Seller ratings matter. If you run an online store and sell your products via Google Shopping, you’re probably wondering what these ratings are all about and how they can impact your business’s bottom line. Fortunately, Google itself has compiled an easy-to-understand guide explaining how to interpret seller ratings, how they’re calculated, and why they matter so much in the first place (eBay Top Rated Seller). Here are the highlights you need to know about Google Shopping seller ratings and how you can use them to your advantage as an ecommerce business owner... [add content]
About Google Shopping
The Google Shopping feature is a tool that allows retailers to sell their products through the google search engine. It is similar to any other e-commerce site, but it has a few key differences.
One of these differences is the way in which Google displays products in search results. From the get-go, there are two ways that you can list your product.You can either list it as an ad or as a sponsored link. An ad will be at the top of the page and will be displayed with images, pricing information and more details about your product.
If a user clicks on the ad, they will then be taken to the retailer’s website where they can buy your product. A sponsored link may also appear in the search results and will show up if someone enters your company name or brand into a keyword query. If this happens, then this is what customers will see when they click on this listing.
With both of these options, customers who visit your store after clicking through from a shopping result have not left google’s domain and all transactions take place directly between buyers and sellers.
How do seller ratings come into play? These ratings provide valuable insight into a seller's past performance.
For example, if a merchant's average rating falls below 4 stars then this indicates that their past customer service was poor enough to warrant such a low rating.
As a potential buyer, knowing this can help you make smarter buying decisions! In addition, reviews allow shoppers to post feedback about the quality of products being sold by different merchants.
If you notice anything wrong with one of these reviews--such as inaccurate information--you should contact the reviewer and ask them to edit or delete it so that others reading your profile don't fall prey to false claims.
Types of Reviews
There are three types of reviews you'll see with Google Shopping seller ratings.
One is a verified purchase review, which is given to customers who can verify they actually purchased the item through your shop.
Another type is a verified non-purchase review, which is given to customers who can verify that they interacted with your shop in some other way (for example, if they contacted you about an order). And then there's the unverified review, which isn't verified by Google and may have been left by a competitor or disgruntled customer.
A lot of people might be wondering how much weight these reviews carry when it comes to their ranking on Google. Well, it varies. You see, only buyers will be able to leave verified purchase reviews. So if you have 10 reviews and only 3 of them are verified purchase ones, those don't carry as much weight as someone else who has 30 total ratings and 27 are from buyers.
If you have less than 10 total ratings, all those reviews carry equal weight; however, once you hit 10 total ratings each additional rating carries less weight - so an 11th rating would count half as much as the first one while a 31st would count 1/3rd as much as the first one.
The best thing to do is keep collecting more ratings! Having lots of ratings will help push your product up higher in searches and make it easier for potential buyers to decide whether or not they should buy. But also, remember that getting a high number of ratings doesn't guarantee success.
Keep working hard on improving your business!
Facing Negative Reviews
Most online shoppers turn to Google Shopping when they're looking for a product.
Which makes it all the more important that you have positive reviews to show up in search results. That way, potential customers can find your products without having to do any more digging.
Here's what you need to know about seller ratings, and how they affect your business. First off, these are not star-based ratings like the ones you'll see on other sites such as Yelp or TripAdvisor.
Instead, Google assigns sellers a number between one and five - with five being the best possible rating. In other words, if a merchant has four stars from 500 reviewers (40% of 1,000), their rating is 4 out of 5 stars; but if that same merchant only had 3 out of 5 stars from 1 reviewer (10% of 1,000), their rating would be 3 out of 5 stars too. All things being equal then, it might seem like two merchants with identical buyer feedback could actually have very different seller ratings depending on how many reviews they each received - which could result in vastly different search rankings too.
So make sure you look at the number of reviews your competitors have gotten before determining whether you should take them seriously.
In addition to this, keep in mind that unlike some other platforms where someone could review an item even after buying it and returning it, seller ratings reflect customer experience with selling items across various categories.
And if you don't sell within those categories? You may not want to worry too much about ranking high within those groups because potential customers won't see your listing anyways. But at least now we know why there are differences between three-star sellers who get 10% of 1,000 buyers versus four-star sellers who get 40%.
Why Do I Need Them?
A Google Shopping seller rating is an essential statistic in the age of online shopping.
Nowadays, a business can't be successful without a strong presence across all channels.
Google Shopping is just one of these channels that allow consumers to find your products and services within search results. However, there are two very important questions you need to ask yourself when it comes to the importance of Google Shopping seller ratings: how do they affect your business and what can you do to increase them?
To answer the first question, it's important to know that a high-quality seller rating indicates that customers are satisfied with their purchase experience and would buy from this retailer again.Conversely, if a retailer has a low-quality rating, it's likely due to customer dissatisfaction or return rates.
Customers will be hesitant to make purchases through retailers who have poor seller ratings as it signals that shoppers might not get the quality product they were expecting.
Unsurprisingly, Google uses seller ratings in order to calculate which businesses appear at the top of search results. In fact, stores with higher quality scores appear higher up on page rankings than those who don't.
To answer our second question, sellers should remember that there are many things you can do in order to improve your business's Google Shopping performance and its corresponding rating! One such thing is improving communications with buyers by responding quickly and providing easy access to customer service representatives during peak hours.
How to Earn Good Reviews
Make sure your customer service is stellar. It's not enough to just have a good product; you also need to know how to deal with people.
Make sure you're responsive, provide detailed information and follow up promptly. If you do all these things well, then customers will be more likely to leave reviews about the experience they had with your company as opposed to just leaving feedback about the product or service itself.
This makes sense because if I buy something from a store, but then the cashier neglects me when I try to ask for help finding it in the store, it doesn't matter how great that shirt was—I'll never come back there again. For example, Amazon has customer review requirements that sellers must adhere to in order to maintain their partnership with Amazon and access their marketplace.
Amazon only permits sellers who maintain an average rating of 4 stars or above after 30 days of operation on its website.
Sellers are not allowed to sell products below a certain price point unless they maintain ratings at 3 stars or higher. Reviews can range from 1-5 stars, with 1 star meaning Terrible and 5 meaning Excellent. A perfect score would mean that customers had nothing but positive experiences dealing with this seller.
These rules give sellers some guidelines on what needs to be done to get a high-star rating (and thus high sales) on Amazon, which in turn creates room for competition among sellers and drives prices down over time.
How to Respond to Bad Reviews
Bad reviews are a reality of doing business and sometimes they're unavoidable. But that doesn't mean you can't take steps to minimize them.
Here are five ways to handle bad reviews from your customers:
1) Respond politely. Empathize with their situation and offer solutions. Be sure to thank them for the feedback and mention how it will help improve your store in the future
2) Take responsibility if the review is valid, even if it's not your fault.
3) Offer an exchange or refund as applicable, if appropriate.
4) Ask if there is anything else you can do for them before closing out the conversation.
5) Consider whether or not it's worth responding at all. In some cases, you may feel like a customer has already made up his mind about your company and won't be swayed by what you have to say.
In other cases, no matter what you say in response to their complaint, it may just seem like empty words that don't address the problem. It's best not to engage if you sense that nothing productive will come from any potential interaction.
Keep these tips in mind when managing your Google Reviews!