Why Your Product Data Is Holding You Back on Amazon

There are an estimated 65 million Amazon Prime shoppers and 300 million total Amazon shoppers. That’s a huge potential customer base – but how many of them are your products reaching?

First and foremost, you must appear in search results in order to reach Amazon shoppers. And then the offering must appear relevant enough that shoppers click through to see it.

Both of these factors rely on the quality of your product data. Yet many merchants simply perform a quick “data dump” to get their product information from their shopping cart system to Amazon. This practice may be convenient, but it also means lost potential revenue.

Here are a few reasons why your product data can hold you back from reaching more Amazon shoppers.

Your product data isn’t optimized for keyword variations.

Most merchants have already taken the time to optimize their product data for related keywords – but many forget to consider keyword variations. These include synonyms, singular and plural, different word forms, word stems, and even misspellings.

For example, let’s say you sell dog beds. “Dog” and “bed” are the obvious keywords, and they are likely found in your product title and description. But there are many related keywords that should be included as well: “dogs, puppies, pups, puppy, canine, canines, pet, beds, bedding, mattress, mattresses.”

Amazon provides 5,000 allowed characters for the Search Terms field. Make use of them.

Your products are only listed in one category.

It’s easy to list all of your products under a general category and call it a day. But the deeper and more specific your categorization, the better chance your product has to be seen. Additionally, you’ll face more competition in a broad category than you do in a very specific one. By considering subcategories, you will be thinning out the field.

For example, if you sell outdoor products, you could simply list them all under “Patio, Lawn, and Garden.” It would just take a minute, right?

But let’s look at one particular product: outdoor string lights. You can get much more specific –“Patio, Lawn, & Garden > Outdoor Décor > Outdoor String Lights.” If you don’t get that specific, your product will simply disappear for people who filter to this category. And those are exactly the people you want to reach.

It’s also important to look at category-specific attributes. Often they aren’t required, but they are available for shoppers to use as a filter. If you don’t provide data, your product won’t appear.
Of course, when you have a catalog of dozens or even hundreds of products, the idea of researching each and every single one in this way can sound daunting, if not impossible. But you don’t have to do this manually. Use software like GoDataFeed that has a tool for categorization built-in.

There are few or low-quality images.

When your product does appear in a search, do shoppers click through – or keep scrolling? One key deciding factor is your images.

It’s a lot quicker to judge a product by its image than from its title, so you can bet that, more often than not, people are glazing past those words and focusing on the pictures.

Make sure your main image is clear, relevant, and high-quality. Invest in professional photography if necessary.

Your product title doesn’t make sense.

If a shopper is draw in by that beautiful product photo, they’ll take the time to read your product title. But if it is so jam-packed with keywords that it doesn’t make much sense, they could take the time to click through and see if the product description helps clear it up for them… or they could just move on to the next offer.

Optimizing for keywords is important, but don’t go so overboard that you’ve sacrificed user experience. Your product title should be short and descriptive. There should never be any questions about what exactly the product is they are buying.

In general, you should include brand name, product type, and distinguishing features (e.g., color, quantity, size, or use). The best order depends on category.

Here are a few examples:

Apparel: Brand + Gender + Product Type + Attributes (e.g., color, material, size)
Books: Title + Type + Format (e.g., paperback, eBook) + Author
Electronics: Brand + Attributes + Product Type + Model #
Hard Goods: Brand + Product Type + Attributes (e.g., size, quantity, weight)
Seasonal: Occasion + Product Type + Attributes

This is another area where GoDataFeed can make a big difference, using your existing product data to “build” better titles. Instead of entering each and every one manually, you can optimize them all quickly and accurately.

Why Reach Matters So Much

Many merchants face a lot of competition in their category, so being seen is half the battle. Maybe more!

If you can get those shoppers to click through to your product detail pages, many retailers see a conversion rate of 15% – which is up to 5 times higher than most ecommerce sites.

But it all depends on reaching those shoppers first. And that means putting in effort to optimize your product data.