Review display mechanism updated! Amazon is going to make a big change to the review system

Yesterday we just said that due to media exposure and Amazon’s own decision, the official will soon take action to rectify the black technology method of merging zombie listings (click here to review yesterday’s analysis).

It was mentioned that the separate review display function that Amazon was testing some time ago was a preparation and test for the comprehensive update of the review system, and the update of the entire system was used to plug the loophole of merging variants to obtain a large number of reviews.

Today, another seller classmate who witnessed the incident broke the news to me, which confirmed our guess. Now Amazon’s front-end review display format has been updated!

Update the front-end review display format

As usual, let’s first take a look at the comparison pictures before and after the update.

It's hard to tell at first glance, so I've highlighted the changes. To put it bluntly, the number of reviews and the average star rating have been swapped, and the average score for most sellers remains the same as before.

However, a small number of sellers told me that the average score changed by 0.2-0.3 before and after the update. I guess there were some changes in the average score and Review weight algorithm in this update, but the impact was not large, so it only affected a small number of sellers.

Although this update to the display format is just a small thing, considering that Amazon has previously tried to display all variants of Reviews separately, it is very likely that the entire Review system will be overhauled in the future.

We have analyzed that if reviews are displayed separately according to variants, each variant needs to have an independent search result on the front end, because the number of reviews for each variant is different, and the front end page now also displays the number of reviews.

▲The search results on the front page also show the number of reviews.

In other words, if you want to keep the current display format unchanged and want Reviews to follow sub-products, then the front end must display each sub-product variant and their number of Reviews.

But this means the breakdown of the variant relationship, resulting in a sharp increase in the number of products on the entire platform, and such a crude individual display is definitely impossible.

Now that Amazon has changed the way reviews are presented, it has given us another inspiration. Amazon is likely to use this idea to revise its review system.

Speculations about changes to the Review system

First, let’s look at this change again.

Although only the position of the number of reviews and the average score has been changed, there is still a subtle difference.

Before the change, although the number of reviews was in a more prominent position, it had the same font color and size as the average score below.

After the change, the average score moved to a more prominent position, while the number of reviews moved to the bottom and used a smaller font and a lighter, less noticeable color.

Such changes clearly show that Amazon is intentionally weakening the attribute of "number of reviews" and wants to replace "number of reviews" with "average score".

We can boldly guess that Amazon will use this "average score" to replace "number of reviews" to rectify its review system in the future. If the "average score" is displayed under the product in the front-end search bar instead of "number of reviews", it will solve the problem of inconsistent numbers of reviews for the child items under the same parent item.

I roughly photoshopped a possible presentation, I hope you guys understand what I mean.

Such a change is really bold. It means that Amazon will pay more attention to the quality of product reviews rather than the quantity. It also means the extreme of the Day One strategy. As long as your product reviews are good enough, it will not be inferior to old products with tens of thousands of reviews. And if the algorithm for identifying the authenticity of reviews can be strengthened, the changes to the product using the average score can also be more effective in combating fake orders.

However, because there are so many things involved, this change will also bring about quite a lot of problems and controversies. Therefore, among so many places to display the number of reviews, Amazon only dares to test this change in the most inconspicuous place now.

▲It is the position closest to the bottom of the product details page

However, even though this display change was not implemented in more locations due to the huge scale of the issues involved, Amazon's change ideas also have a great guiding role in our operations, that is, the importance of product review quality will exceed quantity in the future.

In fact, we can get a glimpse of this idea from the changes in the review weights last year. If a product has more than a dozen five-star reviews, one bad review can drag the average score down a lot, which shows the importance attached to the quality of reviews.

In the future, a buyer account with a higher weight, more security and less easy to identify that is cultivated with more time and effort will bring a better evaluation effect than a bunch of low-quality and low-weight buyer accounts. The entire Amazon evaluation system will also usher in its own refined account cultivation route.

Finally, I have prepared an analysis of the evaluation conditions for the high-weight safety evaluation. Please scan the QR code to get it from me~

PS. If you want to join the seller discussion group, you can also private message me to let me add you to the group