When you’re selling on Amazon, your listing is your frontline salesman. It must convince as many customers as possible to buy your product. Even if you’re selling a fabulous product, your potential customers won’t know it if your listing doesn’t prove it.
Many Amazon listings fail due to poor visibility. They’re simply not showing up high enough in searches. Because 26% of customers will choose the first result from their search (in addition to the many who choose the second and third results,) you need a solid listing that ranks high for relevant search terms and convinces your leads to become paying customers.
Even listings that perform well do even better once they’re updated and optimized for Amazon’s algorithm.
Here are three tips for updating and optimizing your listing to attract customers and sell more products.
Optimize your Amazon Listing for Keywords
Keyword optimization ensures your listing has a good chance of showing up first in relevant searches. But some sellers don’t bother doing keyword research, relying on their own gut feelings about which words customers will use to describe their product. Even those that do conduct keyword research may not fully understand how best optimization is achieved.
A solid, fully-optimized listing includes the following:
- Most relevant keywords in the first part of the listing title
- Keywords in the bullet points (one per bullet point is a good rule of thumb)
- As many keywords into the product description (as makes sense)
- Keywords in the backend of the listing, which the customer doesn’t see, but Amazon uses in its search algorithm
Use keywords in all fields of your product listing from the most relevant keyword to the least relevant.
Like any part of Amazon sales, optimizing your keywords is not a one-and-done deal. The words people use to describe your items may change, and outdated keywords can affect your product listing performance. By researching and updating your keywords quarterly, you’ll be able to stay on top of any new trends before they have a chance to impact your sales negatively.
Get positive reviews
Because Amazon values customer feedback, customer reviews directly impact how your product shows up in Amazon’s search algorithm.
Most businesses struggle to get reviews. So if you feel like yelling every time someone says, “Get more customer reviews,” you’re not alone. Even so, a study done by Jungle Scout found that 79% of consumers looked at product reviews before buying a product.
It’s called social proof. And most of your potential customers will demand it before purchasing your product.
The best way to get a positive review is to have an amazing product that inspires customers to share their feelings with the world. But not every product inspires such excitement (i.e. a dustpan).
To solicit reviews, ask customers to review your product right after they’ve received it. A Review Automator tool like Sagemailer will automatically send review requests for all orders made in the past month so you don’t forget to request the review while your customer’s excitement is still fresh.
You can also provide detailed answers to consumer questions or respond to negative comments. By addressing issues immediately and offering to fix relevant problems, you will inspire confidence in potential customers that are researching your product.
Focus on benefits, not features
With just 200 characters in the title, five measly bullet points, and a 2000-character product description, you have a limited amount of space to sell your product.
In such a limited space, it’s important to emphasize the benefits of your product in addition to its features.
Take a product like woolen socks. One listing might have a bullet point describing the socks as “Made from 100% wool.” Okay, now the customer’s got the information he needs—these are 100% wool socks. But to convince the customer that these are the socks he wants to buy, write a bullet point like this: “Warm cozy socks made of 100% wool to keep your toes toasty in the winter.” That gives your customer a clear understanding of the benefit your woolen socks have to offer.
When it doesn’t work…
What if your listings are fully optimized as described above, but you’re still not showing up in search results?
Here are another two areas of improvement to consider:
- Amazon is a competitive marketplace. Your product and product listing need to outperform all your competitors and still be the lowest-priced product so you retain the Amazon Buy Box . Analyzing your competitors’ listings and buying competitors’ products can help you find ways to make your product stand out even more.
- Be sure you’re not losing out due to low inventory. Whenever you work on driving traffic and sales to your listing, whether through optimization or through paid advertising, you must evaluate whether you have enough stock to handle the resulting uptick in orders. If you run out and your item is not available for a while, your listing’s optimization will suffer.
Just another step in the sales process
While investing time and effort into your Amazon listing does not guarantee immediate sales, it will likely improve your product performance. How well you succeed ultimately depends on multiple factors including your competition, the product demand and your other sales and advertising channels.
If you’d like specific guidance regarding your Amazon product listing, be in touch. We’ll help you optimize your listing for better search results and provide additional sales strategies for your Amazon eCommerce business.
