2021 Amazon Holiday Checklist

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Follow the link to see our 2021 Amazon Holiday Checklist

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4 Tips for Holiday Promotions on Amazon

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As we are all very aware by now, you must have a dialed approach when it comes to being successful on Amazon during the Q4 holiday season. Gone are the days of just waiting around for sales to come pouring in because more and more sellers have become better at targeting their audience through Amazon advertising and promotions. Amazon recently announced these 4 tips for holiday promotions and we wanted to throw in a tip or two of our own to help sellers be successful this year:

Amazon tip #1: Use recommended ASINs – The recommendations update weekly, so do not wait to take action if you see a product eligible for Black Friday and Cyber Monday as it might disappear the following week.

  • Our Advice: Plan ahead! Make sure you know beforehand the products you are willing to promote. We advise going through your catalog and knowing which items you are willing to run promotions on, as well as how big of a discount you want to give. That way when a recommendation comes up, you already know whether it is worth it for your business.

 

Amazon tip #2: Promote your top products – Running a promotion is an opportunity for you to wow Amazon shoppers. Focus on top products to maximize your growth opportunities during the holiday season. 

 

  • Our Advice: We love the 80/20 rule when it comes to promotions. 80% of most sellers’ revenue comes from their top 20% of SKUs so make sure you focus on the big hitters! Don’t try to force a product to sell by just running a promotion, promote those products that sell well and watch them climb to even bigger heights!

 

Amazon tip #3: Use high-quality images – Ensure the image doesn’t include any text, logos, or watermarks that are not a part of the product itself. If a promotion doesn’t follow Amazon’s product image requirements (see Vendor Central or Seller Central for more information) or is not representative of the products within the promotion, the promotion is subject to cancellation.

 

  • Our Advice: Images can make or break a listing on Amazon. You need to ask yourself, “Does this image pass the 3-second test?” or in other words, if someone was to just see that image, could they tell what your product is in under 3-seconds? Make sure your images are high resolution, big enough for zoom capabilities and tell the story of your brand. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, well that’s a whole lot of keyword value from a single image so make sure you put in the time to make them worth it!

Amazon tip #4: Improve product detail pages – Inspire Amazon shoppers to purchase your products. Use bullet points, images, and A+ Content to share your brand message and unique product benefits. 

 

  • Our Advice: This is probably the most important tip of all because if your listing does not convert traffic into sales, it can actually do more harm than good! Amazon wants to see people who visit your page interact with the content and add items to their cart. Make sure that your entire listing is a sales funnel, providing information and selling your product to the people you worked so hard to attract to the page. Focus on features, benefits, and differentiators. What makes your brand/products special? Why should consumers pick you over the hundreds, if not thousands, of other choices on the marketplace?

 

 

Bonus Tip: Inventory Forecasting is KEY – Make sure you have the inventory to keep up with a promotion as well as sustain sales after the holidays! Too many times we have seen sellers go all-in on the holidays without enough inventory to keep them selling through Q1 and they lose all the momentum they gained from a big holiday push. Amazon loves to see consistency because it means they can trust you. When you stock out or delay shipping to customers, consumer confidence dwindles and your keyword rankings disappear. What can take weeks or months to build can all be lost in a matter of days if you mismanage your inventory.

Amazon Inventory Management

Our team has been working with brands on the Amazon marketplace for 10 years now. We have been through a lot of holiday seasons and we know the best tactics to not only win in Q4 but set yourself up for success all year long. Schedule some time to chat with our experts and get a free analysis of your Amazon opportunities.

 

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Top Tips for Amazon Keyword Research

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How to find the right keywords for your product listing

What is keyword research when it comes to Amazon? In short, it is finding the words and phrases that consumers are most likely to use when searching for a product like yours. The goal is to find those top producing phrases to generate traffic to your listing and convert clicks into revenue.

 

Why is it important? A listing without quality keywords will never be found! When it comes to doing keyword research for your Amazon listings, the key is to focus on relevancy! Amazon is a relevancy engine; they focus on showing products to consumers that are closely related to the search terms and most likely to convert into revenue for them and the seller. Below you will find 4 of the top resources and tips for doing quality keyword research that will convert into traffic and sales.

 

Google Ads Keyword Planner

Google has one of the largest libraries of keywords and phrases that internet users type in every day. This is a huge resource because Amazon does not share a lot of their keyword data with the average seller. Understanding that consumers on Amazon are going to show similar behavior and trends as those searching on Google can help you find some great keywords. Focus on relevant, high traffic keywords but don’t forget to look at the lower traffic keywords as well. These can be the golden nuggets that not everyone will use but usually convert much higher.

 

Amazon Auto-Complete Keywords

Like most search engines, Amazon collects data on what all their visitors are searching for. Unfortunately, they don’t readily share that data with us but there are ways to at least get a better understanding of what your potential customers are typing in when doing their product research. 

 

Just open up Amazon in a new browser and use incognito mode or clear your cache. Start to type in a main keyword or something relevant to your product and watch as Amazon starts suggesting phrases for you. These are all phrases that have been used previously by other consumers and could be helpful in your Amazon keyword research.

Competitor Listings

Analyzing and understanding your competitors’ listings and what keywords they are targeting can be a huge advantage in how you do your Amazon keyword research. Read through their listings and look for commonly used words or phrases you can steal. They may have something that is driving traffic for them that you never would have thought of.

There are also tools out there that will do this for you automatically. They are called reverse ASIN tools. They basically find the keywords that show up most frequently on a listing and return those back to you as an option for your listings.

 

Complementary Products

You don’t have to limit yourself to keywords that only apply to exactly what you sell! Look for products that are related to and complementary to what you sell. A great resource for this is the Amazon “Frequently bought together” section found on most listings.

In this scenario, I may be selling a basketball, but I could target keywords related to a pump and steal some traffic for people just looking for sporting goods. The idea is that we are getting in front of traffic that is in a buying mood. (This also works great for advertising, just make sure to keep your bids and budgets low)

 

What do I do with all these keywords?

Finding the right keywords is only half the battle! Now you have to make sure and use them according to Amazon SEO best practices. We recommend limiting the use of your keywords to 1-2 times each and spreading them out based on popularity. Put your most important keywords in the title, second tier in your bullet points and save the description for everything else. Also don’t forget to add keyword into your “Search Terms” section on the back end of each listing.

 

If you would like to consult with an Amazon keyword expert, feel free to contact us today. We can give you a free consult or audit of your existing listings.

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Fulfilled by Merchant vs. Fulfilled by Amazon

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FBM or Amazon FBA, which is better for my business?

For third party sellers on Amazon there are a handful of choices as to how you can sell and fulfill your products on the marketplace. Amazon FBA, Merchant Fulfilled or a hybrid of the two. Each has its own set of challenges as well as benefits. The goal of this article is to help you better understand each method and know what will be best for your business and bottom line.

 

Fulfilled by Merchant (FBM) 

This is usually the most turn-key opportunity for any ecommerce business to quickly get get products on Amazon and start generating some revenue. Through this model, a product can be added to the Amazon catalog and offered to consumers just like any other item. The catch is that the item is stored and fulfilled in your own warehouse. This requires you to cover the pick, pack and shipment of each item as it comes in. Very similar to any website order. It is a quick and easy way to get access to millions of shoppers on Amazon while eliminating many of the added fees and costs to some of the other models.

What’s the downside?

The biggest downside to this model is that your products do not qualify for the coveted Prime badge or shipping. Because Amazon is not in control of the fulfillment process, they can not and will not allow their Prime badge to be on your products. This leads to significantly less traffic and in turn fewer sales. Consumers will always go for the Prime eligible products first so you are at a disadvantage in both search result placement as well as consumer preference

 

What is Seller Fulfilled Prime?

This is similar to the merchant fulfilled strategy but with the added bonus of getting the Prime badge on your products. In order to qualify, you have to prove to Amazon that you can fulfill orders fast enough and within the guidelines they set. Specifically, Amazon requires you to fulfill 50 trial orders with an on-time shipment rate of 99% and a cancellation rate no higher than 0.5%. Once that trial is over, you are automatically enrolled in the program.

So what’s the downside?

As a seller you are responsible for storing the items in your own warehouse or a 3 rd party fulfillment center that is not Amazon. These storage costs and overhead can be difficult for many smaller sellers to absorb. The guidelines and rules to maintain your spot in the program are stringent and you can easily lose the Prime badge with just a few bad orders. Most sellers struggle to profitably offer 2-day shipping anywhere in the US and therefore never make it past the trial orders.

What is Amazon FBA?

This is what makes Amazon famous with sellers and consumers. Studies show that customers prefer a product with the Prime badge significantly more. 2-day free shipping and access to millions of customers every day. Fulfillment by Amazon is a program in which sellers send their inventory into an Amazon fulfillment center to be stored, picked, packed and shipped to the end user. Amazon also provides customer service for all the orders and handles returns or replacements. As a member of the FBA program you qualify for optional services and tools that help you expand your reach and grow your business. This is ideal for any size business but has become more and more popular in recent years with small to mid size businesses. This is due to the fact that a company can get by without needing their own warehouse, fulfillment team or even customer support.

So what’s the catch?

Fulfillment by Amazon or FBA has its own set of fees that sellers need to be prepared for. With Amazon handling all the storage, packing and shipping of your goods, they charge an FBA fee that varies based on weight and dimensions of your item. Some sellers find it difficult to fund enough inventory to have products sitting in an Amazon warehouse. Others struggle to understand the complexity of navigating the ever changing rules, regulations and nuances of the marketplace.

 

In the end it comes down to weighing all the factors and making the right choice for your business and products. In our experience, most everyone is best suited for Amazon FBA simply due to the fact that you will not see as much traffic and revenue without it. Consumers have been programmed to look for and buy items with that Prime badge. If you want to learn more about any of these programs or how you can launch a profitable campaign on Amazon, feel free to reach out to us

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3 Reasons Amazon Sellers Need Business Intelligence

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“Most entrepreneurs fail because you are working IN your business rather than ON your business.” -Michael Gerber

 

The role of business intelligence in Amazon marketing is to help executives make better, more informed decisions to benefit the overall performance. Said another way, business intelligence allows executives to work ON the business and not just IN the business. This is never more applicable than in marketing on Amazon.

Amazon does a great job at providing you with all the tools you need to have a successful store within its platform. The only problem is that there are so many tasks to manage that one can quickly become overwhelmed with the endless daily tasks needed to grow its sales, increase it’s traffic, fulfill orders, manage inventory, etc. At Evolved Commerce, we track a specific set of KPIs for our customer’s accounts. These KPIs have proven to lead to success yet tracking them effectively can require more time and effort than many people can afford to input without sacrificing other critical areas of the business! So, unless you pay someone to do this full time, you simply will run out of time trying to manage inventory, SEO, customer feedback, etc. and won’t be able to properly work ON your store because you’re too busy working IN you store.

1. You NEED to know and track your process.

At Evolved Commerce, we have a set of Key performance indicators (KPIs) that we track to ensure our store’s progress toward preset goals. While there are several methods of affecting the progress of those KPIs, they constantly need to be tracked. If you’re not doing this and only looking at your store’s bottom line then you likely are NOT realizing your store’s full potential! Even if you are tracking those KPIs, you might not be able to connect one KPI’s progress with other necessary KPIs in order to make clear discussions. For example, in order to see both your traffic data (sessions, conversions, and sales) along with your keyword performance data you are required to download separate reports (spreadsheets) both from Seller Central AND a third party keyword performance website. Not only is this time consuming, it still doesn’t guarantee that clear insights will be obtained! Holding both spreadsheets up side by side will make it difficult to see how well your company is doing without some ways of aggregating the data on both sheets.

2. Macro insights from your store are HARD to gain from a spreadsheet. 

This might be controversial but hear me out. I’m not saying that you can’t gain insight from a spreadsheet. What I am saying is that it is difficult to gain a clear (macro level) understanding of how your store is doing just from viewing a spreadsheet of data. Let’s try a test of this theory. Below are three images. The first is a spreadsheet of traffic data from a seller central account. The second and third images are using the same data but have been aggregated and visualized. Try the following tests and see which allows you to find the health status of the store.

Test 1: Take three seconds of looking at IMAGE 1 and identify the store’s total number of sessions, the average conversion rate, and the total sales during this time period. Now do the same with IMAGE2. Notice that you not only see the all three values but also see how you are doing compared to the previous period–indicated by the green and red text values at the bottom of each image.

 

Test 2. How about we try a slightly easier test? Look at IMAGE 1 for three seconds and try to identify the top three performing SKUs in the before mentioned key performance indicators. Now do the same with IMAGE 3. Now, try to imagine these reports dynamically updating every day without you having to go in and locate and download this report. Now image not having to follow the aforementioned process for ANY of your reports?! This brings us to the final reason why business intelligence will help your Seller Central store.

3. It’s a competitive advantage! Quicker insights leads to quicker decisions in a fast changing market.

Data has a way of telling a story. For example, in the unprecedented times we’re in now, we majorly underestimated the effect that this contagious virus had had on the world ALL because we didn’t have adequate ways to test and collect data. If world leaders and healthcare providers had access to good data sooner, we could have responded and potentially slowed the rapid growth of the virus. Most business intelligence tools are developed in a way that dynamically collects and stores data that’s relevant to the business. Having access to data as quickly as possible provides you with insights and trends that your competitors aren’t getting unless they too are investing in business intelligence. In short, this might be the best time to have a case of #FOMO. Here at Evolved Commerce, we have decades of experience in selling on Amazon’s platform and a unique, proven path to success. Our clients deserve to see and understand how our methods work. For this reason, each Evolved Commerce customer is provided a complimentary business intelligence dashboard for their store. We invest in business intelligence because it provides us and our customers with the competitive edge!

Conclusion:

“Great people have a vision of their lives that they practice emulating each and every day. They go to work on their lives, not just in their lives.” -Michael Gerber

Business intelligence provides easy-to-process, dynamic, and actionable insight into a business and its market that can lead to better decisions; and could be the difference between success and failure in an ever changing market. Let us follow Michael Gerber’s admonition, and avoid getting too caught up working IN our business instead of working ON our business.

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How has Coronavirus (Covid-19) Affected Amazon Sellers

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As you are probably aware, a lot has been happening over the last few weeks on Amazon due to the ongoing pandemic caused by the coronavirus. Many sellers, both large and small, are questioning what will happen next and what options they have to keep sales going and prevent their business from being affected by the health pandemic.

 

What are some of the most recent changes and updates from Amazon?

Temporarily Prioritizing Products Coming into Fulfillment Centers

 

Amazon announced that they were limiting shipments into their fulfillment centers to products that were classified as household staples, medical supplies and high demand products. The goal was to mirror what was being done in brick and mortar retail locations. Most of those products fell into one of the following categories:

 

  1. Baby Products
  2. Health & Household 
  3. Beauty & Personal Care (including personal care appliances)
  4. Grocery 
  5. Industrial & Scientific 
  6. Pet Supplies

 

This change led to a lot of sellers panicking and not sure what to do. They couldn’t replenish inventory for several weeks even though sales were not slowing so they had to make a change. Many sellers started to shift from using Amazon to fulfill their orders and instead went back to fulfilling their own orders. This allowed them to maintain inventory in stock and prevent any potential lost sales and revenue.

 

Fulfillment Times by Amazon Slowed Down Significantly

With the increased focus on essential items, fulfillment times for non-essential and high demand items started to slow down significantly. The normal 1-2 day fulfillment time we have all been accustomed to started to creep out as far as 30 days on many items. This led even more sellers to shift their strategy from using Amazon FBA to merchant fulfilled options or 3 rd party logistic companies. The goal was to get more products to consumers, as fast as possible, while still using the increased traffic on Amazon.

Removal order delays and long-term storage fee waiver

To ensure the capacity to receive, restock, and ship high-priority products like household staples and medical supplies, Amazon temporarily paused removal orders in some of their fulfillment centers.

Sellers can continue to create removal orders, but there will be delays in completing the requests. These delays are not only hitting the US but also UK, EU and the Czech Republic markets. This means inventory that many sellers were hoping to remove and fulfill on their own is now becoming more difficult to access and could be weeks away from returning. Sellers again had to adjust and focus on new ways to get those orders delivered to customers. Many sellers adjusted their strategy to have Amazon act as the 3rd party and fulfill their own website orders from an Amazon fulfillment center. This allowed for faster delivery without the delays of Amazon ordered products.

Should We Anticipate More Changes?

As we continue to adapt and change to what the economy and pandemic provides, we anticipate more changes. Amazon has started to slow down their own promotion and advertising of products to allow for more time to catch up on orders. They also announced the hiring and training of over 100k new employees to meet the demands on their system. As health concerns grow and more areas of the country become quarantined, traffic and sales will continue to fluctuate.

 

Maintaining inventory available for sale, whether on Amazon, through Amazon fulfillment or via your own website is going to be crucial to sustaining your business. Making sure you have a plan for fulfillment, SEO, PPC, and all other channels in place for the next few weeks, months and even into Q4 will be critical but we can all get through this together!

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The Best Amazon PPC Strategy in 2020

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We often get asked what is the best Amazon PPC strategy or structure. Over the years advertising on Amazon has gotten more and more competitive. The result is more and more sellers competing for prime ad placement which has in turn increased bids. This increase in bids has made the goal of maintaining profitability more difficult. This begs the question. Is it possible to use Amazon PPC to grow sales and not lose your shirt in the process? The answer is yes.

In an effort to map out the ideal PPC structure I will outline a few high-level numbers and then I will give more explanation around the numbers.

Organic vs Paid Sales

Over the years we have managed hundreds of Amazon accounts. The accounts that perform the best have close to a 70/30 organic sales to paid sales ratio. This means that if your account is running correctly you would have 30% of sales come from your PPC campaigns. Of course, when creating new listings or launching a new account you would have trouble hitting 30% depending on the product category and niche you are selling in. This is meant to be a goal to work toward not necessarily a hard and fast rule.

Ad Campaign Structure

Amazon allows us to build two different types of PPC campaigns. They are Manual targeted and Automatic targeted campaigns. Both have their place and provide different results.

Automatically targeted campaigns are campaigns where Amazon will crawl your listing content and automatically generate keywords for you. Auto campaigns are meant to help in generating keywords. These campaigns are lower bids and are less precise.

While Manual campaigns are campaigns where the seller/agency selects the keywords and then can adjust bids at the keyword level. These campaigns are higher bids and are precise.

The goal is to use these two campaign types to complement each other. The ideal structure here is again a 70/30 ratio. (70% manual and 30% auto). I have seen campaigns closer to 90/10 (90% manual vs 10% auto) and this can work very well. In order to operate in these types of ratios, you need to have a very close eye on performance and spend.

Optimal Ad Efficiency

The most efficient way to run your ad campaigns is to use what is called “keyword harvesting”. Keyword Harvesting is the process of moving keywords into specific targeting campaigns.
Say that you have an automatic campaign already running in your account. The first step would be to add two new manual campaigns in your account. I would name them something like this.

Manual Broad Harvested.
Manual Exact Harvested

Step two would be to download the keyword reports within your account. Then open that file in excel or google sheets. From there you want to filter the sheet by orders. Now you want to copy any keyword that has had at least 1 order and move into the Manual Broad Harvested campaign. The benefit of this campaign structure is that you now have far more control of the keyword bids once now that they are nested in a Manual campaign. You will also want to filter the sheet and copy any keywords that have had more than 5 orders and paste those into the Manual Exact Harvested campaign. These keywords are the cream of the crop because they have had 5 conversions and we can be the most aggressive with our bids in this campaign.

Keyword Harvesting is part of every ad campaign that we manage for our clients here at Evolved Commerce because it works! Remember the purpose of this campaign structure is to gain more control of the keyword bids. Control, if managed correctly, will lead to very efficient ad campaigns. Best of luck!

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The Process to Long Term Amazon Success

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How to win long-term on Amazon

Ever wondered how to be successful listing on Amazon? Amazon isn’t getting any easier for sellers. The days are gone where throwing up a listing, getting a handful of reviews, starting an ad campaign, and sitting back to watch revenues jump month over month. In fact, as Amazon routinely updates their algorithm and becomes better at weeding out the gray or black hat tactics that were at the forefront of organic rankings over the last few years, more and more sellers are finding themselves scratching their heads at why revenues aren’t increasing or even dropping.

Here’s the answer, their focusing on the wrong things. In 8 years of selling on Amazon, we’ve gone through countless campaigns, identifying what works, what doesn’t and what sometimes works. For any seller that hopes to remain in the game for a long time, it boils down to 4 main components: Organic Keyword Rankings, Sku Sessions, Traffic Campaigns, and Conversion Rates. Each of these four areas can tell us 95% of the story about how well our campaign is or isn’t performing. Sales are down; well are we getting traffic? Is that traffic converting? Did we drop in keyword rankings? If we focus on each area correctly and routinely, the chances of our campaigns ongoing success jump dramatically.

 

Step 1: Keyword Rankings

 

Organic keyword rankings are the backbone of any good Amazon Campaign. First question I ask a new client or an Amazon seller is, “What keywords are you targeting and where do you rank?” Most don’t have an answer.

 

Here’s how to breakdown your organic keyword strategy:

 

 

 

Everyone wants to rank for the main, traffic driving terms, in their space. But the reality is, those are highly competitive and take time. Focus on the long tail, low traffic, high converting terms in the beginning. Build your campaign to get traffic first through ranking in a top 3-5 position for low competition terms. This will get you revenue faster, which gives you time to rank for the more difficult terms later.

 

STEP 2: SKU Sessions

 

There are two main components within the Amazon A10 algorithm that lead to organic rankings: Traffic and Conversions. Amazon is all about putting the most relevant and quality product in front of its customers and If you are driving relevant traffic and that traffic is buying your product at a high enough rate, Amazon is going to want to put you in front of more traffic by increasing your organic rankings.

 

Step 2 is probably the easiest step out of all the steps. All you do is have to track it. Track your sku sessions on a month over month basis. If they are going up, great! If they are going down, then we have a red flag and we can start to figure out why.

Say sessions are down. What’s the response? Here’s a checklist:

  • Organic Rankings: Have we lost positions to competitors?
  • Best Sellers Rank: Are our organic rankings the same, but best sellers rank down? This could indicate an industry wide trend. Check your competitors BSR as well.
  • Ad Campaigns: Have we changed our Ad campaigns, ie reduced spend, keyword focus, or has cpc gone up due to competition?
  • Brand or Social: Have we changed what we are doing in promoting our own brand outside of Amazon. If you have a tool like Helium 10 you can see if your branded terms have dropped in monthly search volume.

 

Step 3: Ad Campaigns

 

Ad Campaigns are the foundation to our offensive playbook.  With proper Ad campaigns, we can quickly affect 3 of the 4 KPI’s; Keyword rankings, Sessions, and Unit Session %. Ad campaigns can run in all shapes and sizes, complexities and spend.

We could spend multiple blog posts on building ad campaigns but let’s keep it simple.

 

  • A healthy ad campaign should make up 30% of our total revenue with a 20% ACoS. Now that ACoS can go up and down depending on your margin and how aggressive you are wanting to be with certain keyword.
  • Your Ad Campaigns and your Organic Rankings should align. An effective campaign will dramatically boost your organic keyword rankings.
  • In a lot of cases your Ad Campaign strategy can and should reflect your organic strategy. Focus on long tail, low competition keywords or phrases first. As your campaign and listing matures, broaden your keyword base to find high converting terms.

 

Step 4: Conversion Rates or Unit Session %

If you are a long time Amazon seller, ask yourself “What is the Unit Session % of my top selling products?”  If you can answer that question, you’re an All-star!! Unit session % tracks how well your products are converting based on the traffic that is coming to that page (Unit Sessions). This little number gives us massive amounts of insight into how well our campaigns are performing.

Now each campaign is going to be different, but on average we have found that a good Unit Session % will be anywhere from 25-35%. When a product has consistent traffic and is converting at a high %, our organic rankings have gone up dramatically faster than a product with low conversion rates. Again, think back to one of the basics of the Amazon A10 Algorithm, traffic + conversions = organic rankings. Consistently tracking our products conversion % will give us valuable insight into how to improve our overall campaign.

 

So say we have a 10% unit session %. What do we do? Here are the key things to look for in order to improve your conversion rates:

  • On Page Optimization:
    • Reviews: Best way to kill your conversion rate is with poor reviews. Any average review rate under a 4 Star can negatively affect your conversions rates.
    • Title: Keyword stuffed title will not only negatively affect your keyword rankings now, but can also lead to consumer confusion. Make sure your titles follow Amazon’s guidelines so you can check that off your box as a reason for low conversion rates.
    • Imagery: Amazon customers use your images to understand your product more than your bullet points and your description. High quality images are a must, with lifestyle images and infographics now almost standard across all good listings.
  • Traffic: How well do we understand where our traffic is coming from? (see organic rankings) Oftentimes we are driving the wrong audience to our pages. Are running ad campaigns for terms that are too broad, or for competitors that have a lower priced, higher reviewed product? Start taking out traffic sources that are irrelevant to your listing.
  • Price: If your on page optimization checks all the boxes and your traffic, then double check your price! Amazon customers are more review sensitive then they are price sensitive, but your price has to be supported by the perceived value of your product. Higher priced items will oftentimes require higher review rates, great imagery and A+ or Enhanced Brand Content. Amazon customers need to know what they are buying is quality if you are at a higher price then most of your competition.
  • Coupons and Promotions: If products traffic is solid, consider an incentive. Give a coupon or run subscribe and save to give your customers a little push over the edge.

 

It can be daunting and overwhelming to know how to be successful on Amazon. But by following these simple Key Performances Indicators, you can put a “why” behind your campaign’s performance and create a game plan to increase your sales and profitability.

For even more information on how to be successful on Amazon, check out our other blog posts for The Best Amazon PPC Strategy in 2020 or 20 Amazon Trends to Watch in 2020.

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How Do I Improve My Organic Rankings on Amazon?

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One of the questions our Amazon consultants get asked frequently is: How do I improve my organic rankings?

This really is a great question and it boils down to two things: Traffic and Conversions. The brands that perform the best year over year are focused and deliberate in their strategy to improve rankings and Amazon SEO.

Traffic: Increasing traffic to product detail pages requires a concerted effort. The days of simply creating a listing and sending product into FBA and leaving the rest on “Auto Pilot” have passed us by. This mentality will end with high storage fees and very few sales.

Over the past 8 years while working with brands of all shapes and sizes we have seen all kinds of tactics to increase traffic. Unfortunately, there isn’t a one size fits all strategy to accomplish this goal. There are simply too many variables from things like competition and category.. In an effort to help answer this question I will list out several options and explain the pros and cons of each. Keep in mind the tactics below are only to be used once your listing is fully optimized or “retail-ready”.

1. Amazon Sponsored Products – I think it goes without saying that Amazon’s Sponsored Products can be an effective way to drive relevant traffic to your product detail pages when the campaigns are managed correctly. However, all campaigns are not created equal. You will only want to use pay per click (PPC) ads once you have at least 5-10 product reviews. Campaigns pointing traffic to listings with zero reviews will garner some clicks but the conversions will be low.

2. Social Media – One very simple tactic to drive traffic to your listings is using social media advertising. This is separate from a standard Facebook page with regular posts in the timeline. I prefer to use Facebook Business Manager and market both on Facebook and Instagram. Driving outside sources of traffic via targeted audiences will convert into rankings and revenue.

3. Promotions – There are several product promotions available to Amazon sellers and they can be a good way to generate some traffic. Two of my favorites are creating coupons and using Prime Exclusive Discounts. When you create these promotions your listing will show on the coupons pages or the Prime Exclusive Discount page. Having your listings shown on these pages will provide more exposure to potential customers looking for a deal.

Conversions: Keep in mind the products have already been optimized. Meaning that the listings are built out with proper product titles, bullet points, and product descriptions.

1. Product Imagery – The listing should already have beautiful imagery with clean and crisp representations of your products. Consumers shop with their eyes. Use the secondary image spots to highlight product features and show the product in use. With the increase of sales on mobile devices, your product images HAVE to be on point. Spend some time analyzing your top-performing competitor’s listings and pay close attention to the imagery they are using.

2. Product Sales Copy – Make sure your listing copy is compliant with Amazon’s guidelines. Do not exceed the byte sizes for each area of copy. For example, it used to be common for sellers to cram as many keywords into the product title as possible. This results in a title that is difficult to read and is cut off on mobile.

3. Coupons – Coupons can be a great way to help increase your conversion rate. This is because the coupon is shown in the search results and can help influence clicks that convert into sales. Everyone on Amazon is looking for a deal!

4. Stack and Save Promotions – This type of promotion is shown on the product detail page and can help customers purchase using tiered discount structure. For example buy 2 get 5% off, buy 3 get 10% off and so on.

5. Price – Lowering your price temporarily can be helpful in boosting conversions. I recommend making price changes very slowly when trying to increase the price of a product. Start with 5% or 10% increments at a time.

The best way to evaluate your traffic numbers and conversion rates is by utilizing several reports in the business reports in Seller Central.

If you want to see how your account is performing in regards to these two metrics, use the Sales and Traffic By Date report. Here is the path: Reports – Business Reports – Sale and Traffic. Then use the slider to select the desired date range. From there you will want to edit the columns that are shown. On the right side of the page, you will see a grey box that says Columns. If you select that then you can turn on Date, Ordered Product Sales, Page Views, Sessions, and Unit Session Percentage. The last three can be a little confusing so I will provide a definition for each column.

Page View – Hits in your Amazon.com presence for the selected time period.

Sessions – Sessions are visits to your Amazon.com pages by a user. All activity within a 24-hour period is considered a session

Unit Session Percentage – Percentage conversion metric indicating how many units were purchased relative to the number of people who viewed the products.

I usually will look at this information by month. However, you can view it by day or by week if you would prefer. Viewing the information in this way can help you understand what is happening in your account in terms of traffic and conversions.

In the event that you want to see this same information at the individual product level, you will want to go to Reports – Business Reports – Detail Sales and Traffic by Child Item. Here you can edit the columns shown and view the same information but at a much more detailed level.

Hopefully, these tips can help increase your revenue and help you run a sustainable business on Amazon.

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5 New Amazon Features to Grow Your Brand!

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Amazon has become one of the largest search engines today. If you are an established brand or just starting a product-based business, Amazon is a platform that can be essential in the growth of your brand. In 2018 an estimated 20.6 million users visited Amazon per month, and that number is only growing.

The question is, how can you grow your brand and drive traffic on Amazon and not just get lost on the competitive landscape. The 5 main points of discussion for this article have to do with fairly new Amazon features that are underutilized but can be an essential part in growing your brand! Keep in mind these features are for brands that have applied for and have Brand Registry on Amazon.

AMAZON LIVE: Amazon has found that customers who watch videos on Amazon convert more often than non-viewing customers. Sellers with Brand Registry can now livestream, for free on Amazon detail pages, Amazon stores, and various other placements on Amazon. These features allows you to interact with customers explain unique features about your product as well as tell your story and “why” behind your brand.

AMAZON ATTRIBUTION: Many sellers have been waiting for the Amazon Attribution feature to come out. “For the first time, you can measure the impact of search, social, email, display, and video media channels based on how consumers discover, research, and buy your products on Amazon. Amazon Attribution’s unique conversion metrics — including Amazon detail page views, purchase rate, and sales — give you a comprehensive view into how each of your marketing tactics contribute to shopping activity on Amazon. You now have a deeper insight to your Amazon customer and where that Amazon traffic is coming from.

BRAND ANALYTICS REPORTING: Amazon is making more data and consumer behaviors available to sellers than ever before. We now have a deeper insight on the Amazon search terms, purchase behavior and Demographics of a customer. This data will help with how to market your products on Amazon to maximize the conversion rates on Amazon.

SPONSORED DISPLAY ADS: Amazon has added the Sponsored Display Ads to the PPC campaigns. How do these ad campaigns work? Sponsored Display enables you to reach audiences browsing off of Amazon. Sponsored Display campaigns use auto-generated display creatives that help inspire purchase and have the familiar Amazon look and feel. Your ads have the ability to reach audiences off Amazon across third-party publishers. We use brand safety tools to help deliver your ads to trustworthy placements next to appropriate and relevant content. When shoppers click your ads, they are directed to the product detail page.

AMAZON INFLUENCER PROGRAM: Social media can be a very effective way to grow your brand. Amazon has launched a program where you can use the power of Social media to increase your Amazon sales. Amazon will share a promo code on the Associates Central, where influencers and associates can browse by product category and share links to any relevant promo codes with their audience.

If you want to learn more about any of these programs and how they can help your brand specifically, don’t hesitate to reach out and let a member of our team create a custom strategy for you. Every brand is unique and requires a unique strategy to accomplish the desired results.

Let Evolved Commerce help you achieve those goals!

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