3 Reasons Why High Quality Content & Imagery Is Crucial on Amazon
High-quality content and images on Amazon couldn’t be more important for differentiating your products. 56% of shoppers go straight to Amazon when they start looking for their next purchase, with the levels of competition ever-increasing as the platform’s market share grows. From the start to the finish of the customer journey, you need to take every opportunity to show shoppers why your product is the one for them, and one of the best ways to do that is with unique, informative and compelling content.
1. First Impressions
On Amazon search result pages, first impressions matter. There are millions of products for sale, and making yours stand out is crucial. More attractive listings receive more traffic, and more traffic means more sales. The way your listing appears in the search results is your first opportunity to positively influence the customer’s buying decision, namely with a well-optimised title and high-quality main image.
Titles shouldn’t just be loaded with keywords. You want to clearly communicate who made the product, who the product is for, what the product is, and any additional relevant information such as colour, material or dimensions.
A simple example would be a pair of boots: Timberland Men’s Leather Boots, Brown, Size 10. The main image displayed with the title is just as important as the text. Focus on clarity in your imagery. Not only should the image be high resolution, but it should also show your product as clearly as possible.
In the example of two duffle bags below, you can see both good and bad. In one, the title is ‘keyword stuffed’ and poorly formatted while the image is cluttered and doesn’t clearly show the bag itself. Conversely, the other clearly states the brand, style name, product type, colour and size, along with an image that simply and clearly shows the product.
2. Conversion Rates
Now that your optimised titles and images are attracting shoppers to your product detail pages, you want to do everything you can to convert as many as possible into customers.
While on search result pages you rely on a single image, you can have multiple images on your detail pages. You should…
- Include images from various angles and perspectives so a shopper has a complete view of what they’re getting.
- Show the product in use, especially if there’s any set-up or installation needed.
- Use lifestyle shots to give the product some context to help shoppers picture themselves owning the product.
- Include an image with a size ratio where appropriate
- Highlight any unique features, especially those that you mention in your bullet points or title.
After the title, bullet points are the next part of your content that shoppers will look at to find out more. Use them to highlight the most important benefits and features. While technical specifications are important to assure shoppers that your product meets their needs, there are likely numerous competing products that also fit the bill.
To differentiate your listings, look at product reviews to find what customers love most about your products, and include these as key benefits.
Similarly, look at any Q&As or negative reviews to find friction points that you can address to help smooth the path to purchase. Your descriptions should provide a comprehensive overview of the product, including all the features and specifications. This is your chance to flex your copywriting skills and really sell it.
A+ content is another great way to enhance your listings. It offers an opportunity to expand on your existing content, but with much more creativity. Not only is it a chance to further communicate the benefits of your product, there’s also room to cross and upsell related products, as well as tell a story about your brand.
Much more visually engaging than the regular product description, Amazon says that A+ Content can increase detail page conversion rates by 3 - 10%. Important to note, however, that it is not currently indexed by the A9 algorithm, so ensure all your keywords are included in other parts of your content.
3. The A9 Algorithm
When someone makes a search on Amazon, the A9 Algorithm determines which products to show, and what order to show them in. This is based on a number of both direct and indirect factors. A direct factor, for example, is keyword relevance, assessing if the search terms match up with terms found in the content of the product. Other direct factors include price and availability.
Where content fits in is as an indirect factor. Having good quality content alone won’t help you rank higher. However, good quality content is likely to show for more searches and have much higher conversion rates. A high conversion rate suggests to the algorithm that a product is doing a great job of meeting the customer’s needs. As Amazon so rigorously prioritise the customer experience, they want to show these products where customers can find them easily - higher up the search results page. This is of extreme importance, as 70% of shoppers never go past the first page of results, and 64% of clicks go to the top 3 results.
Content Is Key
While pricing, reviews, delivery and use of Amazon Advertising are all important to success on Amazon, high-quality content and images are what brings it all together to create a desire for, and trust in your products. Don’t waste the opportunity to speak to your market in your own unique brand voice.
This blog post was created by Alec Burns, Lead Amazon Strategist at Fluid Digital.
Subscribe to our newsletter
Sign up to receive top e-commerce content, Styla updates, and more!