Improve your click through rate (CTR) today.
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Raise your hand if you’ve ever felt personally victimized by Amazon? You create a listing, follow all of the rules, work tirelessly to attract buyers, and as a result … you make a few sales each day. Great.
You just cannot figure out how to drive more clicks to your listing, and it kind of makes you feel like Amazon is out to get you. We’ve been there, too.
But here’s the good news: there are steps you can take to increase clicks and sales. With the right strategy, you’ll be selling better than ever before. We’ll go through 5 ways to increase your click through rate, and by the time we’re through, you’ll know exactly what to do to drive more traffic to your listing.
Sell FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon)
Although Amazon does not release Prime membership numbers, Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, LLC is able to make estimates based upon its regular analyses of Amazon shopper patterns. In June of 2016, the company estimated there are about 63 million Prime members, which is 52% of Amazon’s total customers.
Over half of Amazon shoppers are Prime shoppers. And what do prime shoppers look for? You got it: the Prime logo. They want fast, free shipping. If you’re selling FBM (Fulfilled by Merchant) and are not eligible for Amazon Prime, you’re potentially missing out on half of the people shopping on Amazon. Those shoppers don’t want to wait around for 5-7 days on top of the shipping charge they’ll pay.
Additionally, Prime members spend more annually … about twice as much to be precise. If your listing is just as good as your competition, but a Prime member can get your competition’s product in two days with free shipping, it’s an easy decision for that shopper.
Allowing Amazon to fulfill your orders for you will put you in a better position to grab more buyers simply because you’re filling the free two-day shipping criteria for over half of Amazon shoppers.
Shoppers can even filter search results to only show Prime products. Don’t miss out on those buy-ready shoppers looking for your exact product!
Check out this infographic covering FBA vs FBM to determine which fulfillment method is right for you.
Find Your Most Profitable Price Point
Price is a major factor for driving clicks to your listing. Changing your price will impact your click through rate, which in turn will increase or decrease overall sales.
If your product is priced at $29.99, while every other product on page one is around the $19.99 mark, it’s likely that you won’t drive tons of clicks relative to competitors. It goes the other way too; a product at $10.99 on the same search result page may come across as too cheap (not to mention you might be an add-on item or start a price war with competitors).
You want to keep a competitive price on your product, but you want a price that is going to make people click and ultimately purchase. Often, click and conversion rates can vary greatly between ending the price in $.95 and $.99, or between $19.99 and $20.99. You want to find that sweet spot – the optimal price that is driving clicks and sales.
As an example, one seller used Viral Launch’s Split Testing tool to analyze the change in sales and conversions at different price points. By changing her price from $34.95 to $33.99, she saw a major increase in click and conversion rate, which would equate to over $6,500 more each month in sales!
You could be missing out on clicks and conversion because your price is a dollar off. Split test your Amazon product price to increase your clicks and conversions, ultimately driving more traffic to your listing.
Use a Stellar Hero Image
Product photography plays a major role in helping a shopper determine pretty quickly whether or not they want to buy your product. Your hero image, or the main image that shows up for your product in search results, is the most important image in your photo set. A buyer will largely determine whether or not he wants to learn more about your product from this image.
As a shopper, you wouldn’t want to buy a product with a hero image that looks like it’s been taken by some schmuck in his basement with an iPhone 4. These types of photos don’t help explain what the product is and does, and they certainly don’t connect with the shopper.
The photo above likely won’t draw clicks as well as if the seller would invest in a solid hero image, like that of a similar product:
If you’re wanting to take your listing to the next level and aren’t sure where to invest, your photos are a great place to start. Your product photography set needs to:
- Tell a story.
- Build an emotional connection.
- Accentuate all the product’s features.
Bettering your photos will increase your product’s perceived value and instill consumer confidence in your brand’s quality. With a professional, descriptive hero image, you’ll entice buyers to click and learn more about your product.
We highly recommend split testing your photos to see how shoppers are responding to different images. Changing your hero image could result in a sizable increase in clicks, and therefore overall sales.
Increase Your Reviews
Since Amazon banned incentivized reviews back in late 2016, reviews are difficult to gather. And with the new option for shoppers to opt out of Seller Feedback, the pool of potential reviewers is shrinking. However, reviews are more important than ever for competing with top sellers.
Social proof on Amazon is everything. Shoppers trust other shoppers.
Work hard at gathering as many reviews as you can. You’re going to drive more traffic to your listing with 300 reviews than you will with 3 reviews (everything else the same). Implement a high-conversion email follow-up sequence, run sponsored ads, drive external traffic… Do what you have to do within Amazon’s ToS to increase your reviews. You’ll find that shoppers are more likely to click and purchase when other people have done the same thing and responded positively in the past.
Earn a Badge
Having a Best Seller Badge serves as a sort of social proof, similar to reviews. When shopping on Amazon, people are looking for high-quality, low-price items. The best seller badge helps immediately show that this product is trusted by many shoppers, which communicates quality. It also appeals to our “follow the herd” mentality. “This must be good if everyone else is buying it.”
How do you get the best seller badge? Well, be the best seller 🙂 One simple way is to find a relevant niche category within your main category that sees a smaller average number of sales than the large category. Outselling the top seller in a smaller category makes it easier to obtain the badge. But, be careful not to remove your product from its main category when finding a niche subcategory. This will do a lot more harm than good. Learn more about the importance of categories in Amazon’s search results here.
The Amazon’s Choice Badge will also help to drive clicks, since Amazon is confirming the product’s value to shoppers. But unlike the Best Seller Badge, the Amazon’s Choice Badge is awarded by Amazon. Amazon selects products for this badge based on a variety of factors, ranging from rating to shipping speed.
Because of all the variables involved, it’s difficult to determine which badge has the greatest impact on clicks/conversions. But, with either badge, you’ll instill confidence in shoppers and increase your sales.
Capitalize on Your High Click Through Rate
Now you’re optimized for clicks. Woohoo! Time to capitalize with a promotion.
Increasing the visibility of an optimized listing will result in even more clicks and more sales.
Many Amazon shoppers don’t search past page one or two because they find what they’re looking for early in the search results, and they think the best products are listed first by default. Because of this shopper behavior, most sales on Amazon come from page one products.
If your product is on page 4, 5, 6, 25 … for your major keywords, you’re not being seen by the very shoppers who are searching for your product!
A product launch drives sales to your listing to increase your visibility for major keywords. When your product is in front of more shoppers, you have more opportunity for increased customer interaction. And with a listing that is optimized for clicks and sales, you’ll be in the best possible position to claim your market share.
Questions or comments on our 5 ways to drive more clicks to your Amazon listing? We’d love to hear from you in the comments below.
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Related: The Limitation of Conversion Rate on Amazon
6 Amazon Keyword Research Tips from a Listing Specialist
Check out Market Intelligence, the most sophisticated Amazon product research tool