.com/share/ER7DY

To learn how to build your initial review count, watch my video "How to Get More Positive Amazon Customer Reviews to Increase Your Sales." <--CLICK THE LINK

Scroll down to watch the video version.