Amazon 101: Intro to A+ Content
Premium Content to Elevate your Product Detail Page
Introduction: What is A+ Content?
A+ content is a free premium content for brand owners1 and manufacturers that is meant to improve conversions by highlight the benefits and features of your listing through rich images, charts, product copy, and videos.
You can find this content ~2/3 of the way down on an Amazon Product Detail Page and functions as a replacement for the product description. Below is the A+ content that Bulletproof Coffee uses on their original coffee listing.
Why is this a great example of A+ content — because it tells a story about the brand and articulates the strongest points of differentiation for the product. It’s critical to remember that A+ content is is not just sexy marketing creative; Amazon has released data that shows ASINs with A+ content can improve conversion by as much as 13%. Customers are now expecting brands to have this type content as part of a shopping journey and routinely rely on this information to feel comfortable enough to make a purchase.
What Makes Great A+ Content
When developing great A+ content you must keep two themes in the front of your mind. First, it must be “RED” and second must clearly community why a customer should buy this listing.
What is RED?
RED is a marketing framework developed by Collider Labs for Yum! Brands that stands for Relevant, Easy and Distinctive.
Relevant: Is the creative showing the product in a manner that is culturally, socially and/or functionally relevant?
Easy: Is it easy to find, easy to understand, and easy to engage?
Distinctiveness: Is this creative unique to your brand, hard to imitate, and repeatable over time?
Focusing on Unique Value Propositions
A value proposition is “an innovation, service, or feature intended to make a company or product attractive to customers", or said in plain English, the reasons why a customer should buy your item over the competition’s.
When looking to develop your value props, I find that using a VRIO framework helps to identify the strongest points of differentiation for the customer.
Valuable: What specific attributes are valuable to a customer?
Rare: Is this attribute uncommon in the market?
Imitate: Are competitors able to easily imitate this attribute?
Organized for Value: Are you able to organize the message and communicate this to a customer so they can easily understand the inherent value of the item?
If you can build your A+ to check the RED and VRIO boxes then you should have a high degree of confidence that customers will positively engage with the content and remember the creative!
How to Develop A+ Content
There are a few component that need to come together when developing A+ content. The first component is creative which we gave you a frame for development above. Creative should be fresh and recognizable, feature your product in contextually relevant and be easy to understand.
The second component of A+ content is deciding on which modules to use within Seller Central. Amazon allows you to use up to 5 of the enhanced content modules to highlight the functional benefits of your item. The available options from which you can build your A+ content are shown below.
The only required module that you need to use is the “Standard’ Company Logo”, once that is loaded you are then able to customize the look, feel and configuration of the content as you see fit.
You can mix larger format placements with high-impact piece of creative that highlight your product. This format is great to make a statement about the listing, can be delivered as either static image or in video format.
You can then mix the bold branded creative with more dense and complex modules that work to show the intricate details of the product. This format can be really effective when there are intricate details that need to be explained, or contextual scenarios to show more cultural relevance for your listing.
The other significant type of module that can be use is a comparison chart. These charts are a great way to show the difference between similar items within your assortment in a visually digestible format. An added benefit of this format is the ability to drive traffic into other items of your brand which can lead to upselling and basket building opportunities.
Tips for Making Great A+ Content
Now that you know how to build A+ Content and understand that you need to keep it RED, below are a few final tips on how to ensure that you make the most out of your A+ content.
Sizing & Resolution: Ensure that your images are the proper size for each module and with the proper resolution. Remember that most traffic on Amazon is mobile and you will need high-quality images to render properly.
Proofread: Nothing will erode customer trust than a brand that launches content filled with spelling and grammar issues.
Leverage Banners: Banners can be a great tool to visually grab a customer’s attention and seamlessly break up the creative.
Minimize Text: Tell your story with pictures, not words.
Creative Consistency: Ensure that your creative is consistent — and RED to minimize disruption and customer confusion.
In Conclusion
At this point A+ content is table stakes for any brand that wants to be taken seriously on Amazon. Take you time to really plan out the messages that you want to communicate to your customers, and when you launch remember to ensure that your creative is Relevant, Easy, and Distinctive.
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As a seller, you must be enrolled in Brand Registry to implement A+ Content.