If you sell products online today, it is a necessity that you sell on Amazon. Amazon’s market share of e-commerce in the US is just over 40%. This means that you cannot afford to neglect the power of Amazon. Creating and maintaining a successful Amazon listing is not easy but if you focus on these 5 characteristics, your listing will rise to the top.
1. Create Great Images
E-commerce in general, and especially Amazon, is all about product images. When a customer searches for a particular product on Amazon, they immediately see images of many similar products. The image of your product is the first thing a prospective customer sees and it’s your main opportunity to win that customer. How will your image stand out from the many competitors that are all around you? When I started to sell products on Amazon, I learned how to use photoshop effectively. I simply googled and YouTube’d whatever I wanted to accomplish in photoshop and eventually learned how to edit and manipulate my specific product images. I think my product images are the best in my Amazon category and that might be the most important part of a listing in helping to drive sales and improve your rank.
2. Pick the Right Keywords
Your product will be more searchable if the title, product description, and bullet points contain appropriate keywords. The best way to research keywords is to view the product detail pages of your top competitors. For example, if you’re selling a jump rope, search “jump rope” on Amazon, click on several of the top-selling jump ropes, and make a list of the keywords that appear in their detail page text. They might contain keywords like “exercise, fitness, gym, healthy, workout, etc.). If they are best-sellers, putting those same keywords in your listing is a great place to start. You want to also make sure that you use the maximum number of characters Amazon allows for each field. For example, Amazon currently allows 200 characters in the title – use all this space so you can fit in as many keywords as possible. This will give you an advantage over your competitors and help increase your seller rank.
3. Focus on Reviews
Product reviews are so important on Amazon and every seller stresses about them. Customers can be difficult to please so this will be a constant focus for you as an Amazon seller. Later in this article I will talk about shipping a great product to your customers and this is the foundation of getting good reviews but there are little things you can do to help increase your review average. Firstly, if a negative review violates Amazon’s community guidelines, you can report it to Amazon and likely have it removed. Second, you should include an insert card in your product’s packaging that asks the customer to leave an honest review – although don’t ask for a positive review or incentivize the customer in any way because that’s against Amazon policy. Lastly, you can use a 3rd-party company to email your customers asking for an honest review – again you can’t ask for a positive review, incentivize the customers to review, and you’re not supposed to send more than one email per customer. Keeping a 4.5+ star average is important if you’re going to compete at the top of your category.
4. Have a Competitive Price
Customers on Amazon are very sensitive to price. Since your listing will be surrounded by competitors selling very similar products, the price of your product must compete. I’d recommend studying the best-selling listings for the product you’re selling and figure out how to get your price and product quality in-line with theirs. When I started selling on Amazon, my product was not as good and was more expensive than the top competition. Over time, I slowly made the product better and decreased the price. It took time though to be able to do this and maintain a healthy profit margin. It requires a certain level of operational efficiency and economy of scale.
5. Ship a Good Product
If you’re not sending a good product to your customers, you’re going to have problems on Amazon. Firstly, your reviews will struggle. You also won’t get repeat customers or word of mouth marketing. If the product isn’t accurate to what’s shown in your images and detail page, Amazon will likely suspend the listing. Basically, if you do the things mentioned above (images, keywords, reviews, and price) but you’re product isn’t good, your success on Amazon won’t be sustainable. Eventually your review average will drop too low to be competitive or Amazon will discipline you by removing the listing. So you must always improve and make adjustments to your product to make your customers happier.
About the Author: John Accardi is the founder and CEO of cravebox.com and starcoursecap.com. CRAVEBOX assembles care packages and gift baskets to be sold online. STARCOURSE CAPITAL is a venture capital firm that invests in young e-commerce companies. John dropped out of a PhD program at Georgetown University in 2014 to start CRAVEBOX and he says it’s the best decision he ever made. He now runs the businesses out of North Wales, PA and also lives in Manhattan part-time. When John’s not working, he enjoys sailing, playing guitar, and spending time with family.