7 steps to an Amazon listing that sells!
In addition to the product itself, an optimized listing is one of the most important factors for success on the Amazon sales platform. In a cut-throat market like the one we are experiencing in many industries today, listing is no longer just a necessity to sell. In a competitive market, listing is your opportunity to outperform the competition in your industry. Used correctly, an Amazon Listing offers almost unlimited possibilities. In addition to the presentation of your product, the focus is on topics such as building a brand image, storytelling and even upselling and cross-selling. But let’s first take a look at what the key elements of a listing actually are.
The 9 key elements of a listing
- Product title
- Product images and videos
- Bullet points
- Backend keywords
- Additional product information
- Product description OR A+/Premium A+
- Reviews
- Brand Story
- Brand Store
If you are not yet familiar with all of the elements mentioned above, we recommend our article on the basic structure of an Amazon page.
How are the different listing elements connected?
All elements of a listing fulfill one of the three tasks:
- Bring customers to your listing
- Encourage customers on your listing to buy (convert)
- Encourage customers to purchase additional items
An effective Amazon listing uses SEO in, for example, titles, bullet points, backends etc. to be visible for relevant search queries. With an appealing title and an optimized main image, customers who find your listing in the search will click on your listing. Once the customer has arrived on your listing, providing the information needed for a purchase decision in the bullet points, description or images will work together to persuade the customer to buy. Other branded content such as the Brand Story, A+ content or the Brand Store provide space to build trust by providing further information. They are also ideal containers for placing upsells and cross-sells.
Now that we have a rough understanding of how the individual listing elements interact, let’s take a look at the steps you can take to create your Amazon listing:
7 steps to success
Note: We recommend that you follow the Amazon Sytleguides during the entire time you are working on your listing:
https://sellercentral.amazon.de/help/hub/reference/G200270100?locale=de-DE
The Amazon style guides give you a good overview of the guidelines you should follow when creating your product.
Step 1: Carry out keyword research
The first step in listing creation is keyword research. Of course, as an expert, you know what your product is called or how to find your product on the Internet. However, in this step it is important to understand exactly which search terms customers from your target group use when they search for your product.
Example: Let’s say you sell a chessboard with pieces it is logical for you to place the keyword “chessboard” in the listing. However, closer research shows that there are other keywords that customers use to search for shuttering boards. And these may even have more search volume:
If you didn’t carry out keyword research in this step, you would be giving away valuable keywords such as “chess” or “chess game”.
You can either analyze your keywords using various tools such as Helium10 or Jungle Scout, or alternatively via Amazon Search or Amazon Seller Central.
Step 2: Create product images (or have them created)
Product images are one of the most important factors in the entire Amazon listing. You probably know from your own experience that when shopping online, you usually look at the product images first before you look at any text.
Professional product images that show your product from different perspectives and present it in a high-quality way are becoming increasingly important. The images are then processed into infographics, comparison tables or detailed views in order to achieve the best possible results. Ideally, you should even provide your customers with a product video.
In short: Optimized product images will make selling on Amazon much easier for you and will be directly reflected in an increased click-through rate and conversion rate. Even if the budget can sometimes be low at the beginning, investing in high-quality product images is definitely worthwhile.
Step 3: Formulate title (150-200 characters)
Now that you have analyzed and narrowed down your keywords in the first step, it’s time to create your Amazon listing texts with these keywords. The rule is that a keyword only has to appear once in the entire listing in order to be indexed by the algorithm and thus displayed in the search terms. Keywords in the title are considered more relevant than keywords in the bullet points or in the search terms. However, it is important to observe the Amazon guidelines for all texts and images!
When creating the product title, you should pay attention to the following 4 points:
- Focus on your target group: Think about the main features that make your product special and how these can best appeal to the target group. The title should be tailored precisely to their needs and search habits.
- Integrate main keywords: Incorporate the 1-3 most important keywords you found in your research into the title to increase visibility.
- Brand and key product features: Don’t forget to include the brand name and important information such as size, quantity or special features in the title. The brand name is usually at the top of the listing. Important information such as sizes should be placed relatively far forward so that users can also see them on smaller screens. The brand, main KWs and size are therefore at the beginning of the title!
- Readability: Despite all the keywords and information, your title should be easy to read. Strike a balance between keywords, information and readability.
Examples of good Amazon titles:
- [MARKENNAME] Chess set with chess book 38 x 38cm – Chess and checkers made of walnut wood foldable and magnetic with travel bag – Chess board wooden set Chess board – Board games
- [MARKENNAME] 200 tit dumplings MEISENkugel without net 18 kg | Grain ball for wild birds | Nutritious whole food for all bird species
Examples of bad Amazon titles:
- 200 tit dumplings without net
- Cressi Premium dry snorkel adults
Step 4: Create bullet points: (approx. 5x 200 characters)
With the bullet points, Amazon provides approx. 1000 characters to provide the customer with important information about the item and all the information necessary for a purchase decision. At the same time, you should include other important keywords for the algorithm.
When creating the bullet points, you should pay attention to the following 4 points:
- Emphasize benefits and features: Use the bullet points to emphasize the key product benefits and features that you have identified as critical.
- Incorporate keywords cleverly: Sprinkle in other relevant keywords from the research, but make sure it stays natural.
- Focus on the benefits: What counts is what the customer gets out of it. Focus on the benefits, not just the feature.
- Optional use: Depending on whether it suits your product, you can also use an emoji at the beginning of each bullet point.
- Create incentives to buy: Use language that motivates people to buy.
Examples of good Amazon bullet points:
- MAGNETIC: The chess pieces in the set are magnetic and therefore always have a firm hold on the 38 x 38 cm chess board. The felt base of the figurines protects the walnut wood from scratches.
- CHESS LEARNER’S BOOK: The included chess learner’s book “Learning chess made easy” written by the two chess professionals Falko Bindrich and Tobias Hirneise teaches children and amateurs fundamental chess skills on 80 pages.
- EASY TO CARRY: All chess and checkers can be easily stored inside the chess set. Packed in the travel bag supplied, the product can be taken anywhere.
- CHESS AND CHESSWOMEN: The set includes not only the chess pieces with two additional queens, but also queen pieces with which the cult board game “Checkers” can also be played on the chessboard.
- BY PROFESSIONALS: Created by professionals Falko Bindrich and Tobias Hirneise, this wooden chess set is the perfect introduction to the fascinating world of chess.
Examples of bad Amazon bullet points:
- High resistance
- Strengthening the arm muscles
- Increase strength and endurance
- Improvement in physical performance
PS: You can effectively fit more than 1000 characters in the bullet points. However, it is important to know that only the first 1000 characters are taken into account by the algorithm and thus indexed. Keywords that you include in the bullet points should therefore be placed in the first 1000 characters.
Step 5: Product description, search terms and backend attributes
Product description: As the name suggests, the product description offers you the opportunity to give your customers more information about you, your brand or your product. The product description is indexed both in the Amazon algorithm and in the Google search engine. It is therefore important to use keywords here too. To make the product description as appealing as possible, you can format it using HTML.
However, current developments show that so-called A+ content is increasingly replacing the product description or transforming it into a keyword store. A+ (formerly EBC) offers you the opportunity to provide your customers with a graphical product description and has established itself as a conversion rate booster over the last few years. It is important to understand that either A+ content or the product description is displayed on the Amazon detail page – it is not possible to display both.
Search Terms (250 Bytes)The search terms are a part of the Amazon listing that is not visible to customers. The aim here is to integrate as many relevant keywords as possible into the listing. For example, it is a good idea to use the keywords from your keyword research that you have not yet used. It is also common practice to integrate typical misspelling variations of the main keyword. The search terms do not need to be separated by commas and can simply be inserted in Seller Central without formatting:
Backend attributes: Backend attributes are various fields that you can fill in when creating your product in Seller Central (e.g. age group, ingredients, scope of delivery, etc….). Our experience has shown: The more information you offer your customers, the better. As a rule, filling in the backend attributes results in more sales, but also fewer returns.
Step 6: Brand story and brand store
The Brand Story and the Brand Store are like the A+ or even Premium A+ Content features that you have access to if you have registered your brand in the Amazon Brand Registry. Both elements offer space to talk about your brand and place upsells and cross-sells.
Step 7: Upload listing to Amazon Seller Central
The last step in creating an Amazon listing is to upload your Amazon listing to Seller Central. To do this, navigate via the menu to “Catalog” ⇒ “Add products”. In the case of your own product, you then select “I would like to add a product that is not sold on Amazon” from. Enter all the product data and texts in the new screen and you’re ready to go.
If you need more detailed instructions on this, please take a look at our article “Creating a new product in Seller Central”.
Summary and conclusions
A successful Amazon listing is an interplay of various elements that are strategically used to increase visibility and persuade customers to buy. Continuous optimization is essential, especially for Amazon listings. From now on, it is therefore important for you to regularly collect and evaluate data on your listing and recognize data-based potential for improvement.