As a global leader in eCommerce with millions of products listed, it’s almost as easy to get lost on the Amazon marketplace as it is in the Amazonian rainforest.
With Amazon's range of own brand products constantly increasing, it’s becoming increasingly hard for outside names to bring their best cards to the table and win. That’s where we come in. With the help of Amazon expert and founder of Online Seller UK, Prabhat Shah, we’ve put together our top five seller optimisation tips aimed at increasing traffic and conversion rates for your products.
Fortunately for you, Amazon doesn’t change its algorithm half as much as other platforms, so these tips are worth remembering.
As a general rule, the more effort you put into your Amazon listings; the more you will get out of them. People rarely go to the Amazon marketplace to do product research, instead they are usually close to the point of purchase. Therefore our top 5 tips are centred around increasing visibility and encouraging customers to purchase from you rather than a competitor.
After clicking on your product, customers usually make a decision within seconds whether they want to continue with their purchase or return to search results. Ensuring your product images are up-to-scratch is therefore key to selling on an online marketplace, as these entice customers to stay on your page. You can do this by:
Likewise, product titles and descriptions are equally as important. To optimise these you should:
After listing your product, the next thing you should focus on is how to get initial sales. We suggest following the ‘loss leader’ approach whereby you start selling your product at a lower price than planned. This encourages people to make those initial sales, and once a more loyal customer base has been built the price can be raised. It’s important that you also:
As well as helping your product ranking, getting reviews gives your product a greater sense of credibility, which is essential for driving sales. The ideal situation is to have lots of reviews at a 4 or 5 star rating. One method of encouraging this to happen is by sending follow up emails to customers that have bought from you. This could either be automatically or after they have bought the same product from you a certain amount of times.
But according to Amazon guidelines, the email must not contain any marketing or promotional messages, have links to other websites, ask or incentivise positive reviews. Sending this kind of email will develop a customer relationship, which means customers will be more likely to leave a positive review and buy from you in the future. However, be aware that Amazon also automatically send out emails for product reviews and if you send out too many it may feel too spammy and consequently have a negative impact.
Our fourth tip concerns external marketing – that is, driving traffic to your products using websites other than Amazon. To do this you should begin by deciding which of your social media channels it makes sense to direct to the Amazon marketplace and take it from there. Many businesses tend to forget about this part, but directing customers to your products is never a bad thing, it is likely to result in more sales and therefore a higher product ranking on Amazon. Some examples of external marketing campaigns to drive customers to your products are:
Our final optimisation trick is to use sponsored adverts within the Amazon marketplace. As we’ve already mentioned, Amazon uses a pay per click model that allows sellers to promote their products within their search results. The result of this is that your product will get more impressions, and therefore conversions, than it would organically. There are two types of sponsored ad:
Why not schedule a call to discuss selling on the Amazon marketplace with one of our resident experts. Whether you're just starting out or looking to optimise your existing activities, we can help.