What is Amazon product listing and why is its optimization important?
An Amazon product listing or product page tells customers all they need to know about a given product. It features images, and videos of the products, product descriptions, and offers customer reviews from those who have already purchased them.
Amazon product listing optimization is the process of optimizing your listings to increase traffic and conversion. It is one of the most crucial tactics to keep your product on top. For you to be successful, you must succeed in this area and make sure all areas are accounted for from product title, description, reviews (which should have a significant number), advertising strategy, and visibility through keywords and other means.
Amazon product listing optimization is key to creating a personalized and memorable experience for online shoppers. Not to mention, more than 353 million items are sold on Amazon, which can create near-endless competition in the Amazon Marketplace. Therefore, even if you have a top-notch item to sell, you won’t be able to generate sales if customers can’t find your product among a sea of competitors. Optimizing these listings ensures that shoppers will be able to easily locate or search for those products!
Optimizing your Amazon product listing also ensures consistency across branding, messaging, reviews, and ratings – while simultaneously increasing visibility on Amazon’s search engine results page.
Related Post: To know more about Amazon Listing Hijacking & How to Prevent it? Click here
Introduction to Amazon’s A9 Algorithm
A9 is the name of a search engine algorithm that Amazon developed to power its product searches. It’s been around for about two years and has grown with age, becoming more complex over time.
A9.com, a subsidiary of Amazon, develops the company’s search engine advertising technology. However, it is not a functioning brand anymore.
The Amazon A9 algorithm is a powerful aspect for sellers to consider finding their way up the rankings. It is a search methodology that quickly reads and analyzes all the data on the marketplace to provide you with some of the best possible product choices. This AI-based framework ranks products with relevant matches for a customer’s query at the top of its results page. One principle it follows is relevancy: to rank higher, one must optimize their listings for SEO and make sure they have strong relevance when customers are searching.
The Amazon ranking algorithm adapts to the search patterns of its customers, displaying what they are looking for most. The structured data in their catalog allows them to combine different relevant features and displays search results tailored specifically for individual shoppers. The algorithm also learns from its former search patterns and adapts to display important results to its customers.
Factors that determine A9 Algorithm
Although it’s hard to find information on how exactly their A9 algorithm works, we have identified various factors that play into the success of your conversions and sales of product listings. These aspects are:
1
Parent-Child Products
Amazon’s built-in parent/child product functionality is a great way to display variations of the same products as opposed to displaying them with different listings. This means that you can expect your customer to find the products on a single page. Variation themes include color/name, size/count, and scent, among others! For example, identical t-shirts which vary only by their color; lipstick available in various shades; etc. With Amazon’s ranking system, products with multiple options in their listing tend to rank higher than those without.
Another benefit of doing this includes higher ranking chances on product searches due to multiple options being shown. With customers staying in the same place and viewing all other products together, there’s an increased chance they will make a purchase!
2
Text-Match Relevance
Relevancy is what shapes the content of a product listing. It’s like an intrinsic ranking system that factors in keywords, descriptions, and even bullet points to calculate how “relevant” your items are for any given search term or keyword.
The relevancy of the content is a vital factor in rankings. The better it matches, the higher up on the list you’ll see them! Creative titles and keyword-rich descriptions are important for getting your listing to rank high – but make sure they’re engaging too.
3
Customize your product
Completely customize the product however you want. You can look at customer reviews on competing products and pay attention to what issues people have with their purchases — these are fantastic cues. You can then assess how to make your product even better than the top-selling brands.
With this sales method, you can be strategic, figure out ways to improve the product and beat what already exists in the marketplace. Simply placing a logo on a product isn’t enough — here’s where you can work with your supplier and graphic designer to make your product stand out. If you sell something that looks the same as every other product on Amazon, it will be hard to compete.
4
Sales Velocity
This is another significant factor that the A9 algorithm considers while determining the product rankings. To keep the marketplace competitive, it compares the seller’s transactions and dollar amounts with their competitors and ranks them accordingly. The seller with the highest sales velocity wins out.
Amazon calculates both dollar volume (the amount) and quantity of items per transaction (number). Both are important factors taken into consideration to determine who earns top rankings on their site.
5
No competing for the Buy Box
If you’re reselling other brands’ products on Amazon, you are likely competing for the Buy Box with other marketplace sellers. If your offer is not in the Buy Box when a customer makes a purchase, that sale will not go to you.
With private label, you will be the only seller on the listing, and you will own 100% of the Buy Box.
Stock Availability
Ever wondered why your Amazon product listings disappear from the top rankings? Well, the algorithm that ranks your listing takes into account whether an item is in stock. If there’s no availability for a product, then chances are your ranking will be downgraded and customers won’t find your products. On the other hand, running out of stock negatively impacts your Amazon account health too.
Running low on inventory also negatively impacts your seller performance rating which eventually leads to lower sale volume–so don’t wait any longer to restock those shelves!
Find a supplier
After you find the perfect product to sell on Amazon, you need to find a supplier to manufacture the product. The best way to do this is to search on Alibaba or use Jungle Scout’s Supplier Database.
Contact a few different suppliers to see who can offer you the best quality product at a reasonable price. Once you agree on the terms, you can place your order and arrange to ship it to an Amazon FBA fulfillment center.
Pricing
A9 is a tricky algorithm. Besides displaying the top-selling and relevant products, it also checks if a product has been priced appropriately. It looks at the best price and looks at how well your amazon product listing has been represented. So, try to balance these aspects.
FBA
The FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) is one of the most valuable resources for sellers. The fulfillment-by-Amazon program allows merchants who use their services to stock their products at all or some of Amazon’s warehouses within its geographical proximity. This produces two benefits:
A Featured Merchant Status which increases exposure on The Search Page.
An Increased Possibility To Win The Buy Box.
This, in turn, increases your sales velocity and improves conversion rates as FBA has plenty of benefits. Some of them are easy to return policy, shorter delivery dates, accountability, etc.
Advertising
Sales velocity is yet another most vital factor that Amazon’s A9 search algorithm looks for. But the question is how to increase your sales velocity? Well, the answer is through “advertising.” Even a few dollars allotted for advertising can do a big deed in driving visitors to your product listings. And if the product is impressive enough, you get to generate more sales.
Customer Reviews
Undeniably, reviews play a key role in enhancing overall sales. Positive ratings and reviews from customers help the A9 algorithm to determine whether buyers are engaging positively or not. To outshine your competitors with this part of the marketing strategy, create an incredible customer experience for visitors browsing through your listings. Engage them by providing answers to them in the Q&A section of your product listings. Attempt for favorable and good reviews while mitigating and minimizing the negative feedback.
High-Resolution Images
Images are everything in an online marketplace where buyers cannot interact with the product physically. Bright, clear, high-quality pictures of a product enhance conversion rates and appeal to Amazon’s A9 algorithm so your listing ranks higher on search results pages. Upload as many as acceptable images, taken from all angles, as this appeases the A9 algorithm to boost rankings, as well as shoppers to provide them with a wide selection of views before they buy. AI photo editor tools can greatly improve the visual appeal of your Amazon product listing.
Amazon’s recommendation is to have at least 1280 pixels on the longest side. Ideally, you should go for ultra-HD images that have 2560 pixels (or more) on the longest side. You can also try images with 3D rendering or an AI image generator which instantly create unique images that fit your brand aesthetic. These images give authentic appeal to your visitors.
Promotions
There are many ways to boost sales velocity and increase conversions, but promotions can provide a quick bump in sales. However, it’s not a long-term strategy. Discounting your product may provide you with an immediate boost in sales and conversions, but you should be very careful while offering them as discounts often have negative effects on rankings. There are many others more important, more sustainable “A9” factors to focus on – such as your text match relevancy and product availability.
Amazon A+ Content
Amazon says that A+ content helps increase the overall sales of a product by 3 – 10% on average. The increase is because buyers have higher customer satisfaction with products when they know more about them.
A study performed by MediaMind, where they analyzed 24,000 websites, which experienced about 12 billion impressions during July & December and discovered that multimedia content helped boost impressions by 3x.
When it comes to Amazon product listing, there are six elements associated with it. Be it a private label or retail arbitrage, these aspects are important to understand as a third-party seller:
Product Image
Product Title
Product Description
Product Features
Product Ratings
Product Reviews
Brand and Manufacturer
The benefits of including the brand name when listing on Amazon are many. Besides coming up in filter results, customers will also search for your product by specific brands and manufacturers to find what they’re looking for much more quickly than if you didn’t include it.
Amazon does not show products that do not mention a manufacturer or brand. Therefore, for the ultimate success of your product, make sure to include a mention of your brand or manufacturer. This will help you get on Amazon’s radar and ensure that customers searching for products like yours can find them effortlessly!
Make sure to follow the guidelines for every element related to your product listings, followed by optimizing and improving them to make them convert. This helps you outrank your competitors, add value, and increase your customer base.
Category
A customer that wants to purchase a product in the same category may not find you if your listing is too broad. When adding information about products, make sure you list them under their most specific category possible for them to locate your product listings effortlessly.
Related Post: How To Use Amazon Product Category Tree To Optimize Listings.
How did we ensure the best Amazon Product Listing Optimization?
What does it take to have a top-performing listing? At SellerApp, we found that out by comparing two listings, one of which had well-optimized features and the other did not. With our set of amazon tools, we not only figured them out but also will explain the key tricks to optimize to improve your rankings.
So what did we do? We took one product listing from Amazon and analyzed how it performed so well. Here’s what we discovered:
There are nine sets of parameters that can break or boost the process of Amazon Product listing optimization. They are:
Listing quality
Keywords they used
Number of images they used
ASIN index
Number of characters used in the product title
The way bullet points were featured
The way the product was described
Number of reviews and ratings it had
Whether it was Fulfilled by Amazon or not
Let’s dive deeper into each parameter and see what made it so successful.
How To Optimize Your Amazon Product Listings?
By ranking higher in Amazon search results, you can increase your sales and add to the bottom line. But how do we rank high? There are many factors that go into a successful product listing such as optimizing for keywords, having quality photos with good lighting, writing an optimized title & description, and more! Let’s dive deeper into some of these important aspects, so you can have all the tools necessary to succeed on this platform.
When we talk about “optimization,” we stress two things here:
Optimized with potential keywords to help rank for search terms that buyers search for.
Optimized with the right set of images, title, and description to generate greater conversion rates.
Now, what most sellers tend to forget is the concept behind Amazon’s A9 algorithm. Even though you have an incredible listing that is well optimized for Amazon, if a buyer feels that “it isn’t good,” then he or she is not going to buy it. This is obvious.
It isn’t just about an optimized product listing. It is also about your product’s quality, its features, and what customers think about it. Everything has to come together to make your listing successful.
When you say “optimization,” it is not only about accomplishing higher rankings on Amazon’s search results. It is also about building a better and rewarding product overall.
Now, before you could actually get into the actual “optimization,” there is an important step that you need to do, which is keyword research.
First, perform a keyword research
Though you have Google Keyword Planner handy, it is best to have a keyword tool that only gives the stats of what buyers are searching on Amazon’s search box. Though this is completely your freedom of what you want to go with, our “keyword research” feature can discover some top-searched keywords on Amazon in no time.
You can search for potential keywords based on the product that you are selling. Type the product category or product that you are selling on Amazon.
Perform Keyword Research. You will get a detailed list of keywords associated with what you have typed and its stats.
You can even track a few related products if you want to. The tool is that simple. It also allows you to search for long-tail keywords, and it’s difficult to rank on Amazon. Once you decided what keywords you want to target, the next step is to optimize your listing.
Amazon Product Listing Optimization
Here is a list of parameters you must focus on to optimize your product listing. Make sure to follow them diligently and watch your ranking skyrocket in no time.
Number of Product Images
Make sure that your product images are clear and high quality to help you convert. But how many should you include? You need a strategy for your product images and 62% of the top listings tend to have at least 5 or 8. According to SellerApp’s findings, the sweet spot is 6 images.
This was the product listing we took from Amazon and did a complete analysis on its images first.
Why is this considered the best Amazon product listing example?
This product generates an estimated sale of 43 to 61 on a daily basis, with a decent revenue. Though multiple factors call for it, the product image is one of them. You can evaluate your Amazon product image quality using the following criteria:
Close-up and clear shots of the images
Images shouldn’t be blurred
The product should be well lit and properly focused
The product must be easily recognizable
The product should occupy 80% of the space provided
Besides providing quality images, include as many pictures as possible. Also, note that many product categories let you include swatch & alternate images. Though Amazon allows you to upload 9 images, we recommend you to stay around 5 – 6.
Ensure that the main pictures are on a clear, white background. However, the background for others can be clean and simple. You can also use lifestyle images to provide a better understanding of the product and its features. Follow these dos and don’ts for an optimum product image for your product listing –
Do:
Every image should be clicked in bright white light.
Focus the product in the center.
The main image should only include the main product. It shouldn’t have accessories, boxes, or other items with it.
Keep the image background white.
Make sure that the image is large enough to allow the zoom function to work.
Include a tagline to explain the durability of the product.
Include an infographic about the product’s benefits to help generate more sales.
Make sure to use only the JPEG (.jpg) file format.
Keep the resolution 72 pixels per inch with a minimum size of 1000 pixels (for the longest side).
Don’t:
Include logos, texts, or watermarks on the images.
Show multiple pictures if the product is a multipack.
Include background on the main image. But it is okay if you are doing it for any other secondary image.
Show various views of a product in the main image.
Include accessories and other things that you are not selling with your product.
Product Title
There is a correlation between the length of your product’s title and how well it sells. We analyzed our sales data to see what words are most effective in generating interest for products over others. Surprisingly, there was an established relationship between these two factors! What does this mean? Amazon will take into account those first five words when creating URLs which means they can be more relevant if you have them at the beginning- especially since that part makes up about 80% of titles on search engine results pages (SERPs).
The “canonical URL” is generated by taking each word from its corresponding listing’s title with a few exceptions: stop words such as “a,” “and,” etc.
How to ensure your product title is up to the mark?
Follow these simple tips to optimize your product listing title-
Do’s
Your listing should contain at least 80 characters. For a better user experience, make sure the character limit ranges from 100-150 characters.
Include potential keywords in the title but use dashes (-) or pipes (|) to break the keywords. This improves readability and doesn’t look confusing.
Include color, model number, series, and quantity (if required).
If the product is a multi pack. Mention the quantity. Example: 15-pack, set of 5, etc.
Integrate your keywords. Make sure to use relevant keywords to ensure your listing appears before relevant leads.
Address user intent. Your product title should align with the type of audience you are catering to.
Considering that the amazon product title character limit is 200, don’t waste your valuable space adding irrelevant words.
Capitalize the first letter of each word in your product title.
Use numeric values instead of spelling numbers out, for example, 7 instead of seven.
Spell out measurements such as pound, inch, feet, etc.
Don’ts
Capitalize all the words in the title.
Include particular details of your listing. Example: Free shipping.
Include subjective adjectives like “fantastic, awesome, great, etc.”
Use special characters or HTML tags.
Include too much information. Do not overstuff with keywords.
Look at the example below to have a more vivid understanding of how you must frame your product title.
Hence, it is vital to take some time to work on the titles because it is one of the crucial factors that decide its CTR (Click-through Rate) on the results page.
