Marketplaces
How to Get Seller Reviews on Walmart Seller Central
- Written by Rachael Pilcher
Walmart is one of the fastest-growing ecommerce websites in the USA.
It increased its international sales by 44% in the last fiscal year, and it’s now one of the top online stores worldwide based on net ecommerce sales — all of which make it a very appealing place to set-up shop as a Walmart Marketplace retailer!
In this article, we’ll be looking at how to start selling in this marketplace with Walmart Seller Center, why getting positive customer reviews can make or break your success on this marketplace, and actionable tips on how to get more glowing reviews from buyers.
Overview of the Walmart Seller Center
Unlike building a store on Shopify or your own website and hoping that customers will miraculously find you, setting a store up on the Walmart Marketplace instantly gets you in front of 120 million monthly visitors who are searching for products on the Walmart.com website.
With over 155,000 sellers already using the platform, Walmart works closely with vendors to improve their sales and success in the Walmart Seller Center — much of which is tied to positive seller reviews.
It’s simple to join and start selling on the Seller Center, and if you sell in more than one country, you'll be able to sign in and manage all of your markets in one place, helping your ecommerce business to scale faster.
Key features of Walmart Seller Center
No setup fees or monthly fees
Catalog management features
Powerful solutions for pricing, brand management, and returns
Use sponsored search ads to attract more buyers
Use the Walmart Fulfillment Service to store inventory, ship products, and manage returns
Understanding Walmart’s seller review system
At the heart of the Walmart Marketplace is its review system for sellers.
95% of consumers say that online reviews have an impact on their purchasing decisions, even if they don’t know the person who left it, so ensuring you get a rave review after each sale is essential!
It’s important to note there are two types of reviews on Walmart:
Buyer reviews
These are written by shoppers leaving feedback on products they've purchased from Walmart.com.
Walmart's own staff can share their feedback here too, and these will be tagged as being from a “Walmart Associate”.
Seller reviews
Customers who have purchased items from a seller on the Walmart Marketplace (not Walmart.com) can leave a Walmart Marketplace Seller Review. These are the ones that are important for you when you’re setting up in the Seller Center.
The focus here isn't on products, but on the service, experience, and delivery provided by a seller.
Buyers on the Walmart Marketplace will receive an email inviting them to review both the seller and the product a few weeks after their purchase. If they review items within the specified time, they’ll receive a discount code for future purchases.
How reviews affect your sales and visibility
Glowing seller reviews aren’t just a “nice to have” feature. Walmart's algorithm favors product listings that have higher seller review ratings, bumping them up to more prominent positions, and displaying them in recommendation widgets.
The impact of seller reviews can be seen fairly quickly as new reviews are published, helping to improve your reputation and sales in the marketplace.
Walmart has also introduced a Pro Seller badge to highlight their top-performing Marketplace sellers. If you’re a seller that has been rated and reviewed highly by customers, this badge is a huge win for your brand.
Having a high number of positive reviews will help to:
Reduce shopper hesitation about buying from you
Improve your trust factor as a Marketplace seller
Increase the perceived value of your products
Promote your brand
Build a positive relationship with Walmart
Strategies for increasing seller reviews
Encouraging seller reviews isn’t just a numbers game. It’s about improving your shipping and brand experience so that customers will naturally want to leave great reviews!
Here are a few ways you can increase your review count:
Make customer satisfaction a priority
It’s essential to give customers a fantastic shopping experience from the moment they hit the “buy now” button.
This means describing and photographing your products clearly, ensuring prompt replies to customer questions, picking and packing accurately, and being honest and transparent with your operations in the Walmart Marketplace.
Personalized touches such as thank you notes inside a package can go a long way to make customers feel appreciated, leave you a great review, and come back to shop with you again.
Send follow-up emails
Sending a follow-up email once a customer has received their order is an effective way to encourage them to give a review.
Thank your customer for their purchase, ask how they felt about the product, the shipping time, and their overall experience, and invite them to leave an honest review.
This genuine engagement shows customers that their opinions matter, which can boost your chance of getting feedback.
Time your follow-up emails for about a week after delivery, to ensure your customer has had enough time to evaluate the product — but don’t leave it too long, or they will have forgotten all the important details about shopping with you!
Sell quality products
It should go without saying that you need to sell great quality items to get great reviews.
Nobody likes to receive an item that makes them feel like they’ve been misled by the listing, or a product that falls apart shortly after buying it.
Make sure that your product descriptions clearly set out details about features, benefits, and any potential limitations or facts that buyers need to be aware of.
Listing transparency and accuracy will help set realistic expectations for buyers, and reduce the likelihood of getting negative reviews.
Ship fast
In a recent survey, fast delivery was the top aspect that consumers want from their online shopping experiences.
Customers expect shipping that’s speedy and reliable, so it’s important that you choose trusted business shipping carriers who can meet these demands.
Give customers tracking information as soon as possible so they can easily see the status of their orders and know when to expect delivery. Prioritizing a smooth delivery process can encourage more positive reviews, as this is one of the most important moving parts of the online ordering experience.
Answer customer questions
Shoppers can ask Marketplace sellers or previous customers a question about an item, so if you see a question pop up on one of your listings, make sure you answer this promptly.
This should be part of your strategy to improve customer satisfaction, as it can lead to higher conversion rates and more reviews in the future.
Respond to negative reviews
Unfortunately, negative reviews are part of being an online retailer. There’s no way to avoid them completely, and you can’t remove them unless they breach Walmart’s review policy.
If you do get a negative review from a customer, it’s natural to feel upset and want to lash out — but the best thing you can do is to take a deep breath and treat it as a learning experience to help you improve your business.
By tracking trends in your feedback, you might be able to identify recurring problems, whether that’s with product quality, customer service, or shipping times. This can help you address weak spots in your business.
Leaving calm, thoughtful responses to bad reviews lets customers know you’ve heard them, and that you’re making every effort to improve based on their feedback.
It can also show any potential customers who are reading your reviews that you’re a responsible seller, and you’re dedicated to constant improvement.
This approach to negative feedback can help you retain disgruntled customers, and attract new ones, so you continue to grow confidently in the Walmart Seller Center.
Send product samples
Who doesn’t love getting free stuff! Sending product samples can help encourage future sales and more reviews, and there are also reputable third party companies who can help boost your seller reviews through product sample programs.
If you sell on Walmart.com, you’ll probably be familiar with Walmart’s Bazaarvoice partnership which is a similar method that helps brands optimize their sales and review strategies with free samples.
Walmart’s Review Accelerator Program
Walmart offers a program for sellers who want to encourage their customers to add authentic reviews for items they have purchased.
This helps sellers take the fast track to boosting their review count and standing out in Walmart search results.
This feature will cost you $10 for each new review, but it’s an effective way to generate maximum feedback and drive sales for your Marketplace store, which is essential when you’re just starting out and need to build credibility.
In exchange for sharing their reviews, buyers will receive a small incentive, and reviews made under the Accelerator program will be badged as “incentivized” for transparency.
Walmart’s policies around soliciting reviews
Although it might be tempting to think about boosting your seller reviews with feedback from friends and family, or buying fake reviews from dodgy websites, it’s not worth risking your brand’s reputation or getting penalized by Walmart.
Outside of the approved Review Accelerator program we mentioned above, Walmart has strict policies about soliciting reviews from customers. These include not manipulating or coercing buyers to give you reviews, or offering incentives in exchange for good reviews, as both of these can bias customer feedback.
If you want to request reviews from customers outside of the Accelerator program, you’ll need to make sure you do so in a way that’s respectful, ethical, and ensures compliance with Walmart’s policies. 70% of shoppers will leave a review for an online store if they’re asked to - you just need to go about it the right way.
Managing your Seller Center reviews
Walmart provides a suite of tools, plus integrations with Helium 10 that are designed to help its Marketplace sellers succeed. You can access your dashboard to monitor new reviews, respond quickly to feedback, and track your customers’ sentiments over time.
This will help you measure the effectiveness of your seller review strategies by tracking the number of reviews you’ve received, changes to your overall rating, and whether sales are improving.
Walmart also monitors its Marketplace seller reviews through their performance and customer feedback.
They’ll be looking for detailed, helpful feedback from buyers, as well as tagging reviews from verified purchasers, and looking for reviews that feature media such as product images or videos.
By working hard to gather lots of great feedback, you’ll be rewarded in the eyes of Walmart. This will help you create a trusted brand on Seller Center that shoppers remember, share, and buy from again.
Further reading
Ready to sign up to the Walmart Seller Center?
Knowing how to get great seller reviews on the Walmart Seller Center is one of the keys to success in the Walmart Marketplace.
It’s essential to sell quality products, provide honest and detailed product descriptions, and make sure you’re exceeding customer expectations with every sale. This means shipping fast, giving a personalized touch to each order, and following up to make sure every buyer is happy with their purchase.
If you’re using Veeqo, it integrates seamlessly with your Walmart store to automatically update and sync inventory levels across your other sales channels. This means customers will never be disappointed about stockouts, and you can look forward to more glowing reviews!
Ready to take your Walmart sales and customer satisfaction to the next level? Sign up for your free Veeqo account today and discover how simple shipping and inventory management can be.
