90% of the sales on Amazon occur through the Buy Box. Every Amazon seller fights hard to get hold of this coveted golden space. However, although the Buy Box is one of the biggest deciding factors when it comes to increasing your sales, winning it is only half the battle. Even after you own the Buy Box, there are several factors that can impact your conversion ratio and neglecting them can ultimately take a toll on your bottom line.
Here are five key areas Amazon sellers should focus on after they’ve won the Buy Box
#1: Listing copy
Your goal should be to create a copy that appeals to both – your shoppers and Amazon’s Algorithm. Product listing elements like title, bullet points, and description do a great job of educating your shoppers on the features, benefits & USPs of your product so they can make a confident purchase decision. But your listing copy can be a big turnoff if it’s not written properly. Ideally, your copy should:
- Connect with the customers
- Highlight benefits and features of the product
- Answer the most commonly asked questions about the product
- List all the crucial information such as dimension, material, size information, etc.
Sellers can also look into the “customer reviews” and “customer questions and answers” sections to include information that is crucial for purchase. The more informative and comprehensive your content is, the less hesitation potential shoppers will have before purchasing your product. But at the same time, make sure you don’t overwhelm shoppers with heavy words and a mountain of complex information. They’re shopping, they’re in a relaxed mood – definitely not in a mood to attend a science class. Keep the technicalities to yourself. Instead, highlight the technical product features as benefits and make them fun to read at.
Writing an informative yet skimmable copy will help you win over your shoppers, but to please the A9 God, you’ll have to add relevant and high-volume keywords to your listing. Here are a few best practices to make your listing Amazon SEO friendly:
- For Amazon keyword research, use tools like Merchant Words & Helium10.
- It is an unwritten rule that the keywords for title and search terms account for organic ranking and keywords for bullets and description are indexed for PPC. So do not ever repeat the keywords you use in the title in the search terms.
- If you are selling shampoo for pets, instead of targeting high volume and ultra-competitive keywords like “pet shampoo” or “dog shampoo,” try ranking for niche keywords like “fragrance-free dog shampoo” or “tick shampoo for dogs.”
- Target synonym keywords and spelling variations
- Create your title by looking at page #1 competitors. Does your title have all the words that they have?
P.S: For best results hire Amazon SEO professionals.
#2: Product images
You cannot take a customer to a camping spot and show how cozy and comfortable your sleeping bag is. But when created right, your listing images have the power to do that. Writing a detailed listing copy is for shoppers who like to read everything meticulously before making a purchase. Product images, however, are for skimmers who don’t last on one product detail page for more than 8 seconds. To woo customers with a short attention span, you will need a line-up of premium quality images, including:
- White background image / main image / hero image
- Detailed Amazon infographics images
- Images showing the product from multiple angles
- Product lifestyle images
- Image that highlights crucial product information like material, size, etc.
While creating listing images, sellers should follow Amazon’s product image requirements. Amazon recommends your images should be in focus, well lit, show real colors and should be at least 1500 x 1500 pixels, so customers are easily able to hover and zoom.
#3: Price
The seller with the lowest price wins the Buy Box, but the price also greatly affects your conversion ratio and sales. The landed price (the total price of the item plus shipping) is one of the very few factors that can be controlled by the seller. Your prices should be optimized in real-time based on operation data and not on gut instinct just once a month. Since it can be overwhelming and time-consuming to monitor and adjust the prices of your products manually, delegating it to a dedicated Amazon seller consultant can free up your time so you can focus on other high-priority business development tasks.
#4: Customer reviews
Before your shoppers read your product copy or view the images, they’ll scroll down to see what other customers have to say about your product. Every customer visiting your detail page depends heavily on reviews to determine whether they would like to move forward with the purchase or not. Clearly, reviews can make or break your listing.
Right after your product is launched, you should prioritize getting honest, positive reviews as often as possible. There are quite a few white hat tricks to get reviews on Amazon, some of which include using 3rd party tools like Feedback Genius or participating in Amazon review generation programs like Amazon Vine.
No matter how good your product is, you are bound to see a few critical reviews. Amazon no longer gives the option to respond to negative reviews in the comments, but brand registered sellers can now contact shoppers who left a negative review. The introduction of this new feature will greatly help sellers effectively deal with (and get rid of) negative reviews.
#5: Brand recall
Brand building and awareness is not considered as a direct factor for conversion, but it is equally important. If you have a brand customer’s trust, they won’t bother paying a bit more than your competitors, or they wouldn’t mind seeing a couple of negative reviews on your product page. Amazon, too, is focused on giving its shoppers a branded shopping experience. Every new feature recently rolled out is exclusively for brand registered sellers only.
Sellers wanting to build a brand and differentiate themselves in the crowded marketplace can opt to try out various tools and participate in programs such as Manage Your Customer Engagement which allows sellers to send engaging, promotional emails to customers who opt to “follow” your brand, Amazon seller storefront where brands can build a multi-page mini-me version of their website to promote and showcase their entire product catalog or A Plus Content that helps sellers tell their brand story to the customers using enticing infographics and lifestyle banners.
Winning the buy box doesn’t actually make you a winner
Owning the Buy Box does not always guarantee sales if other aspects of your listing are not up to the mark. Having an informative copy, enticing images, just the right price, good reviews and most importantly, brand awareness is just as essential as winning a Buy Box. If you need help getting your listing optimized, creating images, or building a brand, take help from our expert Amazon consultants. Our international Amazon SEO team has already successfully optimized more than 10000 listings on Amazon. Contact us.