amazon listing optimization Archives

How to Use ChatGPT to Optimize Your Amazon Listing

The tech story of 2023 has been the rapid rise of artificial intelligence technology such as ChatGPT. Find out how to use ChatGPT as a tool for your online business.

Writing an effective Amazon listing is crucial for attracting potential buyers and increasing sales, but it can be daunting for many sellers. Many sellers look elsewhere when writing their Amazon listing, whether due to a lack of confidence in writing skills, language barriers, or a lack of knowledge on creating copy that will be crucial to your Amazon success.

This is where ChatGPT comes in – as an AI language model, it can save you time and money regarding Amazon listing optimization.

ChatGPT can save considerable time and money by automating a significant chunk of your Amazon listing copy. If performed correctly, you can generate content that accurately describes your product and informs the customer of its key points, ultimately driving more conversions and boosting your bottom line.

Below, let’s dig in on how to use artificial intelligence tools for Amazon listings to advance your online business.

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is an AI language model developed by OpenAI. It is a deep learning-based model that uses a transformer architecture to understand and generate human-like language. It’s been pre-trained on an extensive collection of text from the internet and can generate human-like responses to a wide range of questions and topics.

ChatGPT is designed to assist and provide information to users, and can be integrated into various chat applications and platforms to provide an intelligent and interactive chatbot experience.

Launched in November 2022, it reached 1 million users just five days after its launch. In the months since its release, it’s generated a ton of buzz thanks to its popularity, concerns about its usage, and the future of tech.

How to get started with ChatGPT

First, go to chat.openai.com. Then, continue with your Google or Microsoft account, or manually enter an email address and password. Upon doing this, you’ll need to verify your email address, and boom, you’re all set up. You may be asked to provide a cell phone number for verification purposes, where you’ll receive a text with a confirmation code.

Due to its popularity and it being a free research preview, you may encounter issues with being unable to sign in or sign up due to servers operating at peak capacity. If this happens, try again shortly as it typically doesn’t remain inaccessible for long.

Before getting down to business, feel free to play around in ChatGPT for a bit. Testing out the technology to find its limitations and see how far it can go can pay off when it comes time to create a prompt for your listing. Since the copy will almost literally write itself, your skill comes not as a writer but as a prompter. The AI-generated copy will only be as good as the prompt you enter.

Take a second to see how ChatGPT responds to vague prompts and how you can be more specific. At this stage of the tool’s development, you’ll likely find there’s a sweet spot between vague and specific that will deliver the best response for what you’re hoping to receive.

Utilizing AI tools for Amazon Listings

Since ChatGPT specializes as an AI language model, it naturally makes sense as a time-saving assistant for writing tasks. While that may not assist with optimizing advertising campaigns or managing inventory (yet), it can save you time and money regarding your Amazon product listing copy.

Your Amazon listing copy serves many purposes, but typically the goals fall under two umbrellas; for SEO visibility and to inform the customer about your product. While ChatGPT won’t check off both boxes to perfection, it can help you save time and tackle most of the basics.

For example, you can prompt ChatGPT to create an Amazon product listing for whatever product you’re selling, and it will provide a solid facsimile of an Amazon product description. You may have to toy around with your prompt and be specific to receive the copy in the desired format.

Before entering the prompt, requests for Amazon product listing copy for teeth whitening strips resulted in a few formats that didn’t match the fields in an Amazon product listing. Once the specifics were included in the prompt, ChatGPT spat out the product description below.

Pretty impressive, right? And it took less than a minute to produce once given the prompt. In essence, the generated copy tackles what teeth whitening strips do. However, you may notice ChatGPT ran with the details quite a bit. The prompt does not mention the number of treatments, ingredients, or price, all directly or indirectly mentioned in the copy. This is where you come in!

The generated copy must be reviewed, edited, and fact-checked to ensure it’s accurate and within Amazon’s Terms of Service. For the teeth whitening strips example, you would want to ensure the treatment details, ingredients, and expectations are accurate to the product you’re selling.

You can enter specifics in your prompt, and ChatGPT will include them in the description. But you may be better served to stick with the generated copy as the technology matures through its infancy. Editing the generated copy may be more straightforward, inserting the product-specific details independently.

Optimizing ChatGPT Copy for SEO

Importantly, ChatGPT doesn’t write for SEO purposes on Amazon. Without access to search volume data from an Amazon-specific search volume tool like Keyword Research, the tool can’t optimize visibility through SEO. For this, you can use Viral Launch’s Listing Builder to cross-reference and edit for maximum visibility.

First, sign in to Viral Launch and open Listing Builder. Next, enter your primary keyword to generate a comprehensive list of keywords for your product.

We recommend skimming through the keyword list and removing any keywords that don’t apply to your product. Keywords like competing brand names, restricted terms, or information that just isn’t accurate for your product, as you won’t want to include them and risk suppressed visibility or lying to customers.

Once you’ve removed unnecessary keywords, copy and paste the copy for your title, bullet points, and product description into the appropriate fields.

Example

The AI-generated product description needs room for improvement but provides a solid start that can be easily optimized with just a few tweaks.

Take a look at your optimization score in the upper right corner. Is there room for improvement? Most likely, yes. From there, find spaces to insert unused keywords into your listing. An easy place to start would be replacing repetitive keywords if synonyms or variations with search volume appear as unused in your listing.

The ChatGPT product description also leaves plenty of space concerning character counts, allowing you to add more copy optimized for search without worrying about losing vital keywords.

After stretching the product title closer to the 200-character limit with the most-searched keywords, the score goes from Mediocre to Exceptional. Also, this is without fully filtering out inapplicable keywords or completing the backend search terms, which would only push the score closer to perfection.

You may need to add a sentence or two to incorporate all keywords, and even move words around to prioritize the title and bullet points due to their higher indexation value. In fact, we highly recommend utilizing all the characters Amazon allows for your product, even if you reach a perfect score with room to spare. In the crowded Amazon marketplace, any opportunity to inform the customer of your product, answer potential questions, and entice the customer to purchase should be used to your full advantage.

Conclusion

ChatGPT offers immense potential to change how we work, but it’s already serving purposes in the business world. While it isn’t a one-stop-shop you can copy and paste without worries, it can save you plenty of time and money spent on a Listing Optimization if you feel confident enough to take these steps.

While this method requires work on your end, it pales in comparison to doing this entire process manually. If you created a listing without ChatGPT, you would’ve had to do these steps on top of the writing process. Or potentially spend hundreds for an SEO expert to handle this for you. Depending on your product and writing experience, utilizing the copy from ChatGPT can easily cut your workload in half.

It remains to be seen how else generative AI applications can streamline an Amazon business. From customer service to Amazon communication, the possibilities appear seemingly endless. Early adopters will likely receive an edge over those arriving late to the AI party. Since Amazon is getting into the generative AI business with Hugging Face, an “Amazon ChatGPT” as some call it, the technology appears to be on the rise and entering the Amazon space.

Consider artificial intelligence as another resource, a new tool in your FBA toolbox. Savvy Amazon sellers comprehend the importance of owning an edge over market competitors. Whether saving money on expenses, expanding your visibility and conversion , or saving time to master other elements of your Amazon business, a tool like ChatGPT can give you that edge to streamline your Amazon success.

Try your hand at creating an optimized listing with ChatGPT and Listing Builder today to boost your visibility and conversions while experiment with a new wave of technology today!

Amazon Product Listings: Can I use a Trademarked Phrase?

“How do I get my product in front of more customers?”

That’s the million-dollar question every Amazon seller should be asking themselves.

As we’ve outlined before, optimizing your product listing remains a foundational building block for maximizing your visibility. And part of optimizing your listing’s copy means utilizing as many keywords as possible that customers use to find products like yours.

You may find competing brand names in your keyword list during the optimization process. Depending on your product, this may be more prevalent than you’d guess.

You may be wondering: “Can I use a trademarked phrase in my Amazon product listing?”

Sometimes, a brand name becomes synonymous with the product, and the brand name becomes a generic term for its market. Think about Kleenex, Velcro, Bubble Wrap, Jacuzzi, Chapstick, Popsicle, and the list goes on and on.

While rare, brand names can rack up significant searches and even become the dominant way customers find products. Data via Keyword Research.

But what do you do when a competitor’s brand name is found in the search terms? Can you include their name somewhere in your listing to index and potentially rank for a recognized competing brand to steal their sales?

These are great questions, and to arrive at these questions means you’ve done your homework on Amazon SEO. One seller in our Facebook group for Amazon sellers asked it this week.

**[Join The FBA Data Hunters Facebook Page]**

So we’re here to shed some light on this intelligent question and clear the air regarding branded keywords.

Can I use a trademarked phrase as a keyword in my listing?

In most instances, the answer is a hard no.

Per Amazon’s Intellectual Property Policy for Sellers, Typically, a seller can use someone else’s trademark in the following circumstances:

When selling authentic goods, a seller may use a trademarked name to list them. For example, a seller who lists an authentic “Pinzon” product is not necessarily infringing on the Pinzon trademark owner because the seller is using the trademark to identify an authentic product.

When using a trademarked word in its ordinary dictionary meaning.

When making truthful statements that a product is compatible with a trademarked product. For example, if you offer a cable that is compatible with the Kindle e-reader, you can use the brand name “Kindle” to indicate that compatibility in the text of your detail page. You cannot use a logo to indicate compatibility, only the brand name. Any statement you make about compatibility must be true. If you want to indicate the compatibility of your product with a product of a different brand in the product title, please build your product title as follows, taking also account of the Amazon Brand Name Policy. If you do not apply this format to your product title, your listing may be removed as potentially trademark infringing.

As Amazon continues to fight against counterfeit products on its marketplace, it has tightened up on the usage of trademarked terms in listings not belonging to the trademark holder.

Violation of these rules opens sellers to warnings, suspension, or a ban from the Amazon marketplace. On the bright side, you can use these same rules to protect your brand from others if you’re enrolled in Amazon’s Brand Registry Program.

What about in the backend search terms?

Still, the answer remains no.

While one might think the backend search terms are the optimal place to index for trademarked terms without confusing a customer as to who the seller is, that is not the case. Amazon finds listings that violate this rule and violators likely face punishment as a result.

In fact, Amazon’s recommended strategy for backend search terms is not to use any brand names.

Can I do anything to gain visibility on trademarked keywords?

Although you can’t use trademarked brands as keywords, there’s a way to potentially earn visibility for a name brand that customers are searching for: PPC advertising.

Keyword targeting allows sellers to appear for search terms that they bid on. Below, you can see how a competitor can sweep in to be prominently displayed in search results for a search for a trademarked product.

An example of how you can gain exposure through a Sponsored Brands ad with a trademarked search term.

However, there are many pros and cons to consider depending on your product, market, and the brand you’d target.

For example, Nike is one of the largest, most recognized brands on the planet and has built strong brand loyalty. So it may be reasonable to believe a customer searching for “Nike shoes” may be looking for a specific Nike product or that they’re dead-set on buying shoes with the famous Swoosh.

It’s also likely this brand had to outbid Nike vendors and major brands like Adidas, Reebok, and so on. Most likely, these ads probably aren’t cheap!

The sneaker market is incredibly competitive and full of industry whales like the brands mentioned above. With the degree of difficulty to consistently rank organically for high-volume search terms, PPC presents the opportunity to compete and even have a positioning advantage over name brands.

Additionally, this particular brand does have one huge selling point over Nike that sellers should consider: price. Certainly, many will breeze right past the ad and scroll down through Nike’s extensive catalog. But others just looking for a comfortable shoe might balk at paying prices up to 4 times that of the brand running the sponsored ad.

Ultimately, these measures will vary from product to product and should be heavily considered if you’re looking into experimenting with this keyword-targeting method.

In Conclusion

So, what’s the answer to: “Can I use a trademarked phrase in my Amazon product listing?”.

No, but with Amazon PPC we can still take advantage of branded keywords!

For the most part, Amazon sellers are limited with options to poach customers from competitors through trademarked terms. However, options exist to gain visibility from searches your rivals generate through their brand.

Do you have any experience with Amazon trademarked terms? Feel free to let us know about your experience in the comments!

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Stand Out From the Crowd With Amazon Product Listing Optimization Scores

By the end 2020’s first quarter, more than half of sales on Amazon’s marketplace were through third-party sellers. It’s grown even more competitive since then, and Amazon product listing optimization is the best strategy for sellers to avoid getting lost in the crowd.

An Amazon listing score is a measure of how well your listing adheres to the keyword strategy that our Keyword Research tool has suggested for your product. The research tool uses search volume directly from Amazon’s data combined with a forecasting formula generated by in-house data scientists for statistics you can trust.

We generate the Amazon listing score by analyzing the keyword list the tool gathers related to the primary keyword you’ve chosen for your product. It’s based on how many of the suggested keywords are in the listing, how keywords with the highest search volume are prioritized by placement, and how many of them are the most relevant.

What’s the Value in an Amazon Listing Score?

The forecasting formula we utilize is proprietary, though it’s based on applied weights in volume, relevancy, priority, and keyword phrasing. This means you can use the Amazon listing score to optimize any listing, at any time, with the highest-quality keywords of the moment.

These three strategies will help you get the most value out of the Amazon listing score:

1. Optimize listings from the start.

The point of Amazon listing optimization is to make your listing eligible for indexing and ranking for a keyword. Optimized listings on Amazon are the most visible ones, and greater visibility is essential for being ranked higher.

Think of your listing’s copy as a foundational piece. Once you’ve successfully indexed for a keyword, you’re eligible to be ranked as you generate sales through keywords, increasing your likelihood of organic sales as your ranking climbs. Enhancing a listing’s keyword ranking also boosts your chances of organic sales by putting your listing directly in front of customers’ eyes (at zero cost).

2. Grab the low-hanging fruit of keywords.

The keyword opportunity score within the Listing Builder and Keyword Research tools will help you find the low-hanging fruit: keywords that receive search volume but are largely neglected.

For example, if you sell first-aid kits, indexing for a niche phrase like “first-aid kit for cars” could be what puts your listing in front of customers. Also, include common phrases in other languages, like Spanish, and common misspellings in the listing’s back-end search terms.

3. Keep listing optimization reader-friendly.

Your product’s Amazon listing score will help you ensure the listing is optimized, but it’s up to you to make it as reader-friendly as possible. Keyword stuffing is a terrible strategy, and Amazon will do its best to weed it out. Amazon listing optimization is both an art and a science. Use marketing-minded language while incorporating the right keywords to masterfully create a listing that’s not only optimized, but also set up specifically to drive sales.

A lot of Amazon sellers rely on trial and error, blindly tweaking their listings’ keywords, copy, or photos without any hard data to back up their decisions. Gain a greater competitive advantage by using keyword research and our Amazon listing score to optimize your Amazon listings with proven, high-quality keywords and phrases.

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!

How To Prepare for the Amazon Policy Crackdown on Product Titles

The title of a product on Amazon carries a lot of weight when it comes to organic rank and click-through rates, and if your listing isn’t in step with the official style requirements, the upcoming Amazon policy enforcement should motivate you to make some changes.

Amazon recently announced that on July 22 it will be “suppressing ASINs from Amazon Search that violate Amazon’s title guidelines.” According to the announcement, the reason behind this new enforcement is that titles that don’t comply with Amazon’s guidelines “result in a poor customer experience.”

As shown in the news release above, the announcement mentions some specific requirements:

No promotional language can be used, such as “free shipping” or “100% quality guaranteed.”
Other examples would be “Best Seller” or “Hot Item.”
No non-readable characters can be used, such as HTML code.
The length of a title can’t exceed 200 characters. Titles must include “product identifying information,” which describes what the product is, such as a garlic press or first aid kit.

Although not mentioned in the announcement, the Amazon Style Guide also contains a number of further requirements, such as prohibiting the use of all caps or special characters (such as ! or $.)

No one wants their business disrupted, so it’s important to understand the effect of what this new level of Amazon policy enforcement may have on your brand, and then take some practical steps to ensure you can maintain your visibility and sales.

What This Means for Amazon Sellers

The most important element of a product listing is its title, and having it optimized for organic search is a vital part of gaining visibility under any conditions.

The “suppression from search” for those who violate the title guidelines is open to interpretation, but the announcement indicates that this suppression would actually be a removal from search entirely.

Amazon mentions that if a product title is penalized, “[o]nce the issue is fixed, we will remove the search suppression and the ASIN will appear back on Amazon search.”

From this statement, the penalization wouldn’t be a matter of your product taking a drop in organic ranking and be languishing many pages deep in a search. It would be an outright elimination from organic search, and the effect on your product’s visibility and sales would bring your business to a halt.

Considering the amount of products that exist in Amazon’s marketplace, how quickly they will be able to roll out this tighter enforcement is uncertain. It likely won’t happen immediately, yet ensuring your title is compliant with the style guide so that your product remains searchable should be your current top priority.

Getting Your Listing Ready for Compliance

To avoid losing visibility, ranking, and sales, we’ve provided a list of crucial steps for becoming compliant with the title guidelines.

In case you aren’t clear on the guidelines or need access to them, we’ve created a downloadable spreadsheet, Amazon Style Guides by Category. It breaks down what the title counts have previously been for each category and provides links to the style guides for each category. The announcement states title character counts cannot exceed 200 characters, so it remains to be seen if certain categories will continue to be limited to 50 characters.

Another requirement in some categories is that businesses must include their brand name in their product titles. Although this helps promote your brand, it essentially restricts the character limit even more, forcing business to balance visibility, precision, and helpful information.

How To Stay Compliant

Before the deadline arrives, follow these five tasks help you stay compliant and avoid any issues:

1. Access your style guide from our spreadsheet and track down the category-specific limitations for your title. Find the exact character count and if you’re exempt from having to include your brand name. Keep in mind that Amazon updates style guides regularly, so be sure to stay up-to-date.

2. Write a new title, staying within the new limit for your category and including your brand name, if required. Our tool Listing Builder can help you quickly devise a new one and move any previous info from your title into your bullet points.

3. Set up organic rank notifications for a particular keyword in Keyword Manager. Go to the Notification Settings, and under Rank Change Notifications, choose to receive messages based on whether the rank increases or drops, or only if it drops. You can then specify how high or low you want the rank positions to be and in this instance you should set wide parameters for the notifications. The tool will then message you if your organic rank changes after the new policy goes into effect. (You can also receive notifications on your Sponsored Rank, as shown in the GIF below.)

4. Set up buy box and Best Seller Rank notifications in Competitor Intelligence for your ASINs. If any changes occur, we send an alert to keep you informed. Using CI, you can track keywords a competitor is targeting and indexed for, and see the keywords’ organic rank. You can then choose to receive change alerts for the keywords’ ranking. This can occur on an hourly basis, as shown below.

5. If notified that your ASIN is affected, implement your new title and bullets to your product listing. After you make this update, Amazon will re-index your listing. As a result, you’ll temporarily see a drop in your organic ranking. But based on your sales history, reviews, and traffic, you’ll see your rank resume its position.

Stay Compliant, Stay Successful

The recent announcement regarding titles has received a variety of different reactions. And many sellers may be asking why it took Amazon so long to enforce its own policy. No matter how you feel, ensuring your title meets Amazon’s policy requirements safeguards your listing. Since visibility remains crucial, avoiding penalization and a loss in visibility helps maintain your sales opportunities.

For any help getting in step with Amazon’s product title guidelines, contact us at service@viral-launch.com. Our team ensures your product listing complies with Amazon’s style guide and remains optimized to increase your visibility, conversions, and business growth.

Amazon Product Photography: What You Need To Know

The saying goes that a picture is worth a thousand words, and it holds true even when it comes to Amazon product photography.

Photos make a much bigger impact on shoppers than even the most eloquently written product description. The majority of information transmitted to the brain is visual, and everything else tends to fall by the wayside. Online shoppers might remember bits and pieces of the information they read, but photos make a lasting impression that keeps them on the page.

Because photos make such a big impact, the internet is overloaded with tons of visual content. This means that to stand out from the crowd, you need to produce unique images that capture the attention of shoppers and help them engage with your product like they would in any store on the shelf.

If you’re thinking about selling on Amazon or have already started and are looking for a way to set yourself apart, product photography is a great place to start. As you begin thinking about the best images to represent your product and brand, here are 5 important things you need to know about Amazon product photography.

1. Types of Product Photography

Many of our more experienced sellers are most likely aware of the types of photos that make up a photo set. But to be sure we’re all on the same page, let’s go over the basics:

Product only images – these are clean-cut images that appear on an all-white background and, as the name suggests, include only the product. Product only images show off the main features and details of the product. Amazon requires that the first image in your set, or the “hero” image, for any product be a product only image. It’s usually a good idea to include more than one of these images in your photo set that shows the product from different angles or even up close, so shoppers get the full effect.

Lifestyle images – this type of photo shows the product in context, placing it in an environment where it would most likely be used. Oftentimes, these photos include models using the product to give it further context. Lifestyle images help shoppers to visualize the product in their own lives, exciting them about the product and nudging them to add to cart.

2. Amazon Product Photography Requirements

For consistency across listings, Amazon does require that all the photos in your set meet a few technical guidelines:

Images must be in TIFF (.tif/.tiff), JPEG (.jpeg/.jpg), GIF (.gif) or PNG (.png) format
Image pixel dimensions of at least 1000 or larger in either height or width is preferred
Images should use either sRGB or CMYK color mode

Hero images have their own specific requirements since they are the first images shoppers see when browsing in the search results. These requirements include:

Photo must be on a plain white background (RGB 255, 255, 255)
Image must not contain extra products that may confuse the shopper
Image should not contain any text or graphics
The product should fill 85% of the image frame
Image should not be an illustration or rendering of the product
Photo should not show any excluded accessories
No logos, watermarks or inset images should be included in the hero image

Secondary images, including feature and lifestyle images, need only follow the technical requirements. Graphics and composite photos can be used on secondary images to further detail product features, but ensure they are not overwhelming or confusing to shoppers.

One other thing to consider is that Amazon displays all images in a square format, regardless of the shape of the original photo. Amazon automatically adds white padding around any long, rectangular photo to make it square. This could make the product appear smaller, making it difficult for customers to get a good view. For this reason, when completing your photography, it’s best to display the item or items in a way that can be easily cropped into a square image.

3. Product Photography Affects Clicks and Conversions

Before you hurry the photography process and upload unprofessional images that don’t adequately represent your product, you may be interested to know that product photography directly affects clicks and conversions. Some shoppers may even consider product photos to be more important in the buying process than spelled-out product information. Good product photography will help boost clicks and conversions by:

Making a good first impression – People form a first impression in a fraction of a second. On Amazon, the hero image is the first thing a shopper sees when browsing. Most shoppers are not choosing which items to click on by reading the title, but are instead making quick decisions based on the images they are seeing.
Engaging customers – A high-quality image will grab the attention of shoppers and make them more likely to stick around on your listing. Photos draw the customer in and encourage them to learn more about your product, which when paired with engaging product information, will nudge them to purchase.
Increasing the perceived quality of your product – Badly lit or unprofessional photos can quickly make your product seem cheap and undesirable. Even if you are selling a high-end product, a grainy product image will bring down the perceived value of your brand and customers will not bother sticking around to learn more.
Reinforcing your branding – Photos should always tie in with your overall branding goal. Generic or photoshopped images tell shoppers nothing about your brand or product. Presenting a cohesive brand across all marketing fronts will reinforce a professional image and make shoppers more confident in purchasing from you.

4. A Good Photo Evokes Emotion

With countless brands and products already available for purchase, online competition is fierce. In order to convert sales, you have to do more than just show your product in good lighting. An effective photography set will also evoke emotions and set a mood that connects with shoppers.

Many of the Amazon product photos do not do their jobs of advancing nonverbal communication. Your product photography should speak to customers and draw them in instead of being just another image they glance at and then ignore. Good photos will inspire shoppers to take action and buy your product.

Raising emotions in shoppers can be achieved by using appropriate lighting, product placement and props in your photography, much like the photos below. These images work to actively engage customers by illustrating how the product should be used. Each of these images sets the mood for the customers. Shoppers can imagine using the product to make a refreshing drink on a hot summer day. And all of this is achieved by utilizing natural light and summertime fruits.

5. Professional Photographers Know Best

While it is possible to create engaging and high-quality product images on your own, a professional photographer will have more experience and the right equipment to get the job done correctly. Especially if you’re working on expanding your business, it’s often best to outsource listing elements like this to the experts. At Viral Launch, our team of photographers has worked with hundreds and hundreds of clients to produce high-quality product photography for Amazon listings.

Viral Launch photographers work directly with clients to ensure images accurately represent the product and the unique branding of each business. If you’re just getting started in the Amazon game or have little to no photography experience, hiring a professional might be the best choice for you. This will ensure you get high-quality photos that work to convert sales.

Build Your Business

Product photography is just one component of a successful Amazon listing. While shoppers base many of their purchase decisions on images, you still need the rest of the components in order to make money. On Amazon, you must do everything well in order to do anything well. Consult with the professionals at Viral Launch to learn more about how photography and listing optimizations work hand in hand to promote sales of your Amazon product. We’re here to help guide you on the path to Amazon success!

5 Data-Based Listing Optimization Tips | Using Data To Improve Your Amazon Listing

Keyword Matter. YOU matter. How you USE a keyword MATTERS. Placement, frequency, plurals, hyphens – there are so many intricacies to keywords and listing optimizations on Amazon, and it’s INCREDIBLY important to get them all right. Getting it right means you’ve checked that box off your list – that you can now focus on improving and implementing changes across other mediums. Getting it wrong means you’ll be fighting an uphill battle until it DOES get fixed. In this episode, we’re breaking down 5, updated, data-driven, data-based simple tips to improve your listing optimizations. These are insights that you can take, and instantly go and implement. We’ve seen conversions increase from following these. So listen in, take notes, and take action. Let’s get started.

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3 Ways To Increase Amazon Sales by Differentiating Your Products

In Amazon’s recent letter to shareholders, the company announced that for the first time ever, “more than half of the units sold on Amazon worldwide were from third-party sellers.” With every passing day, competition on Amazon gets more intense. It may seem like many of the quick-win markets are quickly becoming crowded, but there are often easy opportunities to put new and differentiated products out there that, with a little help, can increase Amazon sales.

In order to stay relevant on the world’s largest ecommerce marketplace, you have to find new ways to differentiate your products while keeping costs low. Whether you’re just sourcing a product or already selling, we’ve got 3 simple tips to help you increase Amazon sales by differentiating your products.

TIP #1 — Before you source, find market gaps to fill

As you narrow down your list of product ideas and hone in on a market, start reading competitor product reviews. You want to identify common complaints and recurring frustrations.

Are most of the products in the market flimsy and cheap? Maybe customers were looking for a different version of the product. Maybe they felt their options were too expensive.

Once you’ve identified a few common complaints, ask your supplier if they can make changes to address these pain points. You’ll want to make sure that any changes to the product are inexpensive and that your costs will still be low enough for you to compete in your market when it comes to price.

In other words, don’t add a $2.00 improvement to a $3.00 product. Keep your costs low while improving on the current best selling products in the market. It could be as simple as choosing a different color or material for your product without even changing the function.

Just make sure that demand for that change is there. Don’t ask your supplier to make you an aquamarine lemon squeezer just because it’s your favorite color. Look at the numbers to make sure they support your decision.

You can use Keyword Research to find if there is demand for these differentiating features. For example, if you search the term iphone case with Keyword Research, you’ll find iphone 6s case blue gets 1,660 exact searches a month and blue iphone 6s case gets 2,494 exact searches a month.

This demonstrates a definite desire for blue iphone cases. But there are only about 2 listings on page 1 for the term iphone case that are blue. With almost 2,500 searches a month, you can probably assume that blue is a desirable color for this product for a portion of the market.

It makes sense to do this kind of research during the sourcing process so that you can evaluate the cost of differentiating a product before you jump into a market. But this is also something you can do once you have a product that is selling. You can always ask your supplier to make small changes to improve your product. This all might seem like nitpicking, but each tweak will help you increase Amazon sales for your products.

TIP #2 — Show shoppers that your product is better with your hero image

Photos are still a differentiator. Until the majority of sellers begin to actually invest in high quality photos, this still remains one of the best ways to differentiate your product.

If nothing else, invest in a few quality studio shots to use for your hero image. Your hero image is the main image for your product – the one that shoppers see on a search result page.

By purchasing a few professional hero images, you can split test them to find the optimal image for you product.

Product photography is extremely undervalued by most FBA sellers but so important to increase Amazon sales. It is the way that people judge your product. Even before they see price, shoppers see your hero image.

Elements of a hero image that gains clicks and conversions:

A spotless, professionally edited, pure white background
Crisp, clean, and accurate portrayal of the product
Expert composition that shows off your product and provides the information shoppers need about what is included

Being informative with your photos does not mean putting text on your images. If you want messaging in your hero image, put it on the packaging for your product. Using text in your main image is against Amazon’s Product Image Requirements, and it clutters the images, making it look tacky and unprofessional.

It’s not always enough to just get shoppers to a product page. Once they are there, use lifestyle images to help shoppers understand how the product is used, what size it is, and how it might look in their day-to-day lives.

Use well-written Amazon SEO copy that helps shoppers understand the benefits of your product. Then, once you’ve convinced a shopper that your product is the best, make sure they have a great experience. Speedy and professional customer response go a long way when questions and complaints come in.

TIP #3 — Expand your product’s visibility with Sponsored Ads

It’s not enough to put a product up on Amazon and just expect it to start selling. Make sure shoppers can find it by running a launch and/or running sponsored ads. Even if you run a launch and are ranking on page one for your main keyword, sponsored ads can help expand your visibility and increase Amazon sales.

You can use Keyword Research to find high-volume keywords that are hyper relevant to your product. Use the keywords that you find to set up broad match campaigns. Let them run for a week or more, and then see which keywords are most profitable for you.

Take the most successful keywords from your broad match campaign and put them into a phrase match campaign with slightly higher bids. Then let it run for another week before you come back and reevaluate. If there are a few keywords that are really performing well, put them into an exact match campaign and increase your bid a little more.

In this way, you can cater your sponsored ad spend so that it is optimized to increase Amazon sales. When you find the best keywords for your product, you can hit the sweet spot of minimal spend and maximum return. A small ad spend can go a long way to increasing your product’s visibility, sales, and overall ranking.

It’s not too late to get into a good market. Find that sweet spot in the market by differentiating your products. Discover the perfect product to sell today with the Viral Launch sourcing software suite.

Breaking Down Amazon Listing Optimization

Every Amazon seller wants to know how to optimize their product listing. Product copy is extremely important. To hit sales targets, you need to get Amazon listing optimization right. Content helps buyers understand the details of your product. And more importantly, it determines how visible your product is to those searching on Amazon.

When it comes to search visibility, here’s what you need to know. Say you’re selling a trash can, and you use the keyword trash can. But you never incorporate the term garbage can. When a buyer searches for garbage can—the word you didn’t include—your product doesn’t appear in their search results. Not because your product isn’t relevant but because you didn’t put that term in your listing. Without a wide enough variety of keywords, you lose out on potential buyers and potential sales.

Including a variety of relevant keywords is vital to your visibility. Basically, your product won’t appear on page one for a keyword that isn’t included in its listing. So, what’s the key to Amazon listing optimization?

Finding the Right Keywords

It’s all about finding the right keywords and being strategic with keyword placement. Strategic placement of a wide variety of keywords improves your chances of indexing and ranking for multiple keywords, not just the obvious ones. This makes your product much easier to find in a crowded marketplace and can also improve your conversion rate.

Using Keyword Research, you can find the most comprehensive set of keywords that are relevant to your product. You’ll see a lot of different metrics for each keyword, including exact and broad search volume, search volume trend lines, and three different scores. You can read more about what each score means here.

We recommend sorting by Priority Score first to get a good list going for your product. Priority Score will show you the most relevant keywords with the highest volume first. Use the checkboxes along the left-hand side of the results table to select the keyword phrases that apply to your product. Then copy the keywords to your clipboard.

Paste your list of keywords into your document of choice, and then go back to Keyword Research. This time sort the keywords by Opportunity Score. Look for high volume words that have a score above 700. Copy the terms that you find to your clipboard, and paste them into your document too.

Expand Your Visibility

Before you begin writing, you should know that Amazon’s search algorithm values unique keywords. This is different than Google SEO, which prefers pages that repeat on one or two main keywords. But on Amazon, having a wide variety and less repetition is the most beneficial approach.

When you construct your Amazon copy, you will naturally repeat some keywords. But if you focus on using a wide variety, you will expand your visibility. Not every shopper will use the same search term, so including a variety helps put your product in front of more buyers.

Once you use a keyword, don’t worry about using it again. For example, if I’m writing a title for a first aid kit, I might start out like this:

Travel First Aid Kit

Now that I’ve used first aid kit in the title, I’m not going to use it again. But if I want to capture the keyword phrase first aid kit for car, I can simply add for car to my title and include the whole phrase.

Travel First Aid Kit for Car

But what if I want to include the phrase first aid kit for kids? Ideally I would use for kids somewhere after the term first aid kit to maintain the phrase order. So for example, with the title I’m building, I might do something like this.

Travel First Aid Kit for Car: Emergency Kit for Kids

Notice how first aid kit and for kids are still in the correct order. You can get the most ranking power when you keep a phrase completely in tact, but you’ll have to make choices about which phrases to maintain and which to split up.

Focus on Amazon Listing Optimization

These difficult choices are why creating an optimized listing that’s still easy for your customers to read is so difficult. And it’s why we offer our copywriting services. Depending on what stage your Amazon business is at, you will want to outsource the actual writing of your listings to a professional copywriter.

There are a lot of moving parts when it comes to writing product copy for Amazon listing optimization. Enlisting the help of someone who has written hundreds of listings ensures these moving parts get put together in a strategic way that maximizes ranking potential.

At the same time, if you’re just starting out and trying to save money, DIYing your listing can help keep costs down. Just make sure that you’re being strategic with your keywords, especially in your title.

The title is the most important part of any listing. Amazon gives weight to the keywords in the title more heavily than anywhere else, and with each sale, the words in your title are fair game for a ranking boost.

You want to have a good combination of high and low volume keywords here while keeping them extremely relevant to your product. You want to be clear on what your product is and what its major features are without making your title a long jumble of keywords. So make sure it’s readable and accurate for your customers.

If you’re looking for all the benefits of Keyword Research but don’t have the time or skillset to write your own listing, let our team of professional copywriters do it for you. You’ll save yourself time and increase the profitability of your FBA business. Whatever you decide, just remember to focus on getting your Amazon listing optimization right.

Optimize My Listing

Amazon Listing Optimization | Drive Keyword Exposure & Sales

Originally Posted: 8/3/2016

“I still work hard to know my business. I’m continuously looking for ways to improve all my companies, and I’m always selling. Always.” – Mark Cuban

Over the last two years we’ve launched over 9,500 products and created hundreds of listings. We track multiple keywords for each listing we promote, which provides us with an incredible amount of data and insight! Here are the major keys to understanding how to optimize your listing for optimal success.

Drive Sales By Ranking For Everything

As we mentioned on a blog post (Product Launches More Effective Than Ever),Amazon’s A9 algorithm is highly (and usually exclusively) favoring the keywords contained in your listing. Sales are still king to achieving keyword ranking, but you must have the relevant keywords within your listing in order to achieve ranking for them.

There have been a number of instances in which a seller launching a product through our system, comes to us because they are not seeing their targeted keyword increasing in the search rankings. When we investigate, we discover they didn’t have one of the targeted keywords anywhere in their listing.

That sounds like a no brainer, but when you consider the fact that there are many possible search terms possibly related to your product, hitting each one can be a daunting task. Amazon is cracking down on listings not adhering to character limit specifications, making it even more difficult to hit all those possible search terms.

For example, if you don’t have the keyword “best” in your listing (preferably your title), then your listing may not show up when potential customers search “best grill gloves”, or “best gloves for grilling”, etc..

Word forms, tense, and pluralization all play a factor in how your product performs in search.

Placement also plays a factor. With that said, it is worth mentioning that our data, has shown a decrease in the degree to which Amazon weights the keyword placement.

The upside to the complexities of building an Amazon listing is that if your listing is well optimized, promotions and/or organic sales can help you rank for an insane number of keywords.

Here is an example of a launch we ran for a customer in the mid-high competition supplement market targeting just one keyword. Because his listing was well optimized, you can see he was able to achieve keyword ranking for 10 competitive keywords!

If your listing is not well optimized, you’re missing out on the opportunity of ranking for many more keywords! That means you are also missing out on sales!

Optimize Content For Conversions

Once your product is ranking in search and customers are clicking on it, you have to be able to convince them to buy! What is the point in ranking if you are not able to drive sales?

Truly great listings are able to synergistically marry keywords with sales inducing language.

Your content has to be well poised to convince the potential customer that your product is exactly what they are wanting to buy.

After writing hundreds of listings, we’ve developed a series of best practices that help us create the best listings on Amazon. In our listing optimizations, not only do we provide the keyword driven and sales inducing content, but our branding expert also conducts a product presentation analysis that offers tremendous insight into how customers perceive your product and brand from an outsider’s perspective.

As Amazon becomes more and more competitive, you HAVE to do everything extremely well in order to compete let alone survive. We want you to prosper! So we’ve put together an extremely talented team that can help you go above and beyond your competitors and take your sales to a new level!

We would love to help improve your sales by increasing your listing’s potential keyword exposure and sellability, so we have a 50% off discount, but only for the next 24 hours!

Coupon: LAUNCHMYLISTING

Link: HERE!

We will be back tomorrow with another great deal!

Wishing you the best in all your entrepreneurial endeavors

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Amazon Product Launches More Effective Than Ever