What are seller ratings, and how do you make the most of them?

If you’re searching on Google chances are that you have seeing stars next to ads or in the organic results - these stars are seller ratings. 

Seller ratings on AdWords Ads

Seller ratings on organic listings

Why do you want star ratings on your ads and organic listings?

I may be stating the obvious, but if you have lots of 5 star reviews and your competitors don’t have any you’re going to be receiving more clicks and customers.

If you are a retailer and you want to get ahead it really does make sense to start working towards receiving seller ratings. To receive seller ratings you need to start collecting reviews, through third party independent review sites. In the Google guide to seller ratings they list all the review sites that you can use to generate unbiased customer reviews. The review site I have the most experience with is Feefo and I personally have been very happy with their service.

The stars will start to show once you have collected about 150 unique reviews with an average score of 3.5 starts from which every review site you decide to use.

I like Feefo because they only collect reviews from your customers and only your customers. They are a closed platform, so whether you receive a good or bad review you know that they are all real and not a competitor being naughty. This trust in the system makes reviews from Feefo particularly useful.

Whilst you may have started collecting reviews to be rewarded with little gold stars, I have found It to be much more useful than I expected.

There are two types of seller rating - a “service rating”, which is a review of your business and your customer service, and then a “product rating” which is a rating on the individual products customers have bought.

The “service rating” shows on your PPC search ads, and if you have a good service rating this will improve your CTR. 

As my specialism is ecommerce I find the “product rating” more interesting - they can show on your PLA (product listing ads).

PLAs are a big part of my ecommerce client’s campaigns.  They are a great way to get in front of your customers because they can see the product and price. However, it is hard to differentiate yourself from the other advertisers with PLA ads compared to search ads. Getting product ratings really helps with standing out and people can also see that other customers like the product that you are selling.

As well as seeing product rating as a great way to encourage a high CTRs, I also see it as a useful way to decide what I want to advertise. If a product is getting lots of great reviews and has a good margin I know I want to be advertising it as much as possible, whereas if a product has had negative reviews I don’t want to advertise it. Increasing sales on good products means happy customers, less returns, less refunds and a more productive sales team. Another reason I like Feefo is that I can download data on which product have had reviews and I use this information to make bidding decisions.

If you want help with your ecommerce marketing, website or feeds give us a call!