Seller ratings is a topic of constant trepidation for most online sellers. With over 3 lakh registered sellers on Snapdeal, a number which is slated to touch 5 lakh by the end of this year, it is vital for the online seller to stay ahead of the curve by maintaining a high rating. Firstly, it is important to understand that from a customer’s point of view, the only thing that separates one seller from another is the rating. Of course, there is the matter of pricing, but competitive pricing strategies should never be blindly applied to every situation – in fact, it has been observed that in the long run, they do more harm than good. Instead, it is better to focus more on keeping a high seller rating, since this number directly reflects in your sales.
The problem is that most of us don’t really understand exactly how seller ratings work – what factors do they take into account. Secondly, it does not seem worthwhile to look at seller ratings as some kind of a competition among sellers. The fact remains that the rating is not comparative, but absolute, in the sense that only your performance is taken into account while rating, and not your comparative performance. Therefore, there is no point getting bogged down by the number of registered sellers on the marketplace.
Finally, another key factor to understand about Snapdeal specifically is that it works via a pure marketplace model, as opposed to the inventory led models favoured by the likes of Flipkart and Amazon India. This means that Snapdeal only provides an online space for buyers and sellers to interact, as opposed to Flipkart and Amazon, which also act as sellers through initiatives like WS Retailers for Flipkart, and Cloudtail for Amazon. This also means that on a marketplace like Snapdeal, it is easier to find many sellers selling the same product, as opposed to other websites. This makes the seller rating all the more important. So what is the Snapdeal seller rating, and how do we maintain it?
Maintaining High Seller Ratings on Snapdeal
How are Seller Ratings Calculated?
On Snapdeal, your seller rating comes down to a few basic factors. The two most important parameters that a Snapdeal seller needs to keep into account are –
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Product Quality Parameters
This includes the actual quality of the product that you are selling, its potential defects, flaws, etc. Issues like receiving faulty or fake, duplicate items, or receiving items that do not match the product description or photograph posted on the website, etc. affect this parameter of your seller ratings.
Order fulfilment factors are essentially issues about your service as a seller, rather than the product itself. This includes your response time and communication channels, speed of delivery, returns policy, packaging, etc. Your interaction with the customer on social media is another important factor that goes into this parameter.
On Snapdeal, the ratings are refreshed on a daily basis. Your performance in the previous 90 days is considered while evaluating the ratings. Only the following orders are considered for ratings:
- All delivered orders.
- All non-shipped orders which were out of stock or customer cancellation after the expected date of delivery.
- All returns.
How to Rectify Seller Ratings?
Now that we know a little about how ratings are calculated, we can isolate the areas of concern in our business and look at them closely to check for bottlenecks. Issues related to product quality are, in some sense, unavoidable. At the same time, it is important to focus on how one treats such an issue because the quality of your service after the product related issue is found, also matters.
Therefore, the key things to succeed in maintaining a strong seller rating are to make sure that you deliver the product on time and to keep the customer in the loop. Product returns are also counted when it comes to seller ratings, so it is important to have a clear and sophisticated returns policy. The idea is that every faulty product will inevitably spoil your rating. But you can make it up by providing good customer service.
To know more about seller ratings or anything related to ecommerce in general, get in touch with Browntape. We are India’s leading ecommerce experts, and we are always happy to help!
