Creating a Great Amazon Listing
Build a page that customers love...
Amazon PDPs (product detail pages) are where the rubber meets the road. This is where a customer will make the decision to purchase your product. Said differently, this is your (digital) shelf space and you need to make your item irresistible. There is no other way to say it, your product detail pages are the most important piece of real estate in your Amazon universe.
Breaking Down the Components of a PDP
Now you might own the inventory, have a trademark on the brand, and it might be “your listing”, but the page undoubtedly belongs to Amazon. In order to create a high converting listing, we’ll need to understand what zones within the page are under our control.
The graphic below shows the on-page inventory available each of 4 distinct groups. 1: Brand Owned Space where you can tell the story of your product, articulate a value prop and put your best foot forward. 2: Algorithm Owned Space which is primarily recommended product that Amazon deems to be relevant for the customer. It’s beyond frustrating that Amazon will drive customers off of your detail page, but those are the breaks. 3: Consumer Owned Space which is primarily ratings and reviews. Ratings are important, but reviews are the secret sauce and come typically contain text and video of images of your product. Not much can sink an item faster than a popular upvoted negative review. 4: Advertisements: This is where other brands can come in and conquest against your product. The jungle is fierce and as Omar Little said- “The game is out there and it’s either play, or get played”.
NOTE: Yes, I used to do consulting and this image was pulled from an old deck, i’m not trying to reinvent the wheel here.
Brand Owned Components of a Listing
For the purposes of this post, we’ll be outlining the key areas of focus within the brand owned space. I’ll be detailing the key areas that we will need to address within the PDP. Since nothing teaches quite like real world examples we will be using the listing for GearLight LED Headlamp Flashlight S500 [2 Pack] - Running, Camping, and Outdoor Headlight Headlamps as a guide for our review.
Product Title: Two major things to know about a product title. 1 - The title is the first piece of content a customer will see when researching their purchase, so you need to make it count. 2 - Titles are a major ranking factor for Amazon’s organic search algorithm. A good title gives customers enough information to click on your listing in the search results page and contains high-velocity keywords to help support relevancy in organic search. A tactical best practices are listed below.
Length: Amazon strongly recommends 200 characters or less; remember that you will be cut off at 80 characters on mobile web and app.
Numbers: Use numerals and spell out units of measurement.
Information: Include relevant information such as type, size, color, and do not use any subjective commentary (things like ‘best’ ‘cheapest’, etc. as this can lead to a suppression).
Capitalization: First letter of each word only. DO NOT USE ALL CAPS. I know that it is common, but once you are caught by a bot your listing will be suppressed until the title is adjusted.
Symbols: Do not use any symbols, they are always misread by the bots.
Now let’s take a look at the title above. Does it check all of the boxes? Let’s find out…length is inline at 154 characters and clearly communicates ‘what it is’ in a mobile friendly manner. The title also explains use cases and functional benefits of the item which are critically important. No issues with capitalization or symbols — this checks all of the boxes, but we aren’t yet done. What about SEO? are they targeting the right keywords?
As the term ‘headlamp’ is the 2,548 most searched term on Amazon and found prominently in title definitely checks. This checks the the SEO Box.
Product Bullets: Also known as ‘Key Features’, is the bullet point section where you are going to communicate the value proposition of the item. Is it organic? Do you have a lifetime warranty? Is it made in the USA? this is where you will put the most important aspects of your item. These are the attributes and features of your product that will make a customer say yes and pull the trigger to purchase. Want more best practices? here you go…
Length: Keep it tight, less than 200 words per bullet.
Content: Focus on what customers need to know, if you can phrase it in a SEO friendly manner, that’s great. But this is about customers.
Voice: Keep it consistent with your brand. If you are selling plush pillows, maybe lay off the language, Chad.
Capitalization: First letter of each sentence, that’s it.
Format: List them in priority order.
Looking at their bullets, they (generally) pass the style guide test as the bullets are succinct, avoid all caps and do not have symbols that would cause an issue. The one area where they could improve is to update the leading words within the bullets i.e change from “Super Bright & Long-lasting” to “Super bright & long-lasting”. Not a deal breaker, but if you can remove any risk of a violation, you should.
More importantly, the bullets are in priority order. The most important aspects of a headlamp are the quality and run time of the headlight, and they address these issues in the first bullet. As customers read though the rest of the bullets the bullets, they are continually educated on the benefits, features and attributes of the product(light weight and comfortable, weather and shock resistant) which help to tell a story and communicate the value that the product is providing.
Again, let’s do an SEO check, this time using Helium 10. I ran a report to show all of the keywords where the listing (the GearLight Headlamp) is in a top 4 organic positions. I then sorted by search frequency, and needless to say, they have all of they major keywords covered.
NOTE: You will see the “Amazon Choice” badge all over the place. The AC badge is done at the keyword level and is assigned to a given ASIN. While Amazon does not give the specifics on how to earn the badge, it is a combination of star rating, price, conversion rate and customer satisfaction metrics. You cannot pay for this badge, but if you earn the Amazon Choice badge for a top keyword, you will see a 20%+ increase in sales for that keyword immediately (this is not an aggregate 20% increase in sale)..
Product Images: You will need a few different types of images. No matter what other images you want to show on your listing page, you will need to start with a front facing image of your product on a while background (1600x1600 in size). This is non-negotiable and a base-line requirements for Amazon. Once you have the image in place, you’ll need to get creative and figure out two things simultaneously. 1 - what makes your product unique and worth purchasing and 2 - how to communicate that message via images. There are countless ways to accomplish this, but the most effective recent trend has been to use icons to represent your value props. The benefit of icons is that you can quickly communicate a vast amount of information with minimal text. Other things to consider…
Include lifestyle images and examples of people using your product.
Try and communicate the information outlined in the bullets since most people don’t (can’t?) read.
Communicate the qualities of the product (size, shape, color, etc.).
Optimize for mobile by using larger text or captions.
As we dive into the product images we are again impressed with the quality of the product tiles. The imagery clearly communicates the value of the items and reinforces the product bullets, and they accomplish this through easily scannable pictures. Tile 3 is a great example of using icons as the image communicate 4 separate functions within 1 image. Lastly, the tiles are able to showcase the product within contextually relevant situations such as fixing a circuit breaker or camping in your tent which give customers the ability to envision themselves using the product.
A+ Content: Marketing is about story telling and A+ content is where you can tell your product’s story in a big way. A+ content is flexible and you are only limited by your imagination….but most importantly, it is able to be A/B tested to ensure that customers are positively responding to the creative.
NOTE: A+ content is only open to accounts that are enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry. That is a topic for another day and will be covering in forthcoming posts.
Say it with images, so consumers can quickly glance and get the info they need.
But also with words for those customers who want additional details.
Remember that A+ content is part of BRAND Registry so think about how you can communicate the values and essence of your brand. This can be a great area to expose and cross sell other items.
This is best in class A+ Content, full stop. The imagery is in line with the brand, each of the tiles has a short and clear value prop. These digestible pieces of content help to provide customers with additional reasons to believe and the confidence to make a purchase. Where this content goes next level is with the chart at the bottom. The comparison chart will help to drive exposure, traffic and ultimately cross sell into other items within the portfolio. Bonus points - this is optimized for mobile.
Product Descriptions: Product Descriptions are the last thing a consumers (might) read (see below) on your PDP. While a well written description can still be an important part of conversion process, the big opportunity here is to sneak in all of the terms that you may have missed in your title and bullets into Amazon’s search algorithm. Here a few tips…
Describe any and all major product features.
Include accurate dimensions.
Use complete sentences with correct grammar, punctuation, and spelling.
Jam in any terms that you need to have from an SEO perspective (the fancy term is ‘keyword stuffing’) that aren’t found in our title or bullets — this is where you serve the algorithm over your customer.
Want a fun fact? the product description is replaced on the PDP whenever you load A+ Content. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t enter this information into Seller Central (the UI for Amazon Sellers) — it’s still indexed and is crucial that you do for SEO purposes. Here is an example of what it a product description looks like…
Learning how to build and optimize your listings will take time, but it will be worth it! The bad news…there are more than 353 million listings globally on Amazon, the good news is that most of them aren’t very good. Use the guide above to start building awesome listings. And remember this is a starting point, not an end destination. Most importantly, don’t give up — I’ll be guiding you through how to change, improve and optimize your listings to maximize every click to your page.
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