Top 6 Ways for Brands to Increase Conversion Rates on Amazon

Amazon has gotten a lot of press in the last 10 years. Since 2015, sales on the e-marketplace have almost quadrupled (with the pandemic accelerating that trend). This rapid hike in popularity has gained the attention of consumers and the business world alike because it’s all part of an experience we share. 

Brands venturing into digital commerce on Amazon are as impressed with the growing platform as they are fans of shopping there as consumers.

There’s another important change in Amazon made over more than 20 years, that’s hardly talked about. Amazon has made an extraordinary shift from a consumer-to-consumer platform selling used books to a colossal business-to-consumer platform of all kinds of e-sales.

As Amazon has grown into the platform where around 50% of online sales take place, it’s taken on new services and functions. It’s a platform that does all the heavy lifting that a brand wants it to. Amazon can do order fulfillment, manage customer service, and even help with reviews. It can also guarantee an unending stream of ready-to-buy consumer traffic every day.

The challenge is getting that traffic to look at your brand’s listings over another.

Products don’t just sell on their own, exciting though the built-in traffic on Amazon might seem. If you’ve ever been frustrated as more reviews pop up on your competitors’ pages while your growing lead list still doesn’t convert on that final “buy” button, keep reading. 

Here are the top 6 ways to increase conversion rates on Amazon.

Let’s Talk About 2021

Hindsight is 20/20, they say, and looking back at 2020 and the pandemic, we all know what that meant for e-commerce. There have been thousands of articles dissecting every aspect of the growth in digital commerce. The statistics, frankly, are flabbergasting. Digital commerce saw a full decade of growth in nine months.

As we talk about conversion rates on Amazon, we, therefore, have to do so within the context of 2020. There were lasting changes that we’re still adjusting to today.

More brands either add new online channels to their sales strategy or move entirely online each day. Those brands that previously sold through wholesalers or retail are now starting to sell direct-to-consumer via online channels.

By the end of 2022, e-retail is expected to grow to $6.54 trillion (up from $3.53 trillion in 2019). And with evolving consumer needs and new tech-driven possibilities, the industry is rapidly changing. New trends crop up that can either help your brand leapfrog ahead or diminish your online relevance entirely if you miss the cue.

Consumer expectations are changing. They expect more personalized attention and product recommendations from brands. Consumers also expect to see their own values reflected in the decisions a brand makes or they will no longer want to buy from that brand.

Within the context of this “new normal,” you can leverage the top Amazon strategies with a more realistic expectation of what outcomes you’re really aiming for.

What Conversion Rates on Amazon Are Considered “Good?”

There are a lot of important numbers to look at when it comes to improving your Amazon strategy. For example: 

All these numbers are best looked at one next to the other. That gives you a clearer picture of where your strategy stands to benefit from conversion optimizations. 

If these numbers line up, a reasonable benchmark to aim for when it comes to end-all purchase conversion is between 10 and 15%. That means one of every 10 or three of every 20 visitors to your product listing should buy.

The calculation to determine your current conversion rate is simple. Amazon simply divides the number of sales by the number of page views.

Now it’s time to get to work on boosting your conversion rate to that target of 10-15% with these winning optimizations.

How to Boost Your Amazon Conversion Rate

1. Think Like Your Target Customer

If you’re targeting the right consumers and piquing their interest with your social media content, email marketing, and PPC, then you’re doing something right. You clearly understand your target customer’s mindset, pain points, and interests.

If they’re landing on your product page and not clicking “buy,” however, you still need to apply what you know about your target customer to your product listing.

Once a consumer lands on your product page, does the description, bullet point list and other content (like A+ Amazon content or enriched photos) carry the same compelling message that your source content did?

You need to “speak” right to your customer’s heart down to the last page where a final purchase is made.

2. Optimize Your Product Titles

This sounds basic, but if every brand were doing it right then digital commerce would look very different. In reality, some brands know how to optimize their product titles well and the rest of the market is left in their dust.

Unsurprisingly, product titles are one of the most crucial pieces of product information to optimize. Not only do they weigh heavily in search ranking, but they’re ultimately the deciding factor for a consumer to click on your link instead of the others returned in search results.

So, how do you optimize that product title?

Your product title should tell people instantly what your product is about. You have between 150 and 250 characters to include the essentials. That means:

Your title should be immediately discernible. Yes, you should also get at least your number-one target keyword in there. And yes, you can use the title to educate consumers on the intended use or top benefit of your product before they even click on the link. Just make sure the syntax for those advanced product titles still delivers instant readability.

3. Use More Images!

Consumers today want to picture themselves with your product. They enjoy technology for a more immersive online shopping experience. They have access to “virtual try-ons,” augmented reality, and an abundance of 3D product renderings.

As soon as you leverage the psychology of product images to optimize your conversion rates on Amazon, you’ll see the direct impact that today’s audio-visual content has on-page conversions.

Amazon does have product image rules which act as a baseline for best practices. They know that consumers expect certain images at a minimum. Adding more images, however, and an overall richer visual experience will adorn your buyer journey with more compelling interactions for your customers.

Try these Amazon product image optimizations to get started:

Be sure to include photos from every angle

Include 3D product renderings when you can

Use the full allotment of images permitted on each listing

Use “look inside” images or renderings to show off what your products are made of

Include images of products in their intended environment

Include product videos

4. Only Publish Complete and Accurate Product Data

In the world of product data—including everything from your product descriptions to the ad collateral that pushes traffic to your product page—is a beast to manage. With sometimes thousands of SKUs, brands trying to manage products on multiple channels can find themselves buried in spreadsheets and product data inaccuracies.

How can you update all your product data quickly and accurately every time Amazon, Etsy, or Facebook Marketplace changes their product data requirements? And how can you ensure that all products in a certain class or category are consistently listed, to begin with? What should you do when you need to share product data internally, but other departments constantly mess it up?

The level of manual labor and human error in product information management is nothing but exhausting. It’s a vicious cycle of trying to clean up data and then launching new products on a new digital channel. You’re never quite done.

That is unless you have a tool designed to aggregate product data and simplify its optimizations. That’s exactly what next-gen product information management (PIM) software is.

Ensuring that your product data is complete and accurate boosts conversion rates on Amazon because consumers can find the answers to every question, including those they haven’t thought to ask. If they’re looking for a product of a certain size, or that satisfies a certain need, every bit of your product data needs to reflect that.

It’s important to keep an eye on the competition’s data, too, because a good look at your most popular competitors will clue you into what consumers are responding to.

Of course, that can end up being another manual to-do unless you leverage technology. That’s why a tool like Amber AI exists. Amber AI takes your brand’s library of product data and highlights what should be updated based on the top 100 product listings on Amazon in your product category.

Then, you simply click to implement “Amber’s” calculated AI optimizations to increase conversion rates on Amazon. Pretty slick, huh? And you can bet it will have an instant impact on your conversion rates.

5. Use Amazon+ Content

Amazon+ content (also known as A+ content) is brand-driven, multimedia content embedded into your Amazon product listings. It stands out in a big way. Scroll through a product page and you can see beautifully enhanced images, formatted bullet point vignettes, and striking comparison charts.

This is all achieved through A+ content.

Brands that are listed in the “Brand Registry” are also able to add A+ content to their product listings. Once A+ content is unlocked for your brand, you’re given an option of combining any of 15 different modules. Just like constructing a website, you’re free to mix the modules to create the full experience you want.

6. Answer More Questions

The “Questions & Answers” section of Amazon product listings is probably the most underutilized marketing opportunity on the platform.

Here’s how it’s supposed to go:

You might ask how the Questions & Answers feature will boost your conversion rates on Amazon. Consumers today have increasingly high expectations for product transparency. They want to know exactly what to expect before making a purchase. 

How Should You Measure Your Amazon Conversion Rate?

You already know how your Amazon conversion rate is calculated: you divide the number of sales by the number of visits to a product page. This includes return visitors. The result is a percentage, and that’s your conversion rate.

The “core” conversion rate is the number of sales you get, but sometimes sellers and brands look at other “soft” conversion rates, too. These are conversions that are positive movements toward a purchase, whether or not the final “buy” button is clicked.

Those “soft” conversions include:

When it comes to monitoring your conversion rates, the important thing is that you do monitor them. None of these optimizations will work unless you track your results.

On Amazon, tracking your conversion rate is simple. Just access your Amazon dashboard where your private analytics are available.

This brings us full circle back to the remarkable way that Amazon has grown. Today, you can think of Amazon as an ecosystem of “mini-platforms” on the backend of its colossal client-facing marketplace.

Dig into the mini-platforms on the back (such as Amazon Seller Central, Amazon Vendor Central, Merch by Amazon, etc.) and you’ll see the ready-made headquarters with statistics on conversion rates and other KPIs. Track them, optimize them, and you can keep your brand at the forefront of today’s exciting opportunities in digital commerce.

About Amber Engine

Amber Engine is a software company passionate about e-commerce. The company’s fast and simple PIM software gets sellers, distributors, and brands to Amazon and other online marketplaces in weeks instead of months and frees up time and resources to allow e-commerce and marketing professionals to create content that inspires modern discovery shoppers.