Amazon Seller Rating: What It Is, And How To Improve It

A lot of Amazon sellers don’t know about their seller rating. Many aren’t aware of the exact details that go into it, while many more don’t even realize it exists.

If this is you, you’re missing an important part of maximising your success on Amazon. A great seller rating shows Amazon that you’re a store worthy of their platform, and can only be beneficial for you in the future.

Regardless of any advantages you get from Amazon, scoring high on your seller rating means you’re doing everything you can to provide the best experience for your customers – which is obviously a priority when you run a business.

A low seller rating lets you know you’ve got some work to do to improve your business and boost customer satisfaction.

So let’s explain just what this system is, and how you can keep your rating as high as possible.

What Is The Amazon Seller Rating?

First, a distinction should be made between seller rating and your seller feedback rating.

Your overall seller feedback rating is the star rating out of five you see on your public seller profile. However, your actual Amazon seller rating is an internal metric, scored out of 100.

The rating assesses your performance, from a merchant’s point of view. In particular, how good your performance is in Amazon’s eyes.

Amazon is generally less concerned with whether you’re moving a lot of product and making a ton of money, compared to how satisfied your customers are with each order. This is what’s more important from their point of view.

The specific points Amazon rates a seller on are:

  • Shipping time: does the order arrive in the time quoted on your listing?
  • Order cancellations: points are lost for orders placed and later cancelled.
  • Customer response time: the time a seller takes to respond to customer inquiries.
  • Negative feedback rate: excessive negative seller feedback will result in lost points.
  • Chargebacks: customers initiating chargebacks through their credit card company
  • A-Z claims: customers initiating refunds based on Amazon’s A-Z guarantee.

All these points are taken into account, with varying levels of importance. A-Z claims, for example, carry more weight, and incurring a lot of these will drop your rating very quick.

You can also earn bonus points if your customer service is found to exceed expectations.

This criteria is judged over all orders over the last 365 days. That means you won’t have problems from a long time ago hanging over your head forever. Scores are also weighted more heavily in favor of recent orders. So if your performance is showing an upward trend, this will be even better for your seller rating. While the inverse applies if your performance is getting worse.

At the end of everything, your scores are tallied up and a rating out of 100 is given (100 being the best, 0 the worst). The final rating will be expressed either as Excellent, Very Good, Good or Fair.

Is Your Seller Rating Important?

Amazon’s material on the internal seller rating has been removed from seller central, and in 2015 they abruptly removed it from the seller dashboard. So whether this is still a relevant metric is up in the air – possibly not.

True or not, the important part is not the rating itself, but what the rating represents.

A great seller rating shows Amazon that you’re bringing a lot of value to their platform, which will put you in higher standing with them. While it shows you that you’re doing a great job providing top-tier service to your customers.

We do know that Amazon tracks Account Health, which takes into account a lot of the same things that the old seller rating did. Account Health is important for many reasons, such as giving you a larger inventory allowance, as well as influencing your search rankings.

How Can I Improve It?

The material seller rating might not be around anymore, but customer satisfaction is still important. You want to maintain a focus on making every customer experience a memorable one.

Amazon gives their own recommendations on how to avoid negative feedback from customers. Some of the key points from their advice includes:

  • Keep inventory levels sufficient (don’t run out of stock).
  • Have a system in place to make sure deliveries are made on time (you may not have to worry about this if you’re selling with Amazon FBA).
  • Make sure your listings are clear and accurate, with high-quality images and informative text.
  • Make it easy for buyers to contact you by showing the Amazon customer support phone number and other relevant contact details on your profile.
  • Give friendly and helpful service to every customer.

Essentially, just keep a professional attitude with your Amazon business, and put your customers first.

Make good use of buyer-seller messages in order to provide customer service and respond to inquiries.

For additional customer service points, it may help you to drive external traffic with LandingCube and capture contact details in channels like email or Messenger. This allows you to give an even more personal customer experience, and increase the number of glowing feedback ratings.

Take these points on board, and it should cover everything the seller rating covers. You’ll also give yourself the best chance of maintaining a high customer feedback rating, which will help your store’s appearance in the eyes of potential customers in the future.

RANK LIKE THE PROS

Discover a better way to rank products from external traffic, like Facebook, Google and TikTok, with LandingCube promo pages.

Try it free for 21 days.

Additional Amazon Seller Metrics

There are many more things that Amazon rates a seller on, most of which can be found on your seller dashboard.

You’ll want to take care to keep these metrics high, both to improve your standing with Amazon and to send customers away with a smile.

These metrics include:

  • Perfect order percentage
  • Order defect rate
  • Pre-fulfillment cancellation rate
  • Late shipment rate
  • Refund rate
  • Valid tracking rate
  • Customer service dissatisfaction rate
  • Response times under 24 hours
  • Late responses
  • Average response time
  • Return dissatisfaction rate
  • Negative feedback rate
  • Feedback rating

Everything in the list above is important, and a poor rating on any metric should be taken seriously. If nothing is done about it, you may find your seller account under scrutiny by Amazon’s performance team. At the very least, chances are your customers aren’t as happy as they could be.

Amazon storefront displaying seller feedback

Seller Rating vs Seller Feedback

Seller feedback is what many people think of when they hear about their Amazon seller rating. And truth be told, seller feedback covers much of the same ground.

Both seller rating and seller feedback give you an idea of whether the customer experience you’re providing is good or bad. The difference is, one is Amazon’s internal diagnosis, while the other is direct from the customer themselves.

Since your seller feedback rating is visible to Amazon customers, this metric would probably be considered more important. A great feedback rating signals to potential customers that they are likely to have a good experience when buying from you.

Your feedback rating also goes towards helping you win the buy box, and making sure you’re eligible to test new features being introduced by Amazon.

That’s why it’s vital that you take Amazon’s advice on avoiding negative feedback seriously. It could be the difference between a sale or another bouncing visitor. Bad feedback also tends to translate into negative product reviews.

Further Reading: The Complete Guide on How To Get Reviews on Amazon

Amazon Seller Ratings: In Summary

The Amazon internal seller rating might not be a thing anymore, but that doesn’t mean you should forget about the metric.

Taking the six points from the seller rating on board every day ensures you’re doing all you can to make every customer happy.

Customers are the heart of any business. Get a lot of them, give them a great experience and your business is going to succeed.

RANK LIKE THE PROS

Discover a better way to rank products from external traffic, like Facebook, Google and TikTok, with LandingCube promo pages.

Try it free for 21 days.

LandingCube Platform Demo

Enter your email below to get access to a full demo video of the LandingCube platform.

? ? ?

Questions? Contact support@landingcube.com to chat with our support experts

Learn Facebook Ads for Amazon

Subscribe to our free Facebook Ads for Amazon email course to learn everything you need to know to rank your products higher, build an audience, and make more sales.