Amazon’s New Policing Mechanism: Are Your Images TOS Compliant?
What Is This About?
Recently Amazon has come out with a new policing mechanism to check your main images to make sure they are TOS compliant. If they don’t comply with the rules Amazon has set, your listing may face suspension or other punishments.
Listings Are Getting Suppressed
What I’ve been noticing is that Amazon is going after our images with a real Vengeance right now and I actually do have confirmation from within Amazon not through Prime Guidance, but through just a close friend of mine that they are proactively launching a new policing mechanism to make sure that all of the main images within Amazon are going to be Amazon TOS compliant. So when you’re looking at your listing and I’m guilty of it, I’ve certainly put additional things in my main image to try and increase click-through rate to try and increase, you know, can I differentiate my product from the rest of the results on the on the search results page but some of those listings that I have done that on are currently suspended and I have a number of clients who have had products that are very deeply impacted by this. One of those clients was is large enough that they have an Amazon representative internally that works, you know directly with them. She was able to confirm everything that I just said that they are doing a sweep. They do want to please says Main images. They do want to you know have a consistent experience for customers and they’re Also catching a lot of supplemental images in that sweep.
Check All Of Your Images
So even though they’re targeting the main images the hero images if you have infographics, if you have kind of embellished images on your listing, you may get caught up in the sweep… So make sure you’re staying on top of it. This is a great use case for having a change tracking software something that we encourage all of our clients to have so that they’re actively watching their listing they’re seeing if images are going missing if the title is changing if the fulfillment methods changing so be on your toes, this is a big deal to Victor’s point the clients that are impacted right now were already into six figures in lost Revenue.
How To Fix The Problem
So it’s a very big deal and what the advice I got from Amazon, If you do run into the situation is that use your internal Amazon rep if you have one They’re going to have the best ability to remedy and fix the situation. And then if you do not have an internal Amazon rep, then you’re going to need to open cases in addition to Re-uploading the videos on the back end of your Seller Central and that you should anticipate it taking up to a couple of weeks before you get those images back live again. So for anybody who has main images that are embellished, this is Food For Thought there’s not a guarantee that you’re going to get caught there never is but I would put a 90% plus certainty that they’re doing a heavy sweep on Main images being just a picture of your product with a white background around it exactly according to Amazon TOS.
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When Should You Make A Keyword Negative On Amazon?
Intro
A lot of people will wonder when or if they should make one of their keywords a negative term. The best solution we’ve found is setting some sort of quota the term has to achieve in order for us to keep the keyword.
You Have To Test It
One thing that I like to always do is to look at how many customers have been exposed to an ad of a particular search query and then determine, did I have enough of a chance to see conversions and I didn’t so that might be 20 clicks or whatever it is based on your conversion rate. But if you said something to a minimum and say if I haven’t received any clicks or any purchases and I’ve had this many clicks then I should have by all their measures had at least one conversion.
Results
Look, it’s probably not a good term to continue with let’s stop spending money on those and if there’s something that, it’s just a no-brainer you don’t have to wait for any clicks I mean, it could be just one impression and you realize that’s oh my gosh Amazon automated bids are trying to to find this term or spending money on this term. That is not a fit. I need to add that in negatives right away. I didn’t think to have it ahead of time learn fast and save that money.
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Are You Taking Advantage Of Amazon Posts?
It Keeps getting Better
So, you know at the end of the day it’s one of those tools where Amazon is just updating it constantly and a few weeks ago, they updated it to include carousels and they updated it to include scheduling post. So I can’t tell you how highly I encourage every attendee every client, take advantage of it I mean its rare that Amazon gives us something for free and the visibility on those posts is phenomenal. So what I’m doing with all of our clients that I’m working with is we’re looking at, okay what is our post strategy for the rest of the year and then how quickly can we get it in there so that we don’t have to think about it anymore.
Easy To Use
Now that we can schedule it ahead of time. Let’s get those posts schedule to the end of the year and then it’s not going back and having to check on it and you know double check and I have 1 client I was speaking to actually earlier today who I think is super smart in what she’s doing and she is posting a few every day and she set it up in such a way. So their social media team is literally feeding their content into her Amazon, you know administrator and then the amazon administrator is just taking it and putting in a post. So as the social media team is creating their content calendar, they’re just sharing it into Amazon. No additional operational cost no extra content creation, it’s awesome.
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Getting A Video For Your Product Page Isn’t As Hard Or As Expensive As You Think. Here’s Why.
It’s Not As Hard As It Seems
It’s an area that I see neglected a lot of times is video because I think a lot of 3rd party sellers think, this video is way to costly. I don’t have the people that they can produce videos and I don’t have the money to pay someone to produce a high-quality video so they neglect it all together. The reality is you don’t need some high performance, you know videographer to shoot a video for your product at least not out of the gate. Initially, We find that just putting some images and photography together into a video and adding some text and some Transitions and stuff can actually look really strong and actually do a really good job of portraying key messages it varies distinctly especially in the the first few seconds to get someone interested in enough to to stay engaged and watch the rest of the video matters.
Increase Sales By Over 3x Your Usual Amount
So if you’re going to do something like that on Amazon because you know, we know Amazon quotes that increases conversion rate by 3.6 times the normal conversion rate when a customer watches one of those videos so its hugely successful.
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Our Ability to Comment on Product Ratings Will Soon Be a Thing of the Past
To comment or not to comment tis the question but Amazon has… or soon will… remove our ability to comment on Product Ratings (also known as Product Reviews). This past week many Prime Guidance clients received this notice from Amazon.
Dear seller,
You are receiving this email because you recently left a comment on a review.
While reviews and feedback are important to our customers and sellers, the comments feature on customer reviews was rarely used. As a result, we are retiring this feature on December 16, 2020.
We are committed to your continued success and will innovate and develop other opportunities for you to connect with customers.
Thank you.
– Amazon Services
As we all know, product ratings can make or break the success of the product. It is very often the first place a consumer looks when they click into a detail page and if they click deeper into the ratings, they most often look at the one and two star ratings. If they use filters like I do, they will never see an item with less than four stars.
We coach our clients to always read their product’s reviews, both the good and bad ones, but especially the bad ones. The small percentage of shoppers who give a product rating are taking time out of their busy day, knocking on your front door, and using a bullhorn to tell you their experience with your item. Most of us were brought up to say “thank you” when we are given a compliment and it may not be feasible for you to make this comment on every good review received, however, it is critical to do so when you receive a bad rating.
Often, a bad rating is given because of product confusion, a defective item (they happen to even the highest rated item), a delayed FBA shipment, or sometimes due to bad content on your detail page. If the rating is due to the first two reasons, sometimes you just need to simply say:
“We are very sorry to hear about the issue you are having with {product name} and your satisfaction is our highest priority. Please reach out to us through Amazon’s support system so we can make this right”.
It tells that customer and anyone else who reads it that they are important and that they matter. If the customer does reach out you can now fix the situation and if you do, just to their satisfaction there is a very good chance they will change the rating. If you go beyond their satisfaction, they will change the rating and tell 25 of their friends about the experience.
For anyone unaware of the ability comment it is here:
Or from your Brand Dashboard you can click on Manage Reviews in the Customer Review Section:
Thus far, the ability to comment still exists. According to the message, it was supposed to have been removed on December 16th, but I suspect it will happen soon after the holiday season.
We will continue to coach our clients to read their product ratings so they can learn about what people are saying. They may not be able to comment back, but if they can detect a pattern it may be able to be easily addressed. It could be through changes to the detail pages, fixes to the infographics, or additions or even deletion to the A+ Content. It could be through developing an insert that goes in every box or a edit to the instructions. If it was a delayed shipment by FBA Amazon, you may want to even remove the rating. There will always be learnings from the negative ratings, but there will be no way to reach out directly to the customer to fix the situation… or will there be?
Speculating to the reason why Amazon is removing this tool is just that… speculation and it does really matter. Amazon simply states that it is a tool not often used but I have also heard people say that less scrupulous sellers use it to hound consumers who have given their product a bad rating. Either may be true but Amazon goes on to say that will “innovate and develop other opportunities for you to connect with customers”.
2020 has seen more changes in Seller Central than I have seen over the last several years and maybe… just maybe… there will be a better way for us to communicate directly to the consumer to tell them that they are important to us and that we want to fix any negative experience they have with our product.
Those of you who have read my other blogs or have seen me on the Prime Guidance weekly webinar every Thursday know that I often cite the Amazon Leadership Principles, which I have learned during my time as an Amazon employee and these principles became even more important as a hiring Bar Raiser. The email sent by Amazon said they are taking this action because the tool is rarely used, but if there is more to it then they have addressed several of their Leadership Principles, first and foremost, Customer Obsession. After that, assuming they create a better tool for us, it is Ownership, Invent and Simplify, Think Big and Deliver Results. When I begin an engagement with a new client, I tell them three things: