Amazon Retail Readiness: How to Optimize Your Amazon Listing

Whether you are a new or experienced seller on Amazon, it’s important to check in with yourself about your product and its retail readiness. Although you can do a retail readiness ‘audit’ at any point, it’s especially crucial to optimize your amazon listing as much as possible before you launch any kind of advertising campaign.

Before you invest time, money, and resources into a product promotion campaign, you have to check to make sure your product is actually ready to be received by a wider audience. Putting in some effort now will help ensure good ad placement and consistent SERP (search engine results page) results.

To understand how you can optimize your Amazon listing, we’ll first go through what it means to be retail-ready. Then, we’ll walk you through the steps you can take to optimize your listing!

What is Retail Readiness?

We’ve all seen listings that appear shabby and unprofessional. On the other hand, some listings are clear, precise, and beautiful. The latter type of product listing is what we refer to as ‘retail ready.’ This means that all the necessary information is there and that every component of the product display page is presented in a way that customers will understand and appreciate.

Retail readiness can be detected by Amazon, so if you launch a product before it’s considered retail ready, you’ll basically be wasting all of the money you spend on the ad campaign.

Why is retail readiness important?

Ensuring good retail readiness for each product helps bring in traffic and potential buyers. A product that isn’t retail ready, on the other hand, might attract some traffic early on, but it’s unlikely to catch on and gain any significant amount of success.

With online shopping, buyers have to rely on the information provided on the landing page. This includes images, product details, pricing, shipping, product title, and more. A buyer will do their best to assess a product’s quality, and they’ll be unlikely to buy something if information is missing or if images are unclear.

Before you go and spend valuable money on an ad campaign, you should make sure that your product landing page has everything a customer needs for a smooth experience. Then, with an optimal Amazon listing, you can work hard to build traffic and bring in shoppers with the help of things like the right keywords and ad placement.

To optimize your amazon listing, you should first understand in what order a shopper gathers details about a product:

• Title

• Pictures

• Product description

• Key features in bullet point form

• Product reviews/ratings

All four of these factors are incredibly crucial to retail readiness. If any of these are missing, your success as a seller will suffer. Amazon’s A10 algorithm can detect poor performance in this regard, and your product page might suffer in its SERP’s. Not only will you lose out on ranking, but you’ll struggle to get the rankings back up.

You should also realize that a product’s images are arguably the most important factor in drawing people in. Although we’ll get into more of this shortly, keep this in mind as you think about your product’s retail readiness.

How to Optimize Your Amazon Listing

you should now have some understanding of retail readiness and how it can affect your success as an Amazon seller. Whether you’re a new seller or an experienced one, or whether you’re listing a new product or revamping an older one, you should regularly do an audit of your products and optimize anything you can.

Luckily, these steps are simple. Although they require some effort initially, trust us when we say that doing these things will pay you back ten-fold in the long run!

1. Product Title

Optimizing your product title is all about sharing critical information for optimal search results as well as customer interaction. The first thing a potential buyer will notice, even before they go to the product landing page, is the product title. The title should be clear, concise, and accurate and tell the customer exactly what you are selling.

Avoid ‘explaining’ your product in the title (this can be saved for later). Also avoid throwing a bunch of keywords into the title, because it might hide the information the customer is looking for. Not to mention that lengthy titles just look awkward and often don’t format very well.

A good product title will attract customers and improve your organic rankings. Here are a few key things to focus on:

• Follow standard capitalization rules: capitalize every word except conjunctions, articles, and prepositions

• Never capitalize all words or all letters; this looks awkward

• Try to keep the meat of the title (if not the entire title) within 80 characters

• Include your primary keyword

• Determine if you need to include other critical information such as packaging, quantity, size, or material

• For measurements, include the word (ex: 2 feet as opposed to 2’)

2. Product Images

Besides the titles, product images are not only one of the first things a customer notices, but one of the most important ones. It’s crucial to provide clear images (and more than one!) that depict your product accurately. A customer is unlikely to buy a product if they can’t tell from the pictures what it really looks like.

Keep in mind, a customer can’t touch or feel a product like they can in a physical store, so images are the closest they have to a sensory experience. In fact, around two-thirds of online shoppers confirm that images are “very crucial” for choosing to buy a product. Your product photography should be done professionally.

• Present high-quality product images (sharp and high resolution images are best)

• Shoot photos in bright, natural lighting

• Shoot photos with a white background when possible

• One or two images can be an infographic about the product, highlighting its key features

• Upload six unique images (more is better!)

3. Bullet Points

Amazon introduced the concept of bullet points to present critical information to the buyer in an easy-to-read format. Rather than reading paragraphs of information, the reader can skim quickly and thoroughly without missing any important details. Optimized product pages have clear, concise, and helpful bullet points.

Above all else, these bullet points should serve to tell your customer what the benefits of your product are. The bullet points should be easily noticeable with an option to expand and read more if necessary. When done properly, good product bullet points improve your product’s discoverability!

Product bullet points prevent a shopper from being overloaded with information or technical data. In addition, these bullet points should let the buyer know how useful the product will be for them and if it fits their needs. You shouldn’t feel like you need to attract every customer, rather attract the ones that will really benefit from your product. The bullet points should be convincing enough to lead to a purchase.

• Amazon limits every product to 5 bullet points, so use the section wisely

• Each bullet point is limited to 500 characters, but you should do your best to stay well within that limit to avoid content overload

• Bullet points are a good place to list your product’s key features in order of relevance

• You can add your secondary keywords here, but avoid awkward sentences

• Write in brief sentence format without too much punctuation

• Avoid spelling and grammatical errors! Sentences should be clear and neat

• Include all important product details here: size, material, dimensions, quantity, etc.

• Avoid redundancy; don’t add pricing, shipping, or promotion details here

4. Product Description

Your product description section is a great place to let your buyer know what you are all about and how your product can help them. For example, here you can add beautiful infographics to emphasize your brand’s identity, ethics, and story. You can also provide more story around the product itself, such as how it can solve a customer’s particular problem!

An optimal product listing has a beautiful product description that is more like a story rather than boring info or data. Try to connect to the emotional side of your product here instead.

• Include some keywords for optimization, but keep the description informal and natural-sounding

• Use this section to further describe your product and its benefits

• You can include product descriptive features (size, color options, etc.)

• Add some information about your brand or company here

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5. Product Availability

A product listing is not optimal if inventory is low or unstocked. In fact, inventory should be one of your top priorities at all times as an Amazon seller, because without it your seller rating will drop and your spot in SERP will fall as well.

Not only is product inventory critical for your performance in Amazon’s eyes, but customers are likely to be disappointed if the product listing says “1 left in stock.” Even worse, when products are out of stock entirely, customers are likely to form a bad impression of you and may not return to you in the future.

To keep your listing optimized and to ensure excellent rankings, make sure to update and keep your FBA inventory fully stocked.

• Keep your inventory stocked at all times

• Anticipate higher order volumes during particular seasons or sales events, and stock accordingly

• Keep track of your inventory and do a regular audit

6. Customer Reviews & Ratings

You can’t always control when a customer is dissatisfied with your product, but you can do everything you can to ensure good ratings as much as possible. Product reviews are critical to your success on Amazon because 90% of online shoppers make a purchase only after checking reviews!

Even before you launch your product to a wider audience, you should do some testing with a select audience and kindly ask them to leave their honest reviews. You should never force anyone to leave a review, good or bad. Not only does that create a bad seller image, but it is highly frowned upon by Amazon and can result in Account Suspension.

• Never force customers to leave reviews

• Never demand positive reviews; you can only ask for honest reviews

• Ensure excellent product quality at all times and low defective rates

• Offer excellent customer support; satisfied customers are more likely to leave positive reviews

• Aim for at least a rating of 3.5 or more

• Before launching, aim for at least 15 honest, verified reviews from real customers

7. Winning the Buy Box

Before you set out to launch an extensive ad campaign, it’s important to win the Buy Box. This is the white box on the right-hand side of a product landing page, where a customer can directly check out a product or add it to their shopping cart.

Winning the Buy Box requires you to have a high seller rating, which can be achieved through a number of steps:

• Maintain product inventory

• Ensure fast and easy shipping (and free if possible)

• Keep your ratings high and positive (provide excellent customer service)

• Reprice your product as needed to stay competitive

• Sign up for FBA (Fulfilled By Amazon)

Losing out on the Buy Box makes it difficult to run an effective ad campaign because your product will be less likely to be selected by the customer. Find out more about how to win the Buy Box in 2022 here!

8. Enhanced Brand Content (EBC)

To make your product truly retail-ready, it’s important we talk about Enhanced Brand Content (EBC), which can increase your conversion rates from 8% to as much as 20%!

EBC is an option available from Amazon to all sellers, and it can help sellers customize and build a truly positive experience for customers. Also known as A+ content, EBC can really help you engage with customers by providing informative and beautiful images, answer questions, and promote your product.

• Provide only high-quality HD images

• Add concise, informative rich text

• You can use this space to highlight your brand’s story

• Add some information about the product that will make a customer want to go to its landing page

How Do I Know When My Product is Retail Ready?

The retail readiness audit provided in this article should drastically help you determine if your product is retail ready or not. If you’re still unclear, ask other sellers, friends, or even customers to give you feedback about what you need to work on.

You can use these questions to help you pinpoint things to work on:

• Is the product title concise, easy to read, and accurate?

• Are there multiple high-quality images of the product in different angles?

• Does the product landing page have clear and helpful bullet points?

• Is the product description aesthetically pleasing and informative?

• Is there enough product stock?

• Are there any product reviews, and if so, are they positive?

• What is the seller’s customer service like?

• Is this product selected for the Buy Box?

• Is the product price competitive enough?

• How fast can the product be shipped?

• Is it worth investing in Enhanced Brand Content?

My Product is Retail-Ready: What Now?

If you’ve done everything you can to ensure a retail-ready product listing on Amazon, it’s time to take the next step and try to find a wider audience! Keep in mind that running an ad campaign is basically worthless if your product isn’t deemed retail-ready first.

If you’re still certain that your product passes the Amazon retail readiness check, then it’s time to draw traffic! You can run your own ads or promotions, or alternatively you can work with us to do all of the hard work for you. Try to determine an ad budget ahead of time so that you don’t spend more money than you’re able to or willing.

Good luck, and let us know if you have any questions in the comments below!