What is Amazon Retail Readiness and Why is it Important to Sellers?
Retail readiness is a critical component of successful Amazon marketing.
If you’re hoping to promote your products using Amazon Advertising (or by securing the Buy Box), then having retail-ready product pages is critical. Not only can it help you secure prime ad placement, but it also ensures you make the most of your advertising investment — and isn’t that the whole point?
Checking your Amazon retail readiness is a crucial step in the product marketing process, and it’s especially important if you’re putting a significant chunk of hard-earned dollars toward marketing or advertising those products to potential leads.
Are your products retail ready? If not, how can you make them so?
After reading this article, you will be able to define the elements of retail readiness and identify if a product detail page is retail ready for a campaign.
What Makes a Retail Ready Product?
Amazon retail readiness entails a whole slew of product features and details, from your content and images down to the ASIN, inventory levels, title and more.
Here’s a quick checklist of what a retail ready product page should look like before you take your ad campaigns live:
- Product titles
- Description & Bullet Points
- Images
- Customer reviews
- Star rating
- Inventory
- Buy box
- Enhanced content
Product Titles
The product title should be 50 to 100 characters and include your most relevant keywords, your brand and other key details, like the material, color, size or quantity. Amazon cautions against using all caps or being too promotional with your titles.
Descriptions & Bullet Points
These should clock in under 500 characters and detail how the product is used, what its major features are and information on warranties, model numbers, assembly instructions and other must-know data. Each product should also have on average five bulleted details. Bullets should max out at 120 characters each and focus on the customer benefits, use cases for the product, and more. Keywords should be included here, too.
Product Title & Description Example:
Images
Your main product images should be clear and captured on a white background. You should also include additional, high-quality images that offer detailed views of the product or its unique features. Photos of your products in use are also encouraged. Videos should have the same accuracy.
Product Image Example:
Customer Reviews
You want to have a solid number of reviews and ratings if you’re going to promote a product. To be retail ready an ASIN should have at least 15+ customer reviews.
Customer Review Example:
Star Rating
You’ll generally want to focus on products with a 3.5-star rating or higher, as this will give you the best chance at converting at leads that hit the page. In high-traffic times (Prime Day, the holidays), you might want to up your game and pivot to 4-star products or higher.
Inventory Status
You should also make sure products are in-stock and that you have plenty of inventory to serve an influx of buyers. Amazon Marketing Services campaigns also require you have stock for at least the last 30 days before launching a campaign.
Inventory Example:
Buy Box
Ensure you are winning the buy box to get the sales credit for the purchase. If you are a vendor, winning the buy box is indicated when the item is sold by Amazon. If you are a seller, the item will be sold by your company.
Buy Box Example:
Enhanced Content
Brand-owning sellers can use enhanced content to add images and rich text to the product description, highlight the value proposition and brand story, and add supplemental information.
Common Retail Readiness Mistakes to Avoid
Gauging your retail readiness also involves looking at a few other areas of your products including your price point. If your product is listed under $10, then it’s likely considered an “add-on item.” Add-on items can only be shipped if the customer has spent $25 or more on their order. Since customers can’t just buy these items one-off, driving ad traffic to their pages won’t do much to help your sales.
Finally, make sure your content is accurate, clear and descriptive. Unclear features, images or descriptions might help you get a sale on the front-end, but they’ll likely result in returns or exchanges on the back-end. That means a double-loss for you: the loss of the sale (and the shipping costs), as well as the lost ad dollars you spent to secure it.
Amazon Retail Readiness: The Bottom Line
Pouring resources into marketing your Amazon products is a waste if those pages are not retail ready. Always do your due diligence and make sure your products are optimized, profitable and primed for purchase before promoting them via any type of ad or marketing strategy.
“From a partnership perspective, it doesn’t really make sense for a brand to hire an agency to manage their advertising if Amazon does not consider them “retail ready”. You could have a world-class agency build out the most efficient campaigns that drive tons of traffic to your page, but if your reviews are low, product descriptions aren’t built out, or any other “retail ready” factor, you’ll end up driving traffic (and budget) towards a page that isn’t optimized for conversions; essentially wasting your ad budget.”
– Heidi Grütter, Marketing Solutions Manager at Tinuiti
What can you do to get your ASIN and product detail page retail ready?
According to Amazon, there are some parts of the product detail page that can be edited or customized by the vendor or seller directly, such as product images. Other parts, such as star ratings, cannot be changed by the vendor or seller, but there are actions you can take to help improve them.
Here’s how Amazon recommends vendors and sellers can improve their product detail page to get it retail ready.
Retail ready tips for Vendors
Product Title, Description, & Images:
- Make updates on Vendor Central
- Vendor central user uploads images and videos
- Vendor central user can make corrections to product title and description
Customer Reviews:
- Use the Amazon Vine program to help boost the number of reviews
- Vine Voices is a select group of Amazon shoppers helping shoppers make educated purchases
- Vendor Central user can sign up on Vendor Central
Star Rating:
- Vendors and sellers cannot impact the star rating, but reading reviews can provide insight into a low rating. This information can be used by the brand to make needed adjustments to the product listings.
- The rating will update in real time as customers leave feedback, so it’s important to review during advertising campaigns.
Inventory:
- Vendor Central users can monitor stock status on Vendor Central
- Vendors should communicate with their Amazon contact regarding inventory
Buy Box:
- Ensure product is in stock on the product detail page or in your self-service portal
- Check who is winning the buy box on the product detail page
- If you are not winning, evaluate how to improve the customer experience on the product detail page
Enhanced Content:
- Uses A+ enhanced marketing content
- Vendor Central users can set up and manage content on Vendor Central
- Can use self-service templates and build their own content, or use Amazon builds
- Can be created after product registration
Retail ready tips for Sellers
Product Title, Description, & Images:
- Must be a registered brand owner or first individual selling the product to manage updates
- Makes updates on Seller Central
- Seller Central user uploads images and videos
- Seller Central user can make corrections to product title and description
Customer Reviews:
- Must be a registered brand owner
- Use the Early Reviewer program to help boost the number of reviews
- Early Reviewer program encourages previous purchasers to post authentic feedback
- Seller Central user can sign up on Seller Central
Star Rating:
- Vendors and sellers cannot impact the star rating, but reading reviews can provide insight into a low rating. This information can be used by the brand to make needed adjustments to the product.
- The rating will update in real time as customers leave feedback, so it’s important to review during advertising campaigns.
Inventory:
- Seller Central users can monitor stock status on Seller Central if shipping from an Amazon warehouse
- For sellers that ship from their own warehouse, the brand will manage stock using their own shipping tools
- Check with whomever manages the product’s inventory for additional inventory to ship
Buy Box:
- Ensure product is in stock on the product detail page or in your self-service portal
- Check who is winning the buy box on the product detail page
- If you are not winning, evaluate how to improve the customer experience on the product detail page
Enhanced Content:
- Must be a registered brand owner
- Uses enhanced brand content
- Seller Central users can set up and manage content on Seller Central
- Uses self-service templates
- Can be created after product registration
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