Amazon products. How to create a correct listing - a guide.

30 Dec 2018

Acquiring customers for our products in the sea of Amazon offers
Acquiring customers for our products in the sea of Amazon offers is quite a challenge. First, we need to be found, and our products must be visible. When a customer finds and clicks on our product, how that product is presented to them and how convincing and encouraging it is, is the key to sales.

We have noticed that many Amazon sellers devote a lot of time and resources to attracting customers to their product through campaigns, promotional activities, and marketing, however, they do not spend as much time on the product descriptions. This is a mistake. Investing time in describing the product and creating a listing is a one-time effort and is key to effective sales. Of course, you need to optimize your listing all the time, but the most important thing is to do it right from the start. Below we will present a step-by-step guide on how to properly create an Amazon listing.

Know your customer
Find out who your customers are. Unfortunately, the fact that you know your product very well and are convinced of its value does not mean that your customers will see it that way immediately. You need to find out who your customers are, what they are looking for, what context they have, what they pay attention to, what encourages them to buy, and what product features may raise doubts. How to gather such information? There are several ways:

  • Benchmark products – find similar products to yours in the target Amazon market and analyze them in terms of how they communicate their products, what features they emphasize, how their description is structured, what photos they have, and what bullet points they include.

  • Customer reviews – read product reviews from customers who have purchased the product and find out what they think about it and what they didn't like. This is a treasure trove of knowledge.

  • Forums, blogs, and Facebook – check what customers are saying about the category, products, what they are looking for, what products they have bought, what they paid attention to, what they value, and what they don't.

  • Customer experiences – use Google and YouTube to find out how customers use the products you want to offer. What applications do they use them for, what do they pay attention to?

  • Context – using Google and Amazon tools, gather as much information as possible about your customers' location, gender, age, the model in which they purchased their product, the average cost they allocated for the purchase, etc.

Rely on your experience
An important element is also your own experience as a buyer. Before you start creating a product listing, put yourself in the shoes of an Amazon customer in that marketplace and try to find products that you would buy yourself. After entering a search phrase, add 3–5 products to your cart without spending more than 10 minutes on it.

Consider:

  • Why did you click on the names of those products that you were looking at?

  • What features of the individual products caught your attention?

  • Why did you ultimately decide to purchase those particular 3–5 products?

Gather all the above data into one document, read it, organize it into sections regarding the product itself and its features, as well as the customer's experiences.

Sleep on it and draw conclusions on how you will communicate your products and what USPs you will focus on.

Amazon keywords
As the name suggests, this is a key element of the description :)

Conduct thorough research on what search terms your product should appear in the results. What keywords do competing products achieve the best positions with and how often do individual keywords appear in search results? There are many tools available for searching product listing keywords. Find popular products (preferably those in the top 100 of their category) and check which keywords appear most frequently in their names and descriptions.

Do you have the above data collected? You can get started on creating the listing.

Amazon product name
The primary task of the product name is, first of all, to match it to the category so that it is easily indexed and searched, and to convince the customer to click on the product.

The product name will be read by Amazon robots and our customers, so it is necessary to balance the requirements of both.

The most important guidelines for the product name (aka Title) are:

  • Don't pack all keywords into your product name

    Overusing keywords in descriptions can be penalized by Amazon and may also lower the CTR of your listing.

    Focus on 2–3 keywords that should be in your product description.

  • Name sequence

    Amazon clearly states in the guidelines of its latest A9 algorithm how the sequence of the description should look:

    PRODUCT BRAND + MODEL (NAME OR SYMBOL) + NAME OF THE PRODUCT ITSELF + PRODUCT TYPE + QUANTITY + COLOUR / PRODUCT VARIATION

  • Name length

    The length of the description depends on the category and may be limited in some. Recommended 120–150 characters with spaces. The system can accept longer (even >200), but this risks exclusion from search ('suppressed from search and browse').

    The name should comply with Amazon's guidelines, contain key information and several keywords, but most importantly, be customer-friendly and encourage clicking.

    When the user enters the listing, the next elements (photos, bullet points, price, description) should turn them into a buyer.

Bullet points
Create bullet points that will convince the user to purchase. Write in a language of benefits, include the most important features and answers to potential customer questions. Stick to the following guidelines:

  • Be specific. Write clearly and to the point – this is the place for hard facts.

  • Be concise and informative. Use 5 points; each should focus on one advantage/feature.

    Typically to ~100 characters; in some categories, the limit is 200–500 characters.

    The system can accept more (Professional account), but usually indexes the first ~100 characters; excessively long entries risk 'Non Compliance'.

  • Write directly to the customer. Explain why a particular feature is important and what distinguishes your product.

  • Address the customer's needs. Show what problem the product solves.

  • It's best to start point 1–2 with keywords in UPPERCASE, and after the colon expand the idea.

  • Write in sentence fragments, without a period at the end.

Product description
This is the place to elaborate on information: specifications, usage, features and benefits – to ultimately convince to purchase.

The limit is about 2000 bytes (~300 words). In the narrative, answer questions such as:

  • Why this one and not another?

  • Why was it created this way and not otherwise?

  • What problems will it solve?

  • What are its advantages?

  • What makes it stand out?

Be persuasive but not pushy. If the customer scrolled down to the description, you have initially piqued their interest – now reinforce their choice and dispel doubts.

Contact and community
If you have additional questions or doubts – write to us, add a question in the comments below the entry – we will be happy to answer, and perhaps this information will help other sellers.

We are happy to share knowledge within the Go2Market Community – become an active member.

Happy Selling
Go2Market Crew