To succeed in your e-commerce business, much of your work and attention will be on impressing your customers first-hand. It is not so easy to get global customers to trust that your product does meet your description. Therefore, you will have to put in a lot of work to get those good reviews from your first customers. Amazon helps you get these reviews through Amazon Vine.
Amazon Vine is a program that enables a select group of customers to post their opinions about new and pre-release items to help fellow customers make well-educated purchasing decisions. The program is used to boost reviews on a particular product to help get better sales. The program is open to third-party sellers and this article will address some of the questions you may have lingering as a seller.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
Amazon selects a group of honest and informative reviewers who are given your products to use and test your product to give a review. These reviewers are invited to become vine reviewers based on the helpful reviews they write that help build a reputation on specified product categories.
After about three weeks of enrolling your products in the program, your first vine review should be ready. It takes this long because the vine reviewers have to use the product and observe it before they can give a review. You will only get billed for this once you receive your review, if no review comes through, then you will not be billed for that vine.
If your product is good, you receive good reviews. The positive reviews that your product will receive through the vine program will help customers show interest in the products and eventually buy them, thereby buying increasing your sales.
You must continue using the vine program until your product has at least 10-15 good reviews. This is because having fresh reviews shows potential customers who may be new to your brand that the product is still relevant.
WHAT KIND OF PRODUCTS CAN BE ENROLLED IN THE VINE PROGRAM?
Any product can be enrolled in the vine program. It is best to enroll products that you think are not meeting your targeted sales but already have an online presence.
Your products must be registered in the Amazon Brand Registry and you must have existing inventory with a description and images of the product.
Since the program aims to boost your sales, the products that are not meeting your targeted sales numbers will highly benefit from the good reviews you are likely to receive from the program and eventually turn into higher sales.
WHEN CAN I ENROLL MY PRODUCTS INTO THE VINE PROGRAM?
Your products can be enrolled into the vine program as soon as they launch and are in their finished packaging state. In other words, products to be enrolled in the Vine program must be in a deliverable state. This is to enable the Vine reviewer to have the same experience with the product as any other seller that will read the review and purchase the product. This prevents any discrepancies in the review given and the true experience of using/purchasing the product.
Remember, e-commerce is about trust and we do not wish to disappoint customers by giving fake reviews simply to amplify our sales.
CONCLUSION
With online trade, the strength of the trust that potential customers have is boosted by reading positive reviews. Good reviews simply mean many customers are happy with the product and will highly recommend it to other purchasers. The reverse is equally beneficial, negative reviews will help you know which areas to improve on and offer better products to your global market.
Amazon, therefore, makes it possible for you as the seller to improve your sales or improve your products through the honest and thorough reviews you will get once you enroll your product into the vine program.
All the best!