(If you missed them, check out our Amazon Opportunity post and the first part of our Accelerator Series Part 1: How to Sell on Amazon.com).
Once a company decides how they're going to sell products on Amazon.com, it's time to actually start selling.
Before we begin, we need to cover a few fundamentals:
The Amazon Marketplace is built around individual product sales performance. This means every product page a company creates has to be of the highest quality ‚ there is almost no brand equity on Amazon, especially if a product page converts poorly overtime due to unoptimized content. Amazon makes money when items sell, so if a company's products aren't selling their product position will suffer.
It's also important to note that Amazon's catalog is organized by assigning a unique number, called an ASIN number, to each product page. Products are organized into categories and are ranked over time by their conversion rate for various search terms compared to other items. The higher the conversion rate, the better a product page will be positioned for those specific search terms, improving item visibility and increasing sales.
Amazon Product Sections
Each product page has nine key content sections:
- Product Title
- Brand
- Resale Price
- Bullet Points
- Images
- Product Description
- Product Information
- Customer Questions & Answers
- Customer Reviews.
We'll focus our discussion on the Merchant Fulfillment and FBA sales methods because they give companies the most control over their product page. For these two sales methods, companies are able to submit content for all but the Customer Questions and Customer Reviews content sections. There are limitations and guidelines provided by Amazon for each content section, but the quality of the content largely falls on the company selling the product. Because Amazon takes a "boundaries" approach to their guidelines, where they set minimum requirements and maximum limitations, there is ample room to display quality content. In fact, the latitude companies have to create content is substantial enough to lead to very different customer experiences and can have a dramatic impact on sales.
Tips For Setting Up Your Product Page
Because each category can have unique requirements and limitations, I'll cover a few, key, universal principles that should always be considered when beginning to sell a product on Amazon:
- Product images are crucial. Companies should use all available image slots and should carefully consider Amazon's product image requirements.
- The first image is the most important image because it will appear on search results pages.
- Product titles should be clear and concise but not leave out any detail about product variation. For example, companies should use size, color, and quantity attributes in the product title:
- Ex: —Shoes— versus —Men's Brand X High Top Basketball Shoes ‚ Size 12 ‚ Black and Red ‚ one pair—
- All available bullet points should be used in order to provide customers with as much information about the product as possible. The same methodology and level of detail should be used for the Product Description‚ be clear and aim to answer any lingering questions a customer might have before they purchase.
- Product reviews are very important for the success of a product, if customers leave negative reviews and they seem to coalesce around a certain issue, consider the implications and seek to address the concern with product improvements or by setting better customer expectations with the content on your product page.
Summary
Product page quality is one of the most important factors in being successful on Amazon and cannot be overstated. From the moment a Product Page is created and an ASIN is assigned to the Product Page by Amazon, Amazon is tracking page performance. Whether companies like it or not, their product pages are either growing their search position or making them fall further behind their competition.
Are you thinking of selling or already selling on Amazon? Optimizing Amazon ecommerce efforts is a specialty of ours. Feel free to get in touch with any questions or concerns about Amazon Marketplace. It's a powerful tool when used strategically and we'd be happy to advise you on how to use it to your business' advantage.