In Part 2, we talked about the four ways to sell on Amazon on how to find a winning product to sell. Our final piece to the puzzle is the product listing.

To master Amazon, you have to have a thorough understanding of how this works.

Let’s go over some of the basics.

1. Title

This one doesn’t need much of an explanation. It’s the name of the product/product listing, so it should quickly and clearly convey to shoppers what it is.

When you create a product listing, it’s critical that you do thorough keyword research so that you can include the top keywords people are most likely to use to find your product. Just your brand name is not enough.

2. Bullet Points

As of right now, you can add up to five bullet points to your product listing, highlighting some of its key features. While you do have up to 500 characters (although it varies by category), Seller Central suggests keeping it short but descriptive.

The best practice approach with bullet points is to describe the main features and benefits of the product.

3. Buy Box

When Frank Sinatra sang, “I think of you day and night, night and day,” he was probably talking about the Amazon buy box. This is it. This is where all the magic happens.

The buy box carries important information like the current price of the product, whether or not it’s Prime eligible, who is selling and fulfilling it, and the buttons for shoppers to add it to their cart or buy it.

Only one seller can have the buy box at a time, which means if it isn’t you, you aren’t selling much of anything.

As you continue learning how to sell on Amazon, don’t be surprised when you come to eat, think, sleep, and live all things buy box. You’ll be obsessed with how to win it and how to hang on to it.

4. Reviews and Ratings

If you hover over the stars, you’ll see the exact rating the product currently has. Next to that is how many customer reviews it has. You can click this and it’ll take you lower on the page to read them.

Note that these reviews and ratings reflect the product — not the seller. (That would be seller feedback.)

If you’re selling a product that doesn’t already have a large number of reviews, you’ll want to collect the maximum number of product reviews possible. It’s critical that you put an email follow-up system in place and set it to send out a message after a sufficient number of days have gone by. In the message, you should ask how the customer’s experience with the product has been and if they would like to come and leave a review.

5. Other Sellers

This link will take you to a list of all the other sellers listed on this product page. This is your competition — although to be clear, while shoppers can buy from them, the odds are that they’ll go with whoever’s in the buy box.

Don’t Forget the Product Description

This is further down on the page, and it’s where you can add additional information that didn’t end up in the bullet points.

In the product description area, Amazon allows you to use something called in Enhanced Brand Content (EBC). This is a very valuable piece of real estate when it comes to telling the story of your brand. Thanks to EBC, you can use rich content that’s full of images and text, and it’s highly recommended that you do so.

Why Should You Care About All of This?

An Amazon product page doesn’t exist just to look pretty, although that’s part of it. It’s a living, breathing organism.

People use Amazon like a search engine, like Google. Whether or not you show up on page one of search results depends on a number of factors — primarily sales and also the click-through rate. You know what else matters?

Relevancy.

If your page isn’t relevant to a search query and it needs to be, you won’t see the sales roll in.

That being said, it’s not like you easily have 100% control of what a product page looks like. Even if it’s a private label product that you created the listing for, anyone can hijack it, unless you took some precautions, like a trademark and brand registry.

The point is this: you should do everything in your power to make your page as relevant for important search queries as possible.

Before we wrap this up, I want to leave you with a few additional tips. These are the most common mistakes I see other sellers making. Not only are they bad for business, but they could get you banned on Amazon. And once Amazon throws you in jail, good luck getting out.

Tanking the Price Just to Win the Buy Box

We’ve already covered this but it bears repeating. Don’t be that guy. Just don’t.

Trolling Competitors’ Pages

If you want to get busted big time, this is a surefire way to do it. Sellers will leave negative product reviews on competitors’ pages to bring down their ratings and hurt sales. Believe me: this can land you in hot water.

Creating a New Product Page Instead of Listing Yourself on an Existing Page

It’s actually against Amazon Terms of Service to create multiple listings for the same product. But sometimes, a seller just doesn’t know any better. Other times, they think they’re going to bypass all the competition on an existing product page by creating their own.

The problem is that all of the traffic is going to the current page — which you’re not on.

Not Optimizing Your Listing

If you’re not optimizing your listing with keywords and filling the page out in its entirety, you’re missing opportunities to get traffic and sales.

On a related note, low-quality photos are a definite no-no. If you need to pony up the dough and get nicer professional photos taken, do it.

Neglecting Negative Reviews

Making customers happy is important. So is responding to the customers who were left unhappy. When you get a negative product review, don’t panic! Instead:
Leave a professional, polite response.
Do what you can to make it right. (Refund? Discount? Replacement?)
Consider their feedback and if applicable, see if there’s a way you can use it to improve your product.

Not Following Up With Customers Via Email

Your relationship with a customer doesn’t end as soon as they purchase. One of the healthiest thing you can do for your product listings and seller account is collect product reviews and seller feedback.

This means after a customer purchases from you, you should send them follow-up emails asking for both of these things.

There are ways you can automate this. Zon Master is excellent for asking customers for reviews.

Mismanaging Inventory

You know what happens when you run out of inventory? The product’s ranking tanks, which means sales will slow, even when you get it back in stock. Make sure you forecast when you’ll need to reorder.

Also, you’ll want to keep an eye on your competitions’ inventory. The Chrome extension How Many makes this incredibly easy.

Learning how to sell on Amazon is a never-ending process, because you will never stop learning. Planning is good. Researching is good. But remember, at the end of the day, you need to take action. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes, take calculated risks, and you’ll be on your way to generating an income as an Amazon seller.

You’re about to embark on an exciting journey, and I can help you along the way. Next step? Join our Amazon Insiders community and register for our next free training webinar.

See you there!

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