Listing Optimization: Things Amazon Seller Must Aware About

Listing Optimization

There are a number of sources of data available within Seller Central that can be used to improve the listing quality of your catalog. For many sellers, the process of building and optimizing listings is a one-time deal, as they understandably turn their focus to other operational matters.

1. Use the Sponsored Product Ad campaign reports.

A significant opportunity, however, lies in using the reports from the Sponsored Product ad campaigns.

                                                    

In these reports, you can see the exact keywords that were connected to Amazon customers buying your products.

By examining these reports periodically (specifically for automatic targeting campaigns), you’ll find that there are keywords leading to sales that you never anticipated being effective.

Lifting those terms directly into your generic keywords will improve the SEO discoverability of your listings. I encourage sellers to repeat this process every three months to make sure that customers’ behavior specific to certain words haven’t changed.

And with the generic keyword capacity for words now much larger than ever before, there is room to add many more keywords and get click benefit through SEO rather than paid efforts.

2. Include answers to previous product inquiries on your product page.

It’s also worth paying special attention to the inquiries that you get from Amazon customers.

If customers are asking product-specific questions, addressing these issues in your product detail page content is likely to improve customer conversation over time.

For too many Amazon sellers, the customer inquiry process doesn’t include an indexing of questions and answers back to specific SKUs, thereby causing a seller to lose out on known product clarifications or embellishments that are needed.

3. Ask for the category listing report.

I’m a big fan of the “Category Listing Report,” a report available in the Inventory Reports section, but only when requested through Seller Support.

                                              

This report will recreate your product listings’ flat file, making it much easier for you to identify any data gaps in your listings (including missing bullet points, generic keywords, improper tax codes, etc.).

While you request this report for only a finite period (i.e., seven days, 30 days), it’s worth pulling this report at least quarterly to make sure your product listings contain all of the necessary data you believe they should.

Operations

And now the biggest category of all. Managing the operations of an Amazon seller business is the most time-consuming part of every seller’s day.

Too many sellers don’t focus on the right activities, leading them to work too hard to make Amazon money.

1. Returns.

Do you have a clear process for handling returns efficiently?

Do you have a way of testing or grading returns, upgrading packaging where needed, and recovering as much revenue as possible by making these items sellable again on Amazon (or some other channel, as needed)?

For too many sellers, handling returns is something done at the end of the month when they have time, rather than something that is managed strategically through analytics and continuous improvement.

Yes, returned products aren’t likely to be 100% recoverable as new condition products.

However, if you carefully track the return rate of each SKU, the recovery rate of each SKU (i.e., what proportion of expected new-condition revenue you actually recover from each SKU), and which products are most likely to be returned damaged by customers, you can identify which products you need to remove from your active catalog.

You’ll also identify with which products and brands you may need to negotiate a returns allowance with your suppliers/distributors/brands.

Once you have this data in hand, you’ll be surprised to discover just how much financial loss you incur because of high return rates and high write-down/write-off costs.

Some of the best sellers on Amazon know, for each SKU, exactly where to sell returned products to get the highest recovery rate.

It’s worth talking with other sellers to figure out if you are unknowingly leaving a lot of money on the table by mishandling returned products, or if you are appropriately managing returned products as a core part of your overall seller business.

2. Duplicate listings from competitors.

Duplicate listings on Amazon can be an effective way for competitors to divert traffic away from your product listings back to theirs. At least once a quarter, it’s worth searching the whole Amazon catalog for duplicate listings of your items.

Tools like Junglescout.com and Synncentric.com can help you compile all of the listings for your brand across the Amazon catalog.

If you find other listings of the same products, consider filing tickets with Seller Support to get duplicate listings merged.

And, if the duplicate listings were created maliciously by sellers using incorrect data (e.g., irrelevant UPCs or incorrect brand names), it may be worth also filing tickets reporting violations against those sellers.

I have seen far too many sellers confused about why their sales are dropping on top-selling items, only to find that the sales are being diverted to a duplicate listing newly created by a coy competitor.

3. Inventory management skills are required.

Inventory management skills require constant refinement on Amazon, whether it’s actively addressing soon-to-be stale inventory or rebalancing products based on changing customer preferences. While I see most sellers ramping up inventory levels for the holiday shopping season, few sellers stock up enough products to cover most of January as well.

                                                

Often this leads to unnecessary stock-outs caused by higher-than-expected demand in December or inadequate time to replenish in early January when your suppliers are closed for the holidays.

Either way, I like to see sellers planning their holiday shopping inventory levels in such a way that they potentially overstock a little bit for January and February, thereby giving themselves some breathing room during those busy months.

Such an approach is especially relevant for products that are expected to continue driving meaningful sales after December.

4. Test-buy your competitors.

Test-buying your competitors’ products on Amazon is a simple way to figure out what your competitors are up to, particular with regard to how they package product, follow up with customers via email and handle customer returns (if needed).

While you and your competitors may be selling the same products, there are likely some aspects of your competitors’ overall offering that you can learn through periodic test buys.

5. Plan for Pricing and Procurement.

Finally, with so many changes to competitors and prices on Amazon, I have watched too many sellers be slow in planning how to evolve their catalogs over the next three to six months.

Sellers should, at least once a month, focus a few days on the procurement of new selection, as some portion of their existing catalog will likely become unprofitable or below an acceptable margin threshold, leading to a need for better use of capital on other product selection.

This is particularly the case for resellers that don’t have exclusive sourcing relationships.

It’s only a matter of time before some competitor with a lower margin threshold starts selling the same product, and makes your offers unsellable.

While a brand may think it has decent control of its distribution, Amazon is a very efficient marketplace for gray-market or diverted product to surface, leading you to find that you have to cut your prices just to match some new entrant.

For private-label sellers on Amazon, remember that your product sales successes on Amazon are an invitation for the next private-label seller to copy your product and make a lower-priced version; so keep evolving and stay nimble.

The active catalog you have today isn’t likely to be as profitable or relevant six to 12 months from now.