While Amazon is a great platform for selling online, the stiff competition and the tools at disposal can easily overwhelm the beginners and experienced sellers alike.In this article, we try to demystify the formula of increasing sales on Amazon. This approach will help you boost your sales not only on Amazon but on other marketplaces like Flipkart, Paytm, etc.
Sales on Amazon can be looked at as a two-step process. First, someone lands on your product detail page. Second, the visitor takes a look at various sections and finally makes the decision to buy the product. Let’s call the first step as “Page Views” and the second step as “Conversion”. So, all you need to do is get more page views and get maximum conversion out of those page views. While this framework may seem too simple, it can prove highly effective in boosting your sales on online marketplaces.
Now, time for answering the most obvious question:
How do we increase Page Views?
Well, in order to increase page views, we need to take a look at the factors that affect the visibility of your products in Amazon search results. So, let’s dig in:
- Optimise your product Catalogue/Listing: Creating a high quality product listing is super important step for your sales growth. Using the right set of keywords in the various sections of your listing like item name, bullet points, descriptions and backend can help you enhance your search result rankings.
- Update Catalogue Regularly: As we said, creating a high quality listing is super important, so is updating the catalogue on a regular basis. It must not be looked at as a one-time job. You should keep reviewing your choice of target keywords and keep updating your listing details accordingly.
- Create and Optimise Ad Campaigns: Creating Sponsored Ads, be it in the form of Amazon Sponsored Products or be it Sponsored Brand (in case your brand is registered), can always help you gain more Page Views on your product detail pages. While creating campaign, do keep note on your product selection and keyword selection. Your choice of products, keywords and bids are going to impact the performance of your campaigns.
- Make external marketing efforts to increase direct traffic: Another very effective method of increasing page views, especially just after account launch, is putting efforts in external marketing. You can make use of Facebook, emails and WhatsApp to bring traffic from external sources.
How do we improve Conversion?
While, you work on increasing page views on your products through the methods outlined above, let’s now discuss the second step of the process: Conversion. This step is all about convincing the visitor to make the purchase decision. Let’s now dig into the levers that can help you improve your conversion rates:
- Buy Box – Become Eligible and Win the Buy Box: According to Amazon, more than 80% of sales on Amazon happens through the Buy Box only. This goes to much higher levels in case of categories like mobile devices.To further understand how to become eligible and win the buy box on your products, read our article 5 ways to get Amazon Buy Box early and increase your sales!
- Price Competitiveness: The competition on Amazon is steep. This doesn’t have to be an obstacle to profitability. A word of advice for pricing your products on Amazon:
“Look at the profits per month/quarter/year and not profits per unit!”
What this means is that while deciding the price of your products, do not go by keeping the profits on the sales of every unit. Instead, look at the profits that you will have per month. Having a lower profit margin per unit can help you stay ahead in the competition that will eventually lead to more sales volume and thus more profits per month. But, if you are profit conscious for each unit that you sell, it may make your products be on the higher side of the pricing which can lead to less number of people buying your products. You should be strategizing your pricing in a manner that leverages the number of potential buyers that platforms like Amazon have.
Also, note that pricing is a dynamic decision. It is not something that you can just decide once and that’s it. It will depend on the stage of the product lifecycle. If your products are new in the market, you need to have a very low-profit margin. Once you start to gain popularity and traffic, then you can go ahead and increase your margin. You can read more on Pricing strategy in our article titled “Pricing Products on Amazon, Flipkart and Other Marketplaces“.
- Product Reviews: A research claims that 90% of consumers online believe their purchasing choices are influenced by product reviews. So, you should definitely work on getting as much seller feedback and product reviews as you possibly can. However, at the same time, you should also make sure that you are not violating Amazon’s Review Policies. While the number of reviews certainly play a very important role in improving conversion, the quality of reviews must not be overlooked. 2 reviews with specific details about the product experience are way better than 10 5-star reviews with comments like “Good”, “great product” and other one-liners. Reviews influence the buying decisions of your page visitors, so reviews that help them clearly decide are the ones that you should be focusing on.
- Use high-quality images: In online marketplaces, your buyers cannot touch or feel the products. So, it’s a no brainer that the only way one can set the expectations is through the images. Your product images should be of high quality so the potential buyers can zoom in and out clearly to understand the product. There should be images from multiple angles. Another very important aspect of it is including in-use images as well. This helps your page visitors picture themselves with the product and converts them into buyer. E.g. if you sell a comforter, you should include an image of the comforter in a bed room as well.
- Have a high quality Catalogue:. What you write in the product title, bullet points and description is definitely going to influence buying decisions. Make sure to mention your product USPs in the bullet points and description. Also, if your brand is registered on Amazon, go on and create A+ content (EBC) for some of the premium high-quality products. The bottom line is that your catalog should give clarity to the page visitors. A Good Quality catalog is like a salesperson talking to the visitor.
- Get Amazon Features: Having Amazon features like “FBA”, “Prime” or 1 Day/2 Day delivery can immensely help you differentiate yourself from the crowd. These features help building trust and credibility among your visitors. Also, earning badges like “Amazon Choice” and “Best Seller” will drastically boost your sales on Amazon.
- Use FAQs : You should always be trying to make your product listing as tangible for the visitor as possible. Answering frequently asked questions about the products are a simple and great way of converting your visitors into buyers.
Now that you have all the weapons of boosting sales in your arsenal, start using those right away!
Guidelines for new sellers or those with no or little sales/views history:
First, work on product detail pages (all/selected items, depending on the number of SKUs in the catalogue) to increase the probability of conversion using the levers mentioned above. Once this is done, focus on increasing page views on these products.
Guideline for those with significant sales/views history:
Analyse the business report and put your ASINs into the following matrix to understand which strategy is going to work for which product.
E.g. for the SKUs (SKU1, SKU2, SKU3 in the above picture) that fall into the cell of High Page Views and Low Conversion, you should be working on the levers of increasing conversion rate and you will start to witness some amazing increase in sales over time. Similarly, for the SKUs (SKU4, SKU5) falling into the category of High Conversion but Low Page Views, you should be working to improve the visibility noting the points mentioned above.
Although in this article, we have tried to touch most of the aspects of increasing sales on Amazon, do mention in comments if we missed anything. Also, we would love to hear about your online selling experience. Share this article with your fellow sellers to help them grow their online sales.
Happy Selling!