If you’re reading this article on how to sell on Amazon, then you’ve already done the hardest part: creating a great product to sell! From here on out it’s all about setting a strong foundation and taking advantage of one of the world’s largest e-commerce platforms. For the purpose of this post, we’ll assume you’re new to selling on Amazon and cover the basics of adding a product, making it customer-ready, and advertising it.
Creating a New ASIN and Product Offer
Setting your products up on Amazon may seem tedious at first, but you’ll get the hang of it before too long. To start, we’ll assume you’re using Seller Central (AKA “3rd-party”) and that you have all your product information handy (UPC, GTIN, SKU, etc). If your product is already being sold on Amazon, this won’t take as much time.
Assuming you already have a product listed somewhere on Amazon, click on the “Add Products” page and enter in your ASIN – Amazon Standard Identification Number. Think of it as the Amazon ID number, it looks like “B07CJFM86T”. You’ll enter this ASIN in the box marked “1” below.
If your product isn’t on Amazon, there’s a little more legwork, meaning entering in product identifiers like a UPC, title, and pack size. Enter these details after clicking “Create a new product listing” (marked “2” below).
Choosing Fulfillment Option
Once you’ve added a product offer you need to choose how you want it fulfilled. There are two options that should be carefully considered: FBA or FBM.
Do you want to ship individual orders yourself or utilize Amazon’s FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) program? Using the FBA program means that you ship your inventory to Amazon warehouses and they take care of shipping to the customer, for a fee. With FBA, your inventory must have been received by Amazon’s fulfillment center in order for your products to be purchasable.
Shipping yourself, or FBM (Fulfilled by Merchant), allows you to leverage existing fulfillment and warehousing capabilities your company may already have in place but doesn’t give the all-important “Prime” badge.
After you’ve decided on a fulfillment method, you’re ready to ship product. But wait, those product pages aren’t ready for customers yet! Let’s look at how to create a “Retail Ready” product detail page…
Creating a Retail Ready Detail Page
If you want to compare Amazon to a brick-and-mortar retail store, at this point you’ve gotten your product onto the shelf. The next step is making it as easy as possible for customers to buy your product. Information about your product should be easy to find and eventually, easy to purchase. Amazon will let you post a product with the information you’ve provided so far and some pictures, but there’s so much more you can add. Think of it as seeing a product on a shelf at the store with no price, sticker, or other info sitting next to a similar product on a beautiful end cap display with clear prices, marketing material, and maybe even a video to show the product in use. How can you create something that will stand out?
For all of your product listings, you should at least have the following:
- Clear and succinct title
- Multiple product photos showing different angles, packaging, lifestyle images, etc.
- Bullet points that give more details (think package size, main benefits, multiple product uses, etc.)
- Product description
And if you have a brand trademark, you can add additional features such as:
- A+ content: Part of the page above the review section that you can customize with product photos, charts, more details, etc.
- Product videos
This list can be intimidating if you haven’t set it up before, so here’s a little more in-depth info:
Titles
Titles are arguably the most important part of the listing because unlike bullet points or product videos, every customer will read the title. You want to make sure your title accurately describes your product and sets customer expectations, but isn’t too long or confusing. A clear title will convert sales better than a long, confusing, run-on title. For the SEO-minded folks out there, the title is also the most important field for keyword indexing. Remember, you can always add more information right below the title in the bullet points.
Product Images
The only other part of the page that’s as important as the title is the product images. Amazon has guidelines for the main image that you can find in Seller Central. It’s important to have multiple images so you don’t leave customers with any questions about the product. This could include all angles of the product, the nutritional label on food packaging, a chart showing specifications or features, or lifestyle images of the product in use. We recommend adding at least six images.
Bullet Points
Bullet points are exactly what they sound like. Short tidbits of information that answer potential customers’ first questions such as “what phone model is this product compatible with?” or “how long does the battery last?” It can also include different uses for your product or details on the quantity/size/packaging. Anything longer than one to two sentences should go in the product description, which is further down the page and where customers go next if they still have questions. Note that the description isn’t always something a potential customer reads because they have to scroll down the page to get there. While important, make sure customers see the most pertinent information higher up the page.
A+ Content
At this point, your product detail page is probably looking pretty good, and customers have all the information they need to make a purchase decision. So why do you need even more content on the page? To help make that purchase decision even easier. One of the side effects of selling on one of the largest retail platforms is the likelihood of having more competition than any other sales channel. To make sure customers click “Add to Cart” on your listing, add some branded content in the A+ section. You can use your logo, cross-sell other product offerings you have, and even link directly to those product pages. Setting this up is slightly more time consuming than the other steps we’ve already taken, but once you have it down, you can also save your templates or apply them to multiple ASINs to speed up the process. As far as product photos, you can add these in the A+ section, as well as the photo section at the top of the page. This is a great opportunity to use all the content you already have for your great products!
Here is a best-in-class example of A+ Content from Bose (to the right).
Advertising
Now your products are on Amazon ready for customers to buy and their detail pages look great. So, what’s the best way to get customers to see your beautiful detail pages? Advertising! And the easiest way to do this is through the Amazon PPC (pay-per-click) campaign manager. This lets you pay for your product to appear in search results. Here are a few high-level details:
- As the name suggests, pay-per-click means you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. If 10 people see your ad and only 2 click on it, you only pay for the 2 clicks (not the 10 impressions).
- Your ads will display depending on what a person types in the search box. This is why you should choose keywords that align with your product or brand.
- The most basic advertising type on Amazon – Sponsored Products – does not allow you to customize ad creatives. How your ads appear is automated; you cannot customize this or change the content. An example of this ad type is below.
- If you have certain keywords in your campaign, but when you type that keyword in the search bar your product doesn’t show up, it’s because you have to put in a “bid” amount for each keyword you use in your campaign. Amazon is running an auction in the background and the highest bidder has their ad show up in search results (generally speaking). Bid higher for more competitive keywords!
Amazon PPC campaigns can be very complex, and you can find plenty of resources online that show how to maximize your campaigns and take advantage of the different settings that are available. With the information you already have, here’s the bare minimum you need to set up a campaign:
- A $1/day budget
- An ASIN to advertise
You can also easily edit the name of the campaign, a date range, and manual keywords to target (although using the default “Automatic Targeting” is a great place to start). It’s easy to come back and edit campaigns as well. If you start with basic settings and want to play around with them, you can easily do so as much as you want.
And there you have it! You went from wondering how to sell your products on Amazon to having them listed with beautiful product pages. You also have advertising campaigns driving traffic that will soon convert to sales.