Amazon Retail Readiness 101: Successful Selling on the E-commerce Giant
Who wouldn’t want to sell on Amazon?
It’s the world’s largest online marketplace, and it’s now second nature for consumers to search for every imaginable product on the site.
With a little bit of work, you can make your product(s) available on Amazon and potentially reach millions of buyers. That part is easy. The hard part is doing it right and seeing a solid ROI on Amazon with retail readiness.
Having your Amazon Product Listings retail ready is critical for long-term success on the Marketplace. When developing an Amazon strategy, most companies neglect this process and just add their products to Amazon, either because their brand is well recognized or think they have a great product.
That’s a mistake. You can have the best product in the world and be one the most recognized brands, and still flop on Amazon. That’s because the way the Amazon consumer shops is based on retail readiness, so don’t neglect these steps.
We don’t pretend we can give you all the answers in one post, either. Rather, this post is an overview that will begin to familiarize you with all the elements that comprise a successful Amazon listing. We’ll be sharing more about each area in future posts to help you get ahead of your competition by implementing these strategies.
Defining Amazon Retail Readiness
Amazon Retail Readiness is essentially buttoning up and packaging all the features Amazon offers retailers, from images to copy at the product level, to ensure you give your customers the best ASIN/Product experience with your brand.
The ASIN, or Amazon Standard Identification Number, is a unique 10-character identifier assigned to all products sold on Amazon.com.
PRO TIP: You should NOT push ads promoting any of your products until your ASIN(s) is retail ready!
Ensuring your ASINs are retail ready means checking off each of these elements for every product you intend to offer on Amazon:
Product Images
Product Copy, including Titles, Bullets, Product Description, and Backend Search terms)
Product Reviews
A+ Content
Product Video
Inventory
Buy Box
There’s no shortcut with any element. Make each of these as strong as possible and to make your selling experience on Amazon as strong as possible. Let’s explore each element.
Product Images
They say picture is worth a thousand words, and that’s never truer than on Amazon and e-commerce. Product images are one of the only ways your customers can get that same in-store experience with your product, so it’s vital that you have optimized and clear images. Your main product images should be on a white background, clearly displaying what your product is, does, and how much of it you get. If you’re unsure, look at what your main competitors are doing. Lifestyle images are highly encouraged—in other words, an image showing someone using the product.
Product Copy
This includes Titles, Bullets, Product Description, and Backend Search Terms. There are three solid reasons to utilize all copy features: first, because Amazon makes it all available, and second because Amazon indexes every keyword that you input into any of those field. It’s critical that you explain what your product does, does not do, and include highly searchable keywords to give your product the best chance to show up organically on Amazon’s digital shelf. Don’t make people guess about anything.
Product Reviews
When’s the last time you bought a product on Amazon without any reviews? Exactly! It’s critical that your ASINs have customer feedback, because you can have the cleanest, most optimized listing and yet fail to sell because people want to see what others have experienced with your product.
This is even more important for unfamiliar products or product categories. The better the reviews for your product, the more likely your product will sell. Aim to have at least 15 Product Reviews and an average Star Rating above 4.0.
A+ Content
This creative feature lives below the fold of a Product Detail Page, right above your Product Reviews. This is your last chance to convey the unique selling points for your product and brand. Establish expectations for your product, including guidance on how to use and product dos and don’ts.
PRO TIP: Include lifestyle images and address common issues or concerns customers may have with your product here.
Product Video
Video is key in helping drive a conversion for your brand and it’s a mistake to not take advantage of this feature. As mentioned above, think about how you can use images and video to match the in-store experience. Use video to share unique selling points.
Video is also an ideal way to demonstrate product use, especially for complex or unfamiliar products. Add some branded content to help your customers understand why they should purchase from you vs. another brand, such as “we give back x% every year”.
Inventory
You can’t sell product if you don’t have inventory. Ensure that you are ALWAYS maintaining proper inventory replenishment for all ASINs.
Amazon will dock you significantly if you frequently exhaust inventory, which prevents you from maintaining high organic rankings and appearing in results for top-searched keywords. And, obviously, no inventory means no sales.
Buy Box
That’s the real estate with the add to cart button and where you can see who is offering the product. Make sure that your product price is harmonized across all the channels in which you sell it, otherwise you won’t be in the Buy Box.
That drags down your organic ranking and prevents you from advertising your product.
Moving Forward
This post is a high-level overview of the strategies you NEED to put in place to ensure that you’re giving your products the best chance of selling on Amazon. It’s just a first look at Amazon, and in coming weeks we’ll dive deeper into these topics to make sure you have all the tools necessary to sell as best as possible on Amazon. We’ll help show you how.