SVP/VP E-commerce and Amazon, Revenue, Digital Strategy l Forbes Next 1000 l RETHINK retail top retail expert 2024, 2025 l Helping brands grow profitably online
I've been in ecommerce for 18 years, and have made hundreds of millions of dollars of incremental profit for clients. One of the key factors I see stopping brands from scaling is putting too much emphasis on a tactic. For example: On Amazon, it is widely understood that your page needs to have robust reviews to perform well. This is true. However, brands will often compress this into reviews = money Which is not true. This is where you lose money. Brands who get fixated here will “do what it takes” to get a review, fast. If reviews=money, then you aren’t going to wait for them to show up organically and Vine takes a little while. Now you're tempted to incentivize your sister in laws friends to write you reviews. This costs you revenue in two ways: 1. Your account is going to get suspended. The largest data company on earth can see what you’re doing 2. Your conversion will go down and returns will go up Good reviews can print money. They help customers validate their search and answer questions before they buy. This increases conversion and reduces returns. How? The best, highest converting, lowest churn goods have star ratings between 3.7- 4.2 1. No one believes a 5 star review- they always look like your mom wrote them 2. There is nothing useful in “This is great”- and your customers probably don’t all agree on what great is 3. 3 and 4 star reviews usually have justification- “I liked this but not that”- This is the money maker. This helps people decide if they care more about this than that. Example: You sell a moisturizing shampoo It is 3.7 stars All reviews mention that it is not moisturizing. But it's also a best seller. How? The clues are in your 3 star reviews “It isn’t moisturizing at all, but it smells great and works fine on my normal hair. Don’t buy it if your hair is dry, but I love it” This works in three ways -Increases conversion by validating purchase decisions from people with normal hair -Reduces returns from those with dry hair because they are aware it won’t work -Tells you how to update your copy and search to maximize sell through Honorable mention- people who don’t like your product will rarely tell you. They will return it and talk about how much it sucks to their friends, not you. Feedback is a gift that you want desperately. This process is what makes reviews valuable on a page. Good reviews can make you money, but bad ones will cost you and this is not based on star rating. Do not hyper focus on a tactic at the expense of your strategy. Shortcuts are often incredibly expensive. #strategy #retail #topretailexperts #ecommerce #amazon