Some may argue that advertising is king and that ultimately the right pay per click (PPC) strategy is the most critical aspect to a product’s success on Amazon but in truth CONVERSION is king!  Without conversion, you aren’t making money. However, in reality, it’s the content that leads to conversion.  Yes, you can say that without PPC advertising the consumer will never see your product. However, let’s say you have the best PPC strategy money can buy yet the consumer’s first impression of your product’s detail page is poor… will you convert?

In the early days of Amazon, it was often shoot from the hip when coming up with content.  Usually, companies had fancy names for their products that often didn’t tell the consumer what the product did, nor why they should buy it.  The consumer had to know exactly what they were looking for to find it, whereas in a brick and mortar store you could walk to the specific department and easily find the item.  The product name wasn’t important when it comes to finding it in the store.  Flash forward to the time when organic searches were (and still are) very critical… that’s when keyword stuffing began.  For a battery pack you saw product titles like this:

External Battery Pack For iPhone, Samsung, Panasonic, Sony, Zenith, RCA, to Charge Grandma’s, Grandpa’s, Kids, Children’s, Aunt’s Uncle’s, Father’s Mother’s Phone, Very Small, Very Very Tiny Battery Pack

The whole idea was to try and capture every word a consumer might use to find the item but also adding somewhat irrelevant words that might bring an unsuspecting person to the page as well.  Amazon soon learned that many consumers were experiencing poor search results and landing on products that had nothing to do with their search, which in turn, led to bad customer experience.  When you read the first Amazon Leadership Principle – Customer Obsession, you understand that Amazon’s first loyalty is to their customer which means providing the ultimate experience on the site and delivering accurate search results.  Many sellers believe that the search algorithm works best when many different words are placed in your product title, bullet points, or product description to bring consumers to your page. However, if there is no conversion, then your organic rank goes down.  This, in turn, puts you further back when the next person searches for your product.  They want the customer to find exactly what they are looking for, so you need to choose the words on your Detail Page carefully!

Consumers look at two things on the Detail Page:

• Content
  • Images
  • Bullet Points
  • Product Description/Enhanced Brand Content

• Rating aka Reviews (to be discussed in a future blog post)

Images

When it comes to images, your first spot or “Main Image” is truly just an image.  At minimum should adhere to Amazon’s requirements but should be as high a resolution as possible, especially if there are fine details that you want the consumer to see.  The next few images should really be called an “Infographic” and you must decide what is most important for the consumer to see and understand. Let’s use a 5-inch screw with 3-inch threads as an example. The infographic would show the screw with lines at the top and bottom of the screw indicating 5” and then a second set of lines from the bottom of the screw to the top of the threads indicating 3”. 

This quickly shows the consumer everything they need to know about the dimensions of the screw and whether it will work for their intended use.  It’s direct and straight to the point which is perfect for this type of item.  But what if you are selling a credit card-sized external laptop battery pack that will charge the laptop at least 100 times? Wouldn’t an image with a laptop, a credit card, the battery charger, and a very large 100X have more impact than lines showing 2” x 3” lines?  It gives a size perspective to the consumer, which is a very powerful statement!

Lifestyle images are great too if they are relevant first to the actual product and then secondly to the brand. Having a lifestyle image of a fishing lure with heat-seeking technology will intrigue a consumer and they will want to read more.  Imagine what an image that conveys the lure tracking down a fish on its own would do for your conversion.  You can even combine a lifestyle and infographic image if you don’t overload it with too much written information.  It’s also important to ensure text is large enough to be easily readable on mobile phones without requiring shoppers to zoom in.

Bullet Points:

In the olden days, bullet points were typically simple feature benefit statements. However, consumers demand more and we have very limited space to give them what they want. We as merchants don’t need to tell them that their life will be easier with this widget or they will look like a million bucks wearing that thing-a-ma-jig. The key is knowing what is important for each product’s consumer and speaking to them.

• 21 GIGAWATT DIGITAL VACUUM MOTOR:  The super-strong motor sucks up every spec of dust and every bowling ball from you living room floor, giving you the confidence of a perfectly clean carpet.

Or…

• HEAT SEAKING SENSORS:  Embedded sensors and a micro-motor guide the fishing lure right to the fish, guaranteeing a catch on every cast.

These bullet points give the feature and then explains how the feature provides the benefit.

The buyer of a high-end laptop computer probably doesn’t need to know the benefit of a 42-terabyte hard-drive or having 256-gigabytes of RAM.  In an example like this, the bullet points should contain a lot more of the features and less on the benefits.  Many times a consumer buying an item like this is using the features in the search which means the bullet points and even the title (discussed below) should lean more towards the features.

Other products may require more of a focus on the benefits, with less of an emphasis on the features. Again, it depends on what is important for your customer’s purchasing decision.

Product Title

Although Amazon doesn’t tell us how their organic search algorithm works, the currently accepted hierarchy is that it begins with the Product Title and then moves to the bullet points. Product titles have character limitations that are different by category and it is still important to only use relevant words that are not repetitive and will eventually index making it easier for customers to find.  Using the word, “Children in Children’s Sock” is important, but don’t use “Children’s Kids Socks”.  The phrase “Kid’s Socks” can go into a bullet point where it will look more natural than “Children’s Kids Sock”. Giving key features in as very few words as possible is perfect and here is a good example.

BRAND NAME 26800 Portable Charger, 26800mAh External Battery with Dual Input Port and Double-Speed Recharging, 3 USB Ports for iPhone, iPad, Samsung Galaxy, Android and Other Smart Devices

The last thing to remember is that you can only make a first impression one time and bad grammar due to keyword stuffing is a bad first impression.  I have very high standards when shopping online and assume that if the grammar is bad on the detail page then the product or product instructions must be equally as poor. Most of the time I am abandoning that page…  How many others are doing the same?

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Author | Robert Baron, Senior Consultant