Tag: amazon conversion rate optimization

How To Increase Amazon Conversion Rates

When you’re selling on Amazon, you have nearly every tool you need to drive leads to your product listings. However, PPC ads and Amazon listing optimization alone aren’t enough to turn that attention into revenue by converting your traffic into customers.

That takes putting a little more thought into every aspect of each listing. This guide will introduce you to some of the key concepts of Amazon conversion rate optimization.

What Matters Most About Your Listings

Through our experience working with more than 8,000 brands on Amazon’s marketplace, we’ve learned that there are four high-priority items to address when it comes to Amazon conversion rate optimization. If you’re looking to turn more traffic into customers, focus in on these areas of your product listings first:

1. High-quality photos

People process visual information faster and easier than they do written words, so attractive photos of your product are an absolute must-have. Online shoppers, in general, put a high priority on quality photos. In one report, 60% of shoppers said they need to see at least three to four photos of a product before purchasing it online.

On Amazon, quality photos hold even more weight. Anyone familiar with the market is likely aware of counterfeit and low-quality products. A well-crafted set of images can instantly reaffirm your product’s quality and establish your credibility, making shoppers more confident in their decision to convert and make a purchase.

2. Well-thought-out descriptions

It’s not as attention-grabbing as photos, but the description should be a helpful expansion on your product’s features and highlights. A neat and clean description can make a difference, especially for higher-end products where comparison shoppers decide based on those details. Use page breaks to separate messages and make them easy to read quickly.

It’s important to have all listing content written by a native speaker. This will help you avoid errors that can chip away at confidence in your product’s quality. With space for 2,000 characters, you can expand on any unique features and capabilities that give your product a competitive edge, such as eco-friendliness or unique connectivity.

3. Informative bullet points

Some shoppers will skip over descriptions and head straight to the listing’s bullet points to get the gist of what they’re looking at. These bullet points are just as important for describing your product’s features and letting shoppers know it’s the item they’re looking for.

Keep in mind, however, that bullet points give you less space to write and are meant to be scannable. Put thought into what key elements of your product would appeal most to your consumers and highlight them here. How is the product used? What makes it better than comparable products?

4. Quantity and quality of reviews

While the first three points focus on what you can tell shoppers about your listing, they’ll pay just as much attention (and sometimes more) to what people who’ve used the product have to say. In fact, in one consumer survey, 92% of respondents said they won’t buy anything online without reading at least one review first.

When it comes to reviews, both quantity and quality matter. You should strive to have an average rating similar to your competitors with a similar number of reviews. Amazon incentivizes reviews through programs like Vine and the Early Reviewer Program, but outside of those, there’s not much you can do to drive reviews for your products. If you ensure your products are of high quality and the buyer experience is positive, however, your customers shouldn’t have a reason to leave negative reviews.

With these elements, your listing will help assure customers of your brand’s realness, as well as the product’s quality and authenticity. As you increase your sales volume through strategic Amazon conversion rate optimization, you’ll be able to earn more reviews and sell even more. If you need help getting started, check out our resource for high-quality Amazon listing photos, read more about our Amazon listing optimization tools, or call and speak with one of our experts today!

The Limitation of Conversion Rate on Amazon

Let’s say I sell a product that is more expensive than my competition. It is of better quality than my competitors, the product listing is well written, and my conversion rate is 25%. Should I increase the price to test the limits of my conversion and see if I can make better profit?

This seems like a logical question, right? One logical answer would be to either sit back and enjoy a rather satisfactory conversion rate. Another would be to perhaps try out some split testing and see if that rate begins to fall as the price rises.

Conversion can be a great data point to understand how customers are responding to your listing. If your conversion is really low, it tells you that there is likely something about your offering that is causing shoppers to pass on your product. It could be something as simple as an unattractive photo or word choice on a bullet, or it could be something a little more challenging to resolve, such as a poor review. It could also indicate that shoppers in the category tend to bounce around and explore their options a bit before settling on a product.

While conversion rate can give you some perspective, it doesn’t paint the whole picture. Let’s now return to the original question (because of course, it is a trick question):

What conversion rate doesn’t capture is the number of people actually interacting with your listing. What if I only made four sales in a month? Yes, a 25% conversion rate is great but if only 16 people interacted with my listing, does conversion matter? In this case, I’m probably paying attention to the wrong metric.

If you’re selling a high value item, you might be happy with four sales a month, but this probably isn’t the case. You could have one sale and a 100% conversion rate. In other words, if a product is listed on Amazon, and no one is around to buy it, does it make a sound?

 

What is a Conversion Rate?:

A conversion rate is the number of sales divided by the number of interactions (people clicking on your link). If 16 people click on your listing and 4 of them buy, your conversion rate is 25%. But as we’ve already discussed, while a low conversion rate most commonly means there may be a problem with your listing, a high conversion rate does not always signify a successful product. To access your conversion rate you will want to log into Seller Central, go to Reports, Business Reports, and finally, Sales and Traffic. You will be able to locate it in the “Order Item Session Percentage”.

The Limit of Conversion Data:

The number one problem with spending too much energy analyzing your conversion data is that there could be a much larger limiting factor at play.

You can have a high conversion rate, but if you’re ranking on page 20 for every major keyword, the reason for your conversion rate could be that you’ve got a great offering but almost no one ends up finding it.

Alternatively, and potentially what is occurring in the question asked, maybe you have a great conversion rate and are on page one for some major keywords, but you’re not making many sales. You could have a situation where upon further inspection of your listing, shoppers are inspired to buy, but something is very quickly forcing the majority of shoppers to overlook your product.

For instance, you could have a great product, but it’s priced much higher than the competition. If someone clicks on the listing, they’ll realize that the improved quality is worth the price but most shoppers will skim through it in search of a more affordable option.

 

What should you be asking?:

While conversion rate is not a bad piece of intel to have, at the end of the day, selling on Amazon is all about one thing…THE MONEY. In other words, you must look at your conversion rate from a broader perspective: in the context of your visibility, your sales numbers, and your market share.

A more appropriate question is something like this:

I sell a product that is more expensive than my competition. It is of better quality than my competitors, the product listing is well written, and I’m selling 40 units a day with a healthy profit margin. Should I increase the price to test the limits of my revenue and see if I can make better profit?

With regards to this question, the answer is yes*.

The asterisk is that you shouldn’t just test a higher price, you should test a lower price too.

Let’s say you’re selling the product for $25 with a profit margin of $10 and you’re making 40 sales a day ($400 profit).

Maybe you up the to $26 to press your luck ($11 profit margin) and you still sell 40 units a day ($440 profit).

But what if you drop your price by a dollar to $24 ($9 profit margin) and you end up selling 80 units a day? Now you’re making a profit of $720.

The point is, everyone selling on Amazon has different metrics of what success is, but all of those metrics of success are all based on (you guessed it) the money.

 

The Conclusion on Conversion:

Among Amazon sellers, we frequently see questions and concerns when people get held up by the plethora of data points that they have to comb through at any given time. Whether it’s BSR, or conversion, or how your product is categorized, you need to ask yourself what the data is actually telling you. If that data is not directly correlated to how much money you’re making, it’s probably not worth focusing too much attention on.

Conversion rate can absolutely hint at potential problems or successes with your listing, but it by no means is an absolute sign of a successful product. You could have a 100% conversion rate selling expired meat on the internet. No shopper will even look at your listing, but eventually maybe some sicko buys it. Boom! One interaction/one sale.

The point is: to be effective on Amazon, you need to determine your metric for success, and you need to ask the right questions to achieve success. Use conversion; use BSR, and determine what you can learn from it and what you can’t.

You can make almost no money and have a high conversion rate, or you can make a lot of money with a ton of visibility and a low conversion rate. It’s just about asking the right questions and seeking the right answers.
On a final note, if you are looking for answers and wish split test some elements of your listing, check out Viral Launch’s split testing tool at listing-dojo.com.

Exit mobile version