It is a known fact that Amazon’s A9 algorithm considers conversion rate, relevancy, and customer satisfaction and retention factors in ranking sellers in their various product categories. Shipping issues, in particular, fall under customer satisfaction and retention factors. The fewer shipping issues you have on your seller account, the better your customer satisfaction and retention score will eventually influence your SEO ranking.
So, you want to keep your customers satisfied by attending to any shipping issue(s) as fast as possible. When you prioritize your product quality, order processing speed, and other shipping processes, you’d limit shipping issues and attract positive customer reviews, improving your SEO seller ranking.
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However, many sellers still neglect shipping issues on their Amazon pages, leading to low ranking and consequently low sales conversions. Experiences show that many sellers do not know how to tackle shipping issues like defective order processing and the rest. Not to worry, this Amazon informational content will expose you to the peculiarities of these shipping issues and how to tackle them to avoid SEO de-ranking.
Prominent among shipping issues on Amazon are order defect rates. Your order defect rate is prominent among the most important metrics you must pay attention to adhere to Amazon’s policies and rank high.
What Is Order Defect Rate And What Makes An Order Defective On Amazon?
Order defect rate is the number of people who order defective products within a certain period on your seller page. To know your order defect rate, you divide the number of negative orders by the number of orders in the same period. Your Amazon order defect score is used to assess your seller performance. Since your score would show whether your customer experience is positive or negative, Amazon considers that when ranking you. Your order defect rate should be below 1% to stand a chance of ranking high in your product category. Apart from low ranking, if you hit 1% or higher, your Amazon seller store might be suspended; it’s that serious.
What then would make an order defective? Amazon considers three important factors in deciding whether or not an order is defective:
- Negative feedback. For Amazon, customer experience is paramount, which is why when a shopper leaves a negative review, it reflects poor customer experience, which will lead to more of such. These negative feedbacks, in turn, lead to high order defect rates.
- Credit card chargeback. If a shopper requests to get their money back, it can affect your order defect rate. Amazon concludes that shoppers request money back for reasons such as damaged products, bad service, fraud, or decline in refund for return. Importantly, if the basis for a chargeback on your seller page is poor customer service, your order defect rate will be high.
- A-to-Z Claim. Amazon offers an A-to-Z guarantee for shoppers who buy products from brands that sell on their page. This guarantee is usually to report late delivery and defective goods. When shoppers make these claims, it affects your order defect rate badly. Amazon understands that a single shopper might make an A-to-Z claim and request a credit card chargeback. This would count as one negative experience instead of two.
How Can An Order Defect Affect Your SEO Ranking?
As harsh as it sounds, if your order defect rate is at or above 1%, you will likely lose your Amazon seller badge. As soon as your defect rate goes above 1%, Amazon would remove your brand and listings from the Buy Box, except you are listed with Fulfillment above Amazon.
Do not panic. The situation is redeemable. Amazon would give you 2 weeks to remedy the situation. To do this, you would have to respond with a plan to resolve this problem. A good thing to do is to look into your buyers’ negative comments and experiences to ascertain a common negative trend. Most times, the problems with all negative experiences are similar, and you can pinpoint the problem.
Failing to respond to negative reviews leads to low conversion rates, which would affect your brand reputation. Consequently, you would drop drastically in the SEO rankings of your product category.
How To Improve Your Defect Rate
- Reply to all A-to-Z claims and negative reviews. Since negative feedbacks and A-to-Z claims usually have a critical impact on your defect rate, you do yourself a lot of good by responding quickly to them. Find out why such claims and feedbacks have been made, and try as much as possible to solve such problems. All these are better done before the end of the month when Amazon calculates your order defect rate.
- Prepare for holidays’ late-shipment. Even Amazon best sellers risk an above 1% order defect rate due to late shipments during the busy holiday season. To regulate your order intakes, use the Amazon holiday mode to set reasonable quantities to prevent overselling. The holiday mode also allows you to pull your listings once it gets closer to the holidays. You could set a cutoff date for the latest you can ship the product without it arriving past the holidays.
- Review and monitor your listings. This is where most sellers default. You want to make sure you check all the information and stock of your listings to ensure that they are accurate. Information like photos and product descriptions should be up-to-date to avoid negative feedback. You should also monitor the reviews of your listings to ascertain common positives and negatives, which would help you improve the quality of your products and customer experience.
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Defective order rates are the basis of numerous shipping issues on Amazon. You want to be proactive in fixing such issues. Remember, customer satisfaction is key to minimizing shipping issues and maintaining a high SEO ranking.
