When it comes to ecommerce maybe the most important factor in driving long-term success is managing customer reviews. The holy grail of selling on Amazon is becoming the “Amazon’s Choice” product in a certain category. 

We’re very proud that our customers have numerous products with “Amazon’s Choice” or “Bestseller” labels. 

Getting these labels comes from a combination of sales volume, pricing, reviews, and undoubtedly other metrics which probably have less of an impact than the three above.

There are obvious ways to manage reviews that everyone probably already knows or which will sound intuitively obvious once you hear them, for example:

1. Offer free, no questions-asked returns (this is well worth the cost in virtually all cases)
2. Provide high-quality explainer videos
3. Respond promptly to customer questions
4. Spend the extra $$$ it takes to make sure your packaging survives transit

However, something that may be less obvious as a strategy is adding whatever type of tool your product is best used with. For example, if you are wanting to sell car wax – include with the product a foam pad that is ideally suited to applying it. This may be surprising, but a huge portion of bad reviews come from users not knowing how to appropriately apply a product. Sometimes this boils down to them trying to use the wrong type of tool – for example, a cloth that will result in streaking as opposed to a foam sponge that won’t. 

Even if you have a high-quality explainer video, some consumers may not realize that the sponge your video showcases will apply the product differently than a kitchen towel – or they may not realize there is a difference between a microfiber towel and the old bathroom towel they planned on using. 

Unlocking the Power of Positive Reviews: Strategies for Customer Satisfaction and Brand Reputation

Adding applicators, sponges, microfiber towels, sprayers etc to a product is what we call bundling or kitting. One of the things we’ve heard from our customers over the years is that our cost to create bundles and kits is lower than any other company they’ve run across. In fact, virtually all of the products we make for customers which are sold on Amazon are bundled with some combination of inserts and applicators.

When I say applicator, I just mean whatever is used to apply the product – which can be a sponge, towel, pads of various shapes, etc. Inserts are often used to either provide instructions directly or they can have barcodes which link to online tutorials once scanned with a smartphone. 

There’s an additional advantage here which is that for many products consumers KNOW that they would have to purchase the applicator separately. Because selling something on Amazon requires a price point that covers the cost of shipping, it is a fact that you will not be able to purchase an individual applicator for the same cost as you would pay in an additional fee to get it packaged with the product itself.

Here is a search for microfiber towels on Amazon – you either pay through the nose or buy more than you need:

Amazon is going to charge the seller $3.00+ for shipping, so if a seller wanted to sell just one single sponge they would have to sell it for a good chunk more than that to make a profit. This is why if you search on Amazon for applicators most of them come in packs of 10-20 – far more than most consumers need.

Compare that against being able to buy a product and pay $1.50 extra to have the sponge included. 

Our customers will sell more than 700,000 bottles via e-commerce channels this year and the VAST majority of them will come bundled or kitted – so we know this works.