In this episode, we sat down with Joy Pak, CEO of GetReviews, a SaaS platform that helps ecommerce sellers generate authentic customer reviews through compliant methods including package inserts, QR codes, and targeted surveys. Joy has mastered the art of tacking Amazon ToS while building genuine social proof that converts browsers into buyers. GetReviews enables brand owners to scale trustworthy review acquisition, boosting both customer confidence and search visibility in increasingly competitive ecommerce marketplaces where every review counts. Read the full transcript below.
Episode 38 of The Seller’s Edge – Joy and Jonathan talk about:
- [00:00] Introduction to Joy Pak from GetReviews
- [01:10] The Importance of Social Proof
- [02:26] Tariffs Causing Sellers to Cut Corners
- [04:41] Compelling Case Studies
- [06:47] Why Products Need More Than 100 Reviews
- [07:46] How Reviews Support PPC
- [09:51] Bad Reviews Can Be Good
- [11:18] Do Star Ratings Matter More than Reviews?
- [15:26] The Challenge of Getting Reviews
- [20:18] Competitors & Black Hat Tactics
- [22:35] How AI Shopping Assistants Work
- [25:30] How GetReviews Helps Sellers
- [28:54] Walkthrough Demonstration of GetReviews
- [38:03] Joy’s Advice to Brand Owners
- [39:59] Recap and Closing Remarks
Key Takeaways:
- Develop a Review Strategy from Day One: Don’t wait until launch to focus on reviews. Layer in compliant review generation (inserts, Amazon’s ‘Request A Review button, etc.) as soon as your product is live.
- Aim for at Least 100 Reviews: Review volume, not just star rating, is a meaningful trust indicator for customers and recommendations from AI shopping assistants. Target 100+ reviews per ASIN for optimization.
- Leverage Package Inserts, But Stay Compliant: Inserts are allowed, but text must be strictly neutral. Don’t ask for only positive reviews or incentivize based on review content. Include an easy CTA and optional surveys.
- Accept and Learn from Negative Reviews: Don’t fear a few bad reviews. They make your brand look real, and are often opportunities to either improve or publicly demonstrate great customer service.
- Understand Structural Limitations on Amazon: Accept that you won’t get direct customer contact info. Automate and streamline what you can within Amazon’s rules, and know that review rates tend to be 1-2%.
- Optimize for AI and Review Summarization Tools: Text reviews and UGC matter as much as star ratings, so encourage detailed feedback. Monitor what keywords are highlighted in AI summaries, and consider them in your product listing optimization.
Full Transcript of Episode:
JOY PAK: We can kind of start off by talking about the current ecommerce landscape and how, you know, it’s been greatly impacted in the last few months. Right. Specifically due to the tariffs that are happening. And it’s affecting many ecommerce businesses and sellers. And a lot of companies have their supply chain or sourcing their products internationally. Right. So as a result, we’re seeing that one of the most common results with these tariffs is that, you know, cost of goods are rising. Therefore a lot of these sellers are also, you know, increasing their prices to offset these costs. Right. And you know, because of this, we see a lot of customers being maybe a bit more price conscious when they’re looking for products. They’re seeing these increased prices. So they might even scrutinize social proof or reviews even more. They want to be able to make smarter purchase decisions. They’re actually maybe taking reviews more into more consideration. So, you know, so even before these tariffs happened, social proof was always crucial for any business. But again, as these prices increase, you really want to just ensure that the reviews reflect the quality and customer support that you’re kind of providing for customers and making sure that you stay consistent. But another big thing that I’m seeing is that for businesses experiencing that increased cost of goods, they’re trying to save money in specific aspects of their business operations. Right. And typically, marketing is one of those first areas that is impacted. And with a reduced budget, that means a lot of companies are now reducing ad spend when it comes to, you know, for example, running PPC ads on Google, on Amazon. And you know, for a lot of these businesses, when they, you know, spend less money in paid advertising that might take a dip in their sales and visibility and what that results in is also maybe less conversions and less sales. And in situations like this, you want to make sure that social proof and the reviews that you have are kind of, you know, it’s verified and you have reviews ready on your storefront, just because you want to make sure that the customers that are coming to your product listing organically, they have star ratings and reviews that they can review and you want to be able to try to sustain those conversion, rates as much as possible. So, yeah, we’re seeing that especially in the current ecommerce landscape, tariffs are affecting a lot of ecommerce businesses. But no matter what social proof is, you know, one of the, still the most important aspects to run a sustainable and successful business.
JONATHAN: Yeah, I’m always curious who the people are that will like, because I’ll see products online that are like, I mean expensive products. I mean it kind of varies by category but I’ll see an expensive product and I’ll have like three reviews and I’m like, who’s paying for that product without any reviews? Like who’s willing to just roll the dice on that?
JOY PAK: And I also wanted to add that, you know, we’ve also seen new sellers want to actually onboard with GetReviews and their new business and but they will actually reach out saying joy due to the terrorists, we actually decided to stop, you know, our business or stop the idea of launching our business or becoming an Amazon seller just because there’s so much uncertainty and you know, risks for a lot of these ecommerce sellers. So again, a very interesting time right now. I know it’s been happening since the beginning of April so it’ll be kind of interesting to see what pans out in the next coming months.
JONATHAN: Also very good points. I’m curious on your end if you, if you have any sort of compelling case studies or examples you have with some data showing how much social proof has impacted a business or a product.
JOY PAK: Well, I can start off by asking Jonathan, is there any like products that you purchased recently by any chance?
JONATHAN: I’m trying to think. The last thing I purchased, I actually yes, I had an impulse buy and I bought like an exercise device that I kept seeing on my social media.
JOY PAK: Okay. And did you read any reviews before purchasing that product by any chance?
JONATHAN: I did, I did, I read many, many reviews actually for several different products, not just that one.
JOY PAK: Exactly. So you know, even for myself I was in need of buying Matcha. So. So you know, I’m currently in Korea so I use Korea’s equivalent of Amazon, it’s called Coupang. But honestly, you know, after just typing in the word Matcha, right. There’s so many different options that come out personally for me. The first thing I did was, you know, I sorted out the products based on products with the most reviews and then that narrowed down my search and then I tried to look at the average star rating for those products and then you know, was able to kind of come to a conclusion as to what product I wanted to purchase. But you know, one of the key statistics that I always like to keep in mind is that 93% of users say online reviews affect their purchase decisions. A Whopping 93%, which is pretty significant. Right? It shows that you know, customers are doing their due diligence when purchasing a product and they’re doing their research and they’re really mindful of the decisions they take. Right. Like you said, you were doing some sort of competitor analysis, looking at different competitors of products, seeing what the alternatives are before making the purchase decision. Right. Same for me as well. And, you know, if I had any friends or family members that were also Matcha connoisseurs. Sorry. You know, I’m probably, you know, going to be asking them for their feedback. Right. So you can imagine online reviews play such an important factor for customers when they’re making a purchase. And I think another key statistic I wanted to share was that, you know, 43% of consumers prefer products with more than 100 reviews. It’s interesting because, you know, psychologically, if you see two products that are exactly the same, and if one product has, you know, three 5.0 star ratings versus maybe a product that has a 4.7 star rating with 100 reviews. Right. The chances of you choosing product B with 100 reviews is probably going to be a lot higher. Right. Just because the more reviews it has, the more reliable it seems. And, you know, customers don’t necessarily just want to look at having a high star rating or high, you know, rating count, but, they actually want to see quantity as well. So that’s kind of like an interesting, you know, stat that I kind of came across. But, what’s even more interesting is that one, that 100 reviews number is typically that magical number that a lot of sellers try to hit for any marketplace that they’re selling on. Especially on Amazon. Right. They believe that in order for your listing to be properly optimized and for, you know, PPC ads, for example, to really properly, perform well, they usually say that your product should have at least 100 reviews. And I’m sure that, you know, 100 reviews is probably consistent with a lot of marketplaces. Let’s say Walmart, TikTok, shop, you know, Shopify even. So it kind of, you know, it’s interesting in terms of that volume also takes a role when it comes to reviews, for sure.
JONATHAN: Especially within that flywheel effect. And it’s. I’m. I’m curious. It’s, you know, there’s so many things I want to respond to because every time I’m looking for a restaurant, there will be like, some place that has, like 4.9 stars, but it’ll have, like three reviews. And I’ll be like, that person probably has three friends that gave them a review.
JOY PAK: Right.
JONATHAN: And it’s just really interesting how that factors in. And even when it comes down to like, if there’s a restaurant that has like 4, 47 stars versus 4.8 stars, I’m like, let’s go to the place with 4, 8 stars.
JOY PAK: Exactly.
JONATHAN: What’s sort of some misconceptions that you’ve seen about people having when it comes to social proof and reviews like have, have sellers sort of, I mean, I imagine they underestimate them a lot.
JOY PAK: I think, when it comes to sellers, one of the most common misconceptions I usually hear is that, you know, negative reviews are all bad, you know, and I always like to tell the sellers that negative reviews aren’t always a bad thing. I know no business seller wants to hear that just because, you know, there are a lot of negative consequences when you have negative reviews. That I completely understand. But I kind of, you know, see it in the other way around where, you know, if you had a customer give you a negative review, oh, you know, poor review because they had, you know, a negative experience with your product, you know, that can actually inform other customers from, you know, buying your product and having that same negative experience and leaving that same negative review. Right. And I hate to say it, but having maybe at least one to negative review amongst like a flood of positive reviews, if anything, I, I find that it makes your product and your company look a lot more authentic. I personally don’t think there’s any company that has, you know, perfect, let’s say 10,000 five star reviews. I find that to be kind of impossible. But you know, I know it’s usually kind of, A lot of sellers will complain, you know, regarding having negative reviews and stuff like that. But you know, I always like to tell them to think about it the other way around, it might actually be a good thing. So that’s kind of a common misconception I really hear. And another thing I often hear is that, you know, customers will only leave negative reviews. The customers that leave you reviews are the only ones that want to leave a negative, that want to share their negative experience. And I know we just kind of talked about stats, but another interesting stat I found was that yes, many, well, you know, 49% of customers are more willing to share a negative experience and 38% are more willing to share a positive experience. And you know, the gap isn’t huge. Right. But with the right approach, even if you are prompting customers to leave a review, it can result in both, you know, positive and negative. So I would say those are some of the most common misconceptions I see regarding reviews. But I guess maybe a third thing to add is that, you know, typically a lot of sellers will have the idea that let’s say, you know, star ratings are the only thing that’s important. You know, and I agree in the sense that that’s kind of what catches people’s attention. Right. And that’s kind of the calculation that determines your average star rating. But what’s also really important is, for example, having quality text reviews, especially in marketplaces such as Walmart, what is it? On Amazon and for example Target, they have all these different AI features that are able to, for example, consolidate specific, specific keywords regarding your product. And you know, customers now want to see for example photos, more real experiences and need more detailed insights when it comes to, you know, leaving a review for your product. And you know, again we don’t know the exact algorithm for any of these marketplaces. But you know, star ratings are just as important. Text reviews are just as important. Generating actual ugc, user generated content is just as important. So you know, you really need to take into consideration a lot of factors and consideration when it comes to, you know, optimizing your product listing on any of these marketplaces.
JONATHAN: Yeah, you make a lot of great points. So if I have a great experience, I will leave a review and if I have a terrible experience, I will leave a review. I’m curious about these people leaving like three star reviews. That’s right. They’re like, I just had an okay experience, I’m gonna leave her review. Yeah, I don’t feel compelled to. I mean, unless maybe you just have time on your hands and you want to leave a review.
JOY PAK: Right.
JONATHAN: But I do have a theory. One of the things you mentioned about companies having negative reviews, it makes them seem more authentic. And I would agree with you because if I see something that just has positive reviews, there’s something I don’t trust there. Yeah. But I also think that negative reviews are a really good opportunity to, to, to convert somebody into having a really great customer experience. Because if somebody leaves you. I was actually just. I rented a car recently and I had the worst experience and I went into the place and I was ready to give them the worst review. But they handled it so well that I just turned around. I was like, oh my God, like I’m only going to rent from this company from now on because of the way that they handled that. And I see that a lot of people will leave a bad review and then the company will respond and go above and beyond and then they’ll turn their one star review into a five star review. But I do think the three star reviews are former one star reviews that got promoted to three star reviews.
JOY PAK: Yeah, I know. There’s you know, that’s also very interesting that you brought it up because. Yeah, absolutely. Like that customer experience can kind of change your entire perception about that company within a couple of seconds. Right. So you’re completely right in the sense that even, it’s an opportunity for a lot of these businesses and brands to kind of find a solution for the customers who kind of had a negative experience and try to kind of have at least one more chance to turn it around.
JONATHAN: Yeah. And I’m so petty that if I have a bad experience and then you don’t do anything about it. Like now I’m just out for revenge. Like I’m gonna start just shouting from the rooftops that no one should be using your company or brand or product. Right? Yeah. And the AI shopping assistance is a really great, point too because I mean there’s so many things and I mean working on as a consumer and both having worked in marketing on ecommerce platforms and seeing like how things can be positioned because you’ll, I mean every day I’ll be on like TikTok or something and you’ll find out how like a baby pacifier can be used to change your oil or like some weird thing like that that you’re never gonna put in the marketing copy on product list. Right, right, right, right. But if people are willing to use that and it’s in the customer views, like that’s something that you want in there.
JOY PAK: Right.
JONATHAN: I mean it’s an incremental sales or incremental sales. But I’m curious as far as obstacles and we were talking about negative reviews and how those can be opportunities, like what are sort of the obstacles for sellers when it comes to getting reviews or authentic reviews.
JOY PAK: Yeah, you know, it’s, I think the number one challenge, especially for new sellers, is that, you know, it’s kind of a cycle. Right. It’s like in order to get reviews, you need to have orders. Right. And then in order to get orders, you need reviews. So it’s just kind of like that loop where both of it needs to be working at the same time. Right. But you can imagine a new seller, they might not be getting initially, you know, 100 orders a day or you know, so it’s kind of just like an interesting cycle to see. But with that being said, I think, you know, I guess if we were to kind of specifically focus on specific marketplaces, let’s say like Amazon, Walmart, Target, one of the biggest challenges of trying to get more social proof and reviews is that you do not get the customer’s contact information. On the other hand for marketplaces such as Shopify, right, you do get the customer’s email addresses, their phone numbers, their, even their shipping address. And you can imagine it’s super easy to be able to just send an email to the customer after the product is delivered requesting for a review. And that’s why there’s a lot of, you know, great product reviews applications, let’s say on like the Shopify App Store, Wix App Store, you know, such as Farah, Judge Me Loops, you see a lot of these apps available, right? But with Amazon, Walmart, Target, you can’t just simply email the customer to leave a review because one, you don’t even get that information. So there’s not really much of a follow up process that you can do with these customers, right? And you know, now there are some tools that Amazon provides for you such as, you know that review a request button, right? But what a lot of sellers don’t know is that when you do use that button and when you do click it, a review request email is sent to the customer’s Amazon generated email address. And if a customer has actually unsubscribed to these emails, they are never going to be receiving that review request email, right? And you know, in terms of what’s that statistic that Amazon shares, right? They say that only 1 to 2% of your customers will leave a review. So you can imagine in order for you to get one review you need to make at least 100 orders. And I can’t really imagine a new seller being able to have maybe, you know, maybe if they’re lucky they might have 100 orders in their first month, right? But you can imagine for one month they only get one review. So you know, with Amazon and Walmart specifically, I mean specifically Walmart, sorry, Amazon, they really don’t have a kind of a structured follow up process I would say in place. But for example like Walmart, Target, they do have other integrations with app review platforms such as, let’s say like Bizarre Voice, right, which does a kind of automate that process of requesting reviews. But you know, just the biggest challenge I see right now is that there’s just like a lot of limited tools and resources for a lot of these brands, especially maybe for Bizarre Voice, if I’m being honest. I don’t know the exact pricing, but I can imagine that it might be a bit, you know, maybe out of the price range, especially for like, new sellers. But yeah, I would say that’s kind of just like the biggest obstacle I see. It’s that, you know, there’s just no opportunities to really try to collect reviews.
JONATHAN: Yeah. And then remind me, like, broadly, like, I know Amazon has like some strict toss about it where you can’t, like, you can’t put like, like an insert in the like package asking for a review, or there’s, you can’t, there’s. Or you can’t offer products in exchange for reviews. But I’m curious if like across marketplaces, like, what are mostly like the rules.
JOY PAK: Yeah, well, you make a really good, I think, good comment and I do want to make it very clear that package inserts or product inserts are allowed on Amazon. You can actually email, even email the support team asking this if you’d like. But, this, the. What’s important is that you need to make sure that the package inserts stay compliant with Amazon Terms of Services. And this is where we notice. That’s why there’s so much discussion regarding if you are allowed using package inserts. Yes, you are allowed to use it, but you need to make sure that you, whatever copy that you put and whatever, you know, kind of experience you give to the customer with that package insert is compliant with Amazon Terms of Services. And you know, with reviews, basically our survey flow, we make it so that you can put in package inserts to your packaging, but also make sure that you collect reviews in a very compliant way. But again, you know, we can of course discuss that a bit later. But you know, there are definitely important aspects that you need to make sure that you keep in mind when it comes to staying compliant with Amazon Terms of Services with these package inserts.
JONATHAN: While we’re on the subject of compliance, I’m curious about issues like, you know, fake reviews or review bombing or early negative, negative reviews and how those impact a seller’s reputation. And it’s the one thing that, like, I’m always curious about because you’ll always see verified purchases and things like that. And I’m like, is that really a verified purchase? Like, I don’t even know what that means. Like, obviously, like they had an account and there was a transaction, but I don’t know if that’s a friend or somebody that I’m, like a click farm that purchased it and then just sent it back to the company to recycle into their inventory.
JOY PAK: It’s an interesting topic because I don’t think there’s any specific answer to this because, you know, the reason why is that, you know, whenever I am on calls with GetReviews users, they will come to me and they are so confident, you know, they’ll say, joy, I know a competitor and they are leaving us negative reviews. I know this for a fact. I’m just like, how do you know this? You know, and you know, of course sellers, they want to, they have their investigative hat on there. You know, they might look at the address. They’re going to try to see us to, you know, try to make things aligned, to be confident that a competitor, is leaving a negative review. Right. And you know, of course I can’t say that this is happening, but maybe this is happening in, you know, different marketplaces where unfortunately, you know, competitors will try to bring you down. And I’m assuming it’s not just for ecommerce. Right. It’s probably also for, you know, retail businesses, for restaurants in your neighborhood, for cafes. And I’ve also heard some, you know, users will come up to me and say, joy, I use a Vine program. I participated in Amazon’s vine program, but it actually, you know, brought down my start rating. So, you know, I’m upset. It actually impacted me in a negative. Right. Negative way. Right. And you know, of course, I can imagine that when it comes to negative reviews, it can absolutely damage your product listing and of course your sales.
JONATHAN: Right. As far as being on the side of the consumer, you want all those reviews, but it’s like, you can’t say, like, only the negative reviews are bad reviews. I’m curious, just, I mean, from your perspective, having worked, like focused on reviews so much. Like, what else? I know you spoke about AI shopping assistants before, but are there any other sort of things that you’re seeing that are worth calling out?
JOY PAK: I think when it comes to a lot of these marketplaces are now starting to implement AI into, you know, the customer’s shopping experience. Right. And you’re, you just mentioned it, but you’re right, AI is scanning these reviews. Right. I know with Amazon, Rufus, they have a lot of features, Right. Like, for example, you can ask for specific details about a Product, you can ask for suggestions. Like if I’m saying I can write in, you know, hey, I’m throwing a birthday party, recommend me like the best, you know, party decor, stuff like that. And Amazon will actually give you the list of recommendations. Right. And you can also ask, you know, for a comparison, a question, comparing specific products to Amazon Rufus, you know, should I get this product or should I get this product? Right. And it’ll actually give you a detailed explanation as to which product is going to be a better fit for you. Right. And you’re spot on in the sense that Amazon is giving these recommendations based on a few factors. Right. And again, we don’t know exactly how AI does their algorithm and portray these, you know, show these results. But you know, very commonly it’s reviews. They want to, they’re going to scan these reviews, they’re going to have us highlight specific keywords related to your products and show that information and make sure that it’s emphasized to the customer. Right. So what’s important is that you’re right in the sense that you don’t just need quality reviews, but you still also need volume. Right. The chances of Amazon maybe recommending a brand that has one review is going to be drastically low compared to maybe a seller that has 100 reviews on their brand. Right. So the more specific the feedback you have, especially text reviews, again, not just star ratings, because the emphasis is on text reviews, you know, the better. The AI, for example, can, you know, recommend your product. There’s a lot of other factors, but they want to make sure that some of the reviews are very consistent. They want to make sure that it’s detailed and they also want to make sure that it’s coming from verified customers. Just all of these kinds of factors take into place as to how AI or Amazon’s Rufus is going to be showing your products to a lot of these customers. I would say it’s kind of an interesting time as to, you know, how a lot of customers can now start, getting insights from these, reviews because you can look at some of the keywords that your customers are writing and you can make sure that you’re able to optimize your, brand listing, your product listing and make sure that it’s, up to date and it kind of has those keywords to really just optimize and make sure that whatever Amazon is kind of, recommending to customers, you know, your product is one of those as well.
JONATHAN: It seems like such an uphill battle and I don’t envy anyone, like a new brand starting out, needing to generate reviews. So I’m specifically curious how GetReviews can help sellers do that while remaining compliant. Because I feel like the rules are always changing. So I’m curious how you guys do that if you can walk me through that process.
JOY PAK: Yeah, well you’re completely right in the sense that like these rules for every marketplace are changing. You can see for example Shopify, right? You can send a review request email but with Amazon you don’t really have an opportunity to send a review request email specifically to the customer’s email address. But yeah, I mean in terms of, you know, getting reviews, we help customers collect more reviews from customers post purchase via the use of product inserts or package inserts. But we’ll focus on you know, the Amazon Marketplace right now. But like I mentioned before, there are a lot of misconceptions about the use of product inserts and you know, to make it clear it is allowed on Amazon. But you need to make sure that there are specific things you don’t do to make sure that you stay compliant with Amazon terms of services. So I’ll first go into what you shouldn’t do. And these are very interesting. But for example, and this is also not just with Amazon Marketplace but also with FTC guidelines and also with a lot of the other marketplaces such as Walmart Target as well, number one thing you cannot be doing is specifically asking for positive reviews. So for example, on the product insert if you say leave us a five star review on Amazon, that is not allowed because you’re basically, you know, you need to make sure that whatever review the customer wants to leave for you, it’s honest. So even if it’s a one star or a five star review, you shouldn’t, you can’t just ask the customer to share their positive experiences. Number two is for example directing customers through different flows. This is something that I’ve seen a lot of Amazon sellers do and this is what kind of gets them in trouble by Amazon. For example, on the package insert if you say if you liked our product, leave us a review on Amazon. If you didn’t like our product, email us here and we’d be happy to know, solve the issues that you’re facing. That is the most, one of the most common ones I see. And again Amazon doesn’t want you to direct customers to different flows because again you’re basically just asking for only positive reviews and something that’s super small. But yes, you can get in Trouble by Amazon is that even if you, on the package insert, if you leave like the icon of a smiley face or even like the icon of five stars, like the five stars in that row, that is not allowed because you’re basically encouraging the customer to only leave a positive review. So, those are really some of the three most common things that I’ve seen Amazon sellers do where they get into the most trouble. And again, there are repercussions with it. But also one of the other things that you cannot do is essentially, for example, force a customer to write your review. So, you know, you need to make sure that, if a customer wants to leave a review in exchange for anything, it’s optional. So no quid pro quo kind of stuff. So, you know, if the customer does this, then they’ll get this. So you want to make sure that if a customer wants to leave a review for you, it is completely optional.
JONATHAN: Outside of that, I’m curious, what do you guys do at GetReviews that sort of makes your review funnel approach unique and, like, also encourages that sort of honest, unbiased feedback from, from real customers?
JOY PAK: Yeah, well, I don’t know if it would be okay if I could share my screen. So I kind of mentioned before, right, in terms of package inserts, I mentioned what you shouldn’t be doing. But one of the things you can, for example, write is scan the QR code to share your experience. So something a very neutral copy where you’re not explicitly asking the customer for positive reviews or directing customers to different flows. Now what you are allowed to do on that package insert is, for example, placing a key QR code. Now this is where kind of GetReviews comes in, is that, you know, we can provide the QR code for you or you’re more than welcome to use your own QR code if you have one. But what happens is customers can scan that QR code and they will land on your survey landing page like this. Really what GetReviews does is we provide that survey flow technology to have customers leave you a review. And as you can see here, this is just customizable for your brand. And this is just a demo, a supplements company that we made up. But there’s a few things that I kind of want to point out. But, I’ll kind of quickly walk you through the flow. And one thing I did mention is that you are off. You are allowed to offer, for example, specific things to your customers. Let’s say a promotion code warranty, you know, maybe extended warranty that you want to offer to your customers, you are allowed to do that. But like I mentioned Amazon, they want to make sure that if you want to offer those things to your customers, you need to make sure that it’s optional for them. So you know, the first thing we do ask the customer is to select which product they purchase from you. So let’s just say again, it’s a supplements company. I purchased a supplement called Energize. The next question we ask them is which marketplace they purchase them from. And I’ll go into why this is important a bit later. But we pretty much have all of the major ecommerce marketplaces available on the GetReviews platform from all of the major Amazon marketplaces to TikTok, Shop, Shopify, Walmart, Target, just to name a few. And if there is a custom marketplace, we can absolutely work into adding that as well. But let’s just say I purchased it on Amazon us. The next question we do ask the customer is their order number. The reason why we ask for this is we only allow verified customers to proceed with the survey flow and to write you a review. And by verified customers, I mean once that actually purchased from you. Right. This is very important because again we are not. I do want to make it very clear, GetReviews is not one of those platforms where we artificially generate reviews for you. Our survey flow is built so that we basically help you collect more reviews from customers via package inserts from actual customers that actually purchase from you. So I’m just going to put in this test order number. Perfect. And then I can click this next button. Now on the second step, as you can see here, the customer is able to give a star rating and written review. Now I’ll kind of do the highlights a bit later, but right now this demo survey is set up so that it’s mandatory for a customer to write your review. So as you can see here, there’s an asterisk it says indicates a required field. And I can’t click this next button. Right. I will let you know. This specific demo that I’m showing right now is not compliant with Amazon terms of services because you are making it mandatory for a customer to write your review. And I did want to actually show this version because you know, I kind of want to show customers basically what you shouldn’t do. But when you are setting up your survey, when sellers are setting up their survey in the back end, you will have a few different settings as to what you can do because again there, each marketplace has its own different rules and sets of rules. So for example, Shopify customers will set it up so that it’s mandatory. But when it comes to Amazon, we always recommend our customers to set it up so that it’s optional. If it’s optional, basically instead of this, these asterisks, it’s just going to be in brackets, it’s going to say the word optional. And if the customer wants to click the next button, they can. So basically if you want, if the customer wants to skip this step, they do have the ability to do that. I always tell you know, GetReviews users this, but I know it’s frustrating because you are obviously using a platform like GetReviews, collect more reviews. Right. You want to collect more reviews, that’s why you’re signing up to our services. Right. But I always tell them there are specific marketplaces such as Amazon specifically that have so much red tape when it comes to reviews, you want to make sure that you’re staying compliant with them. And yes, it’s frustrating in the sense that it might not result in what you want, but even though it takes some time to maybe get those reviews, at least you’re making sure that you’re doing it in a compliant way with Amazon Terms of Services. Yep. So this is just an example, but again, I do want to make it clear this survey is set up so it’s not staying compliant with Amazon Terms of Services. But I will say, you know, I love this product so much, we’ll buy it again. Perfect. Now let’s just say if a customer does give you that star rating and written review. Right. What happens is the customer is going to be able to copy the review that they’ve just written for you. And when the customer clicks this paste on Amazon button, we take them directly to the ASIN of the product they purchased from you so they can leave a review there. But again, we do have an Amazon deep link setup. So again, a QR code. Right. A customer is going to be scanning this on a mobile device. So the customer is doing this entire survey on their phones. Right. We do have a deep link setup. So if the customer has an Amazon app downloaded on their phone, we take them directly inside the Amazon app itself for them to leave a review. It just makes that customer experience a lot easier. And I know it’s a bit frustrating because you know, we have to redirect the customer to Amazon to write a review. But one thing I want to mention is unfortunately there are currently no tools or apps out there in this world right now where a review can be automatically syndicated to Amazon. Amazon just doesn’t allow that. They want to make sure that any reviews that are being left on Amazon are actually being left, are being actually written on Amazon itself. So we just built our survey flow to try to make sure that it’s as easy as possible for the customer. And I kind of want to go into why this is why we asked the customer for the marketplace. I’ll be honest with you. We had one GetReviews user who was selling on Amazon and Shopify. What they did was they did a huge email campaign to their Shopify customers. Again, on Shopify you get the customers’ address email addresses, right. They sent out a huge email campaign to their Shopify customers asking them to leave a review for them on Amazon. Again, this was a huge red flag to Amazon because one, there was a bunch of traffic from unverified customers trying to leave a review. So Amazon obviously saw that as suspicious activity. And what happened? I believe their product was actually blocked from receiving reviews for around two weeks if I’m not mistaken. So you know, I want to make it clear that our survey flow is built in a way where we redirect the customer to the marketplace they purchased it from. So if they purchase on Amazon us, we take them to Amazon.com if they purchase on Walmart, we take them to Walmart. They purchase on TikTok shop, we take them to TikTok shop. We don’t, for example, cross mingle in terms of when it comes to different marketplaces.
JONATHAN: That’s great.
JOY PAK: Yeah. And really the last step is again you have kind of different offerings as to what you can provide on the GetReviews platform. You know, we have for example offerings such as like an E-gift card, promotion code, warranty, like digital guide, if you have any sort of PDFs that you want to share with your customers. But let’s just say specifically like if you want to share, you know, maybe a 15% off next purchase, you know, promotion code with your sellers. It’s very simple. First name, last name, email address and the GetReviews platform will automatically email the customer their coupon code. But that’s it. And again, I want to make it very clear in order to make sure that you stay compliant with Amazon terms of services, you need to make sure that your survey, is set up correctly. And like I mentioned, if for example, you know, you want to make sure that it’s not mandatory for a customer to write your review, it’s completely optional if they’d like to, I Love that. That’s all great.
JONATHAN: Yeah. And I mean you guys have taken everything into consideration there too. Which is phenomenal. Which most people don’t because you don’t. I mean again, the rules are always changing so you never know when Amazon’s going to throw your review curveball or any of these platforms.
JOY PAK: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And also I do also want to make it very clear that you know, we don’t for example just offer, give that promotion, coach customers that give you a five star review. We don’t do that no matter what. Even if the customer is giving you a one star review or a five star review. Our flow is built so that no matter what all your customers would be able to, let’s say you get a 15% off promotion code. We don’t suppress negative reviews which is again something that FTC and Amazon terms of services, promotes and they don’t want you to do. So our survey flow is built in exactly that same way. No matter what, you’re still able to receive all reviews.
JONATHAN: Yeah. I love that you walked us through the platform. I’m curious, if you have any parting words to sellers or advice to new ecommerce sellers on how they should tackle reviews?
JOY PAK: Yeah, I think when it comes to new sellers or any person that’s starting their own ecommerce brand, there’s a lot of emphasis on, you know, setting up the right website, setting up the right storefront, making sure that your product development and your product is perfect for the customer. Right. Which are very important. But I always like to emphasize that you need to also make sure that you have a review Strategy from day one. Like I mentioned before, only 1 to 2% of your customers are leaving your review. Right. So you know, in order to get that one review you need to have 100 orders. And you can imagine that’s going to be very difficult and it’s going to take a very long time in order for you to hit that 100 review mark. So if there’s ways where you could increase, like multiple touch points and getting reviews from customers, that is something and you know, reaching your customers, that is something I highly recommend you to focus on. Again, you know, you make use of Amazon’s reviewer request button, make use of Amazon’s buying program, Also make sure that you use for example package inserts. That way when customers open their packaging right away, they see that package insert, it’s right in front of them, they’re reminded to leave a review. But again, you know, another important number is that, you know, when it comes to reviews, it can increase your conversion rates of up to 270%. Right. So, nowadays having a review isn’t just nice to have, you basically need to have it. And it’s a way for customers to make a purchase, but it’s also a way for you to showcase your social proof and get trust with customers. Right. And these are all very important for components for a new seller. So make sure that you have a review strategy from day one.
