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Making sure your product listings are optimised is an essential part of getting sales on Amazon. When you are competing against a multitude of other products it's your listing images and descriptions that will make what you're selling stand out. Think of it as your sales pitch to potential customers. Below we look at the key aspects of optimising your product listings to make sure you get the sale!

Image

One of the first things buyers eyes will be drawn to is the image of your product. If you don't have clear and detailed images, buyers will not trust what you are selling - this is their main way of getting a feel for the product. Think about these key aspects when selecting pictures to represent your listing:

• High quality: Make sure your pictures are at least 1000x500 resolution. Blurry or pixelated images won't give the buyer a true sense of the product you are selling. Additionally, images that are 1000x1000 pixels or over will be able to utilise the zoom function, giving prospective customers even more insight into the product.
• Selection: Try and upload between four and six photos of your product, especially if you are selling apparel. Also make sure you get a variety of shots - one with a plain background, inside and outside packaging, shots of the product being used - remember the more information the buyer can get about the product from these images, the better.
• Compliance: It almost goes without saying but make sure your images comply with Amazon's image regulations, otherwise you risk your items being suspended.

Pricing

As always, pricing plays a key part in consumer's decision on whether to buy or not. In fact, it will invariably be the second thing their eye is drawn to after the product images. Consider the prices of your competition and try and stay within that range. A great way of doing this is using an Amazon Repricing tool. This can automatically work out the best price to sell your items for based on the competition, constantly changing with the market to ensure you make maximum profit.

Title

What's in a name? Actually for SEO optimised products, it's important to find the right balance of keywords in your title. Make sure your title doesn't come off as spammy with too many keywords stuffed in. This will make potential customers less likely to click and actually end up reducing your ranking in listings. Instead make sure you include key details such as: brand and description, size, colour and quantity. Most importantly, make sure you double check that everything is spelt right, otherwise your products may not come up when people are searching for them and it can make your brand look unprofessional.

Bullet Points and Description

This is where you really need to think about how you are going to sell your product. Amazon gives you the opportunity to include five bullet points, with the option to add additional bullet points for off-page optimisation.

The bullet points are a key section to pass as much detailed information as you can to the customer. As it's right next to the product and in bullet point format, it's the part of the description they are most likely to read, especially as they can skim read it to find out the key information. Make sure you put in keywords but expand on them to give the reader a fuller idea about the product.

Underneath that you have the description. Try and avoid stating similar features of the product in this section and instead use it as a chance to market your item to the buyer. You've already told them all about the product with the images and bullet points so treat this as a way to explain to the consumer why they need your product, and why they should buy it from you! And remember, different categories of products may have different markets so keep the audience in mind whilst you're doing this.

Conversion Rates

There's no good optimising your product listings, if you don't know how well they're actually working to convert product views into sales. But what is a good conversion rate?

Of course, this is highly dependant on the product you are selling. High value, expensive products generally require a lot more consideration from the perspective buyer, whereas people are more likely to buy cheaper items without thinking about it as much or even on a whim. Naturally, this means the conversion rate for cheaper items tends to be a lot higher.

You can work out your conversion rate through Seller Central by looking at your Unit Session Percentage. This figure is calculated by dividing your number of orders by the number of sessions.

It is essential to continuously track your conversion rates in order to properly ascertain how well optimised your products are, but it is important to look at trends over time rather than in the short term. You can also attempt to use AB testing to get a better idea of what is working by trying variants of your descriptions on similar products and see which one performs best.

Reviews

Reviews can be extremely important in buyers decision on which brand to go for. Imagine your competitors have similar products at similar prices, a buyer is most likely to go for the one with the best reviews. Not only this, but your product will rank higher the better and the more reviews your product has. An easy way to generate reviews is through sending simple follow-up emails. Try and aim to send two; first a general follow up just to make sure the buyer has received the product and a second one a few days later once the customer has had a chance to use the product asking for an unbiased review.

However, don't panic if you get a negative review but instead find a way to resolve the situation.

In an age of service economy, great customer service has become everything and if people can see that you are trying to effectively resolve the situation that can work in your favour. Negative feedback can also work as constructive criticism - if something is going wrong somewhere along the line this is an easy way for you to find out and correct the issue. Customers are much more likely to shop again with a brand they know take customer complaints seriously, with 71% of consumers saying they change their perception of a brand after seeing a positive response to a review on social media.

All in all, using a few simple tricks can help boost sales immeasurably. It really is as simple as putting a little time and effort into your product listings.