May 2018
4 main components have to be accounted for when defining and strategizing for your Amazon content:
- Base copy;
- Enhanced copy;
- Imagery & video;
- Variations;
All these components have an impact on your revenue and it is important to have a plan in place to measure this. Furthermore, with experience and measurements it is essential to start developing toolkits and guidelines with best practices and content standardization recommendations (a key factor in scaling your business). Content auditing and understanding your consumers are also 2 factors to account for in your content strategy. Specifically think about your consumers in terms of:
- Usage;
- Demographics;
- Purchasing patterns;
- Key product categories by market;
Base Copy
Base copy is the key component of the product description. It is a mandatory piece which needs to be optimized for SEO in order to maximise relevance for a specific product in search queries. As Amazon is overcoming Google as the search engine for shopping (~30% of US online shoppers head to Amazon first), it is important to integrate enough search terms from the Amazon store and Google in the indexed content created. Including the right keywords in the base content, will ensure better relevance for the consumers, subsequently increasing conversion rates. ‘Converting’ on specific search terms will provide a solid indicator to the rankings’ algorithms for search results, thus creating a virtuous cycle where your products will also rank higher.
60% of internal search is driven by product titles and 64% of clicks are on the top 3 items of a page. It is therefore key to optimize titles with proper keywords and product details (size, colour, packaging type). Bullet points below the title should range between 3/5 and are the first method to engage with customers: they should be informative; concise; unique (stay focused and objective!).
Product descriptions are longer and richer but should remain factual and support the user in making an informed purchasing decision. Romance copy should be avoided as you don’t want to pitch your product, but rather make sure you address the needs of a consumer at their time of purchase.
Translation and ‘transcreation’ is a key component of your base copy. You need to ensure that content is translated maintaining the SEO/optimized value generated in the researched language for production. If working with third party vendors, this step can be integrated in the translation phase by requesting SEO optimization in the different languages.
Enhanced Copy (A+ for Amazon)
This is your ‘ below the fold’ content on a product description page where you have a chance to showcase more features of your products while expanding on them and educate the consumer on your brand. Several customizable modules are offered to build and populate this section, but they all have on thing in common: they allow for a great deal of ‘visual engagement’ where photographs and banners can directly be integrated among text.
Amazon claims this type of rich content helps revenue by 3-10% depending on the product category analysed, but it can be trickier to measure customer engagement / conversions’ attribution. Amazon also states that the categories impacted by this uplift are comprised of complex items or high-priced items.
Think about streamlining/standardizing the production process for enhanced content as this can be effort-intensive and introduce a prioritization according to categories that may allegedly benefit from it. Outsourcing A+ production is expensive in comparison to outsourcing base content. On average and from experience, enhanced content accounted for ~95% of expenses with third parties for our content production in 2017 in EMEA.
Invest in tools that allow you to measure the impact of your enhanced content on revenue. We formalized an internal simulation for an A/B test on our content to measure the uplift on sales after introducing enhanced content on specific categories. We ensured the sample was varied and large enough to be statistically significant and measured the sales variance over a period of 8 months. From our own measurement we were confident in confirming the positive impact of this type of content on specific categories (such as Baby products) whereas others were negligible or less impacted.
Think about your enhanced content formats when considering the ever decreasing attention span of consumers. The objective is to provide a greater ‘visual’ experience while minimising the text content, reflecting the ever growing consumer base who browses from portable devices and smaller screens. Additionally, 90% of consumers use multiple devices to accomplish a purchase online, indicating the focus is far from being on a single channel.
Amazon is also taking a similar direction with their new premium enhanced content which is offering a more visually engaging ‘below the fold’ content option with rich media and videos. We still don’t know if this content will become part of the current vendor management program, but we can leverage it as a starting point to review the structure of existing enhanced content with additional use of visual assets and a reduction in text.
Wherever possible, continue to use comparison charts to make sure that key benefits are shown/highlighted and flag any potential alternative to the consumer that may even suit his needs better (this is particularly valid for new products that will have innovative features introduced).
Imagery & Video
Images are emotional, they are the perfect tool to draw the interest of the consumer and generate an emotional response. They are also a key indicator of the level of detail and attention that a seller is willing to dedicate to their consumers providing an initial flag for the quality standard of the product in question.
Ensure you plan for any photography work in advance by briefing your internal marketing or brand teams on ecommerce needs. Aim at standardizing these requirements in a content toolkit. Specifically think of:
- Silo shots (by fashion)
- Lifestyle (by fashion)
- Pack shots if applicable
- In use assets
- Video content
Consider using more banners on A+ content and visual assets with overlays to be able to scale your A+ content globally (one fashion or style per product range) by product category or by brand.
Variations (Product variants)
Look at standardizing the process for creating variations to reflect an optimal choice of products for the consumer, ensuring any work on variations does not negatively impact search results’ selection on Amazon.
For example for categories like Writing there have been different business requests/cases around variations. However, research suggests that offering too many choices may be confusing for a consumer/potential buyer unless the choice offered is a value adding piece of information (size; color; tip size). Specifically, we need to ensure any variation created is a necessary part of the consumer journey before he/she completes a purchase (colour/size selection). We should also carefully refrain from showing product variations for items that differ in price unless we clearly explain in the text what the cause for such difference is.
Understanding our consumers
Remember our consumers come first. Always ask yourself the following questions:
- How old are our consumers?
- Who are they (gender; social status;..)?
- Where do our consumers buy from? Which device?
- When do they purchase? Are they promo-driven? Are they repeat-buyers? Seasonal buyers?
- What are the top performing categories by market? Which are the key products purchased online across geographies?
The biggest challenge is to collect some of the data above for key geographies we operate in. Especially, when working with Pure Players we will need to ask for more information to be shared on their side or consider third party analytical services that may do that for us.
The key motivator in asking these questions is how we can be more targeted with our content online considering the following factors:
- Who are we presenting our products to? What style should we adopt?
- What level of ‘product/brand education’ do we need to present? How familiar are our buyers with our brands? Are they repeat or new buyers?
- Where do our purchasers buy from? Is it from mobile? Tablet? If so can we adapt our enhanced content to be more visually engaging and less text-heavy? Will we need to invest on enhanced content at all?
- Finally, what are key categories where we should invest more in producing content by geography? What do people purchase online in specific markets?
Being able to answer just a few of these questions will allow content teams to become more targeted (within the possible limits) with the content we produce online and therefore be more engaging with our potential customers.
From the 2017 KPMG report we know that Generation X is the most active online shopping category. Generation X benefits from higher income levels and established family situations which make this group an attractive customer for consumer goods’ companies. We also know that men spend more online than women: how will this affect the content we produce?
We also know that ~40% of online consumers will likely purchase household goods and appliances online next year. 30% will likely purchase sporting goods next year. This makes some of our categories key candidates for content optimization and content investment.
Looking at devices purchasing patterns, we know that 59% of Western Europeans purchase via PC/laptop (as opposed to Asia where devices are on the rise) and 15% from devices instead (with tablets overcoming phones). This is a key piece of information to decide how we should think about the content we produce online for the different channels. We should, however, not miss the fact that consumers tend to research products via their devices before completing a purchase later on. This is mostly driven by price comparisons, but providing the right product content across all channels is a key factor in the purchasing decision.
Audience Base – building a target audience
One factor we have not yet addressed from a content perspective is how to leverage and build a target audience for our brands and products. The most effective way to do this is through social media advertising (specifically Facebook). By marketing our products to potential customers, we can make sure they are redirected to a dedicated landing page with further linking to our Amazon pages.
Campaign targeting is highly powerful as it allows to segment the population through different layers of criteria (location; age; gender; interests; page likes; purchasing behaviour;…) so that we can target the best sample that may likely lead to a sale conversion. Although there are limitations in terms of linking a campaign directly to an Amazon product page and measure the conversion, there are workarounds:
- A dedicated landing page with for example a promo code to use for purchase on Amazon
- A dedicated landing page with email registration to send product information directing to an Amazon product page
Do not underestimate the opportunity to work on social media campaigns to generate even more insight that will allow you to grow and understand your target audience.
These are just some key factors you should think about when working on and presenting your product content on Amazon. Simple steps in leveraging the tools available to you could make a big difference and allow you to scale and think strategically about your content output.