Cracking the Code: Proven Techniques for Effective Amazon Listing Optimization - Part 1 CTR

In the competitive world of e-commerce, standing out on Amazon is crucial for success. With millions of products vying for attention, optimizing your product listings becomes a vital strategy to increase sales and improve visibility through SEO. In this comprehensive guide, we will delve into the key aspects of listing optimization on Amazon, equipping you with the knowledge and techniques to excel in the marketplace.

Understanding why listing optimisation matters

Before we delve into exactly what we need to do we should understand why we need to do it and what it actually means. Listing optimisation is the process of improving your listing for a specific purpose, usually sales or SEO, which are almost one and the same, check out the full breakdown on SEO here https://www.amzppc.co/post/seo-how-to-rank-number-one-in-amazon

Sometimes listing optimisation can be needed to reduce returns due to educating buyers or even to upsell other products, so don't limit yourself to thinking it's just conversion rate. That being said, in this post, we're going to focus primarily on the conversion and clickthrough rate side because that is universal whereas the others are situational.

Clickthrough rate

We're going to start with clickthrough rate (CTR) because this is the simplest. We should begin this by understanding what factors can actually have an impact on the CTR and then we'll look at best steps to improve them. Here's a fully exhaustive list of the factors impacting your clickthrough rate.

1. Main image
2. Title
3. Pricing
4. Reviews
5. Prime or not
6. Badges

Let's go through these one by one and the best practices for each.

Main Image

The main image should be a clear shot of the product on a white background. Ideally, you want to fill as much of the space as you can, it should be high resolution so when someone hovers a mouse it's zoomable, at least 1000 pixels on each side.

Filling the maximum amount of space is key here

Do you see how the Amazon's Choice product shows two variations to take up maximum space on the image whereas the other image has huge amounts of blank space on either side of it? Tricks like this can help you fill up more space and get your product noticed. Sometimes Amazon will not always accept a product with the packaging behind it so please check the exact rules at the time of uploading, but in general, the more space you fill the better.

Title

Your title is your opportunity to give a reason why your product is different and what features it has that make it stand out. Take advantage of this. It is also a key area for placing high value keywords as this seems to be a significant factor in determining relevancy. Logically it fits that keywords found in the title are very relevant to the product so you want to take advantage of this too. Therefore your title should be a blend of selling your best features and hitting major keywords.

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Below is the title of one of the top ranking, best-selling shaker bottles in Europe. Notice how there is a balance between hitting important keywords like shaker bottle, protein shaker and protein shaker bottle as well as noting its features, lifetime durability, leakproof, size, etc.

Promixx Pursuit Protein Shaker Bottle - Premium Shaker for Protein Shakes - Lifetime Durability, Leakproof, Odourless - 950ml / 32oz (Graphite Gray)

Compare this to their competitor. Notice how much less readable it is for a human, it's all keywords with little to no mention of features and how it might stand out from any other competitor. This is typical of a product just competing on price, which is not something I would ever rely on.

VOLTRX Shaker Bottle, Gallium USB C Rechargeable Electric Protein Shake Mixer, Shaker Cups for Protein Shakes and Meal Replacement Shakes, BPA Free, Made with Tritan, 24oz

You can go too far down the feature path into something like the below. But even this converts incredibly well because it sounds so interesting, so if in doubt lean more towards selling to real people and improving your conversion rate. Since A10 kicked in a while ago these products are outperforming the keyword stuffers like Vortrx from what we've seen.

Hidrate Spark PRO Smart Water Bottle – Tracks Water Intake with Bluetooth, LED Glow Reminder When You Need to Drink – Chug Lid, 21oz, Brushed Steel

Pricing

Pricing is always going to be a factor. Cheaper products will almost always get more clicks and more sales because everyone is looking for a bargain. There's not so much you can do about this as your pricing is somewhat dictated by the market but running deals is a great way to increase CTR because your product appears to be only available for a limited time driving a level of scarcity.

Reviews

Reviews are the lifeblood of a product. 1000+ good reviews and your CTR and conversion rate (CVR) are going to be great. If you hit 4 star for lower, you'll always have a hard time bringing customers in. The question is how can you attain more? I'm writing a full post about this very soon but there are a few options, the simplest of which is to setup a review follow up system using helium 10 or similar software. These will email reminders to customers

Prime Or Not

I've talked about the benefits of being on prime at length in the SEO post here https://www.amzppc.co/post/seo-how-to-rank-number-one-in-amazon

The simple answer is get a prime badge and your sales will increase by at least 50%.

Badges

Small business, climate pledge, limited time deal, amazon's choice, best seller and so on. All of these are going to help your CTR in one way or another so the more you can collect the better. Each of them have their own criteria, some of them are pretty straightforward, the best seller badge means you have a BSR of 1 in a specific category for example. Whereas amazon's choice is very much guesswork as to how you obtain it, generally high selling products that are cheaper tend to win it though. The small business and climate pledge badges will require certain criteria and potentially certifications to be passed so do your research into what's needed in your specific marketplace.

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Key Takeaways

There are six areas you can optimise to improve your listing's clickthrough rate and you should be working on all of them to achieve the maximum efficiency on your account, otherwise you're simply wasting traffic and therefore sales. Follow the best practices laid out here, make your listing stand out from the crowd and before you know it your organic sales will be doubling.