How to increase your Amazon conversion rates

As a global leader in e-commerce, no retailer can ignore the power of selling on Amazon. In the last reported period, it had 310 million active users – a global audience not to be sniffed at.

This of course means though, that retailers face fierce competition from other sellers and an increasing challenge of making sure their products are not only noticed, but that consumers follow through on a purchase when faced with alternative products.

So, given this huge challenge, we developed the ATOM, powerful ad technology to help maximise the opportunity to sell through Amazon.

The Amazon and social media relationship

Amazon has become a sort of social media platform in itself. Last year, it launched Spark – a feature aimed at improving product discovery, which is seemingly inspired by Instagram and its use of shoppable photos – which shows just how serious it is at becoming a game-changer in social media.

Tapping into Amazon’s social media ecosystem, as well as leveraging other social media platforms plays a key role in driving your Amazon sales.

This is where marketers need to focus, and it starts with a good understanding of how advertising within the Amazon website itself works.

Removing distraction from competing products

The ranking of products within Amazon is based on an algorithm that is influenced by a variety of factors, one of the main ones being conversion rate (i.e., how often a product sells).

Although it may be tempting to drive users straight to the product page to increase the likelihood of a purchase, improving its ranking on Amazon and thus continuing the purchasing cycle, it is important to bring users to the area that is of most use to them.

For example, if you have identified a particular product interest then you may bring them to the product page, otherwise you may focus on a brand led page or a particular product range to ensure the customer always receives the most relevant information.

When we were developing our Amazon ad technology, we knew we had to find a way to remove competitor noise and distraction from competing products. Too many click-throughs on your Amazon product page that don’t convert to sales can be detrimental to rankings.

Our focus on bringing high value and high intent traffic to product pages led to the development of our 1-click to shopping cart functionality. A direct link adds products straight to the shopping cart in one easy click straight from ads themselves which fully optimises the purchasing process and can be used across any digital channel.

We have seen ad conversion rates increase by 500% as a result of this shortened user journey.

Understanding search behaviour on Amazon

The key to improving Amazon performance both within biddable ad units and organic page ranking is to understand what ‘intent’ looks like for each product and what keywords express intent on Amazon, as opposed to a search engine.

Intent on Amazon search is expressed differently to Google search.

The majority of searches on Amazon are product or brand specific (e.g. not ‘how to fix wrinkles’ but ‘Nivea Anti-Ageing cream’).

When users add superlatives and modifiers during their product searches, (such as “best new vegan cooking book” or “top 10 gifts for Mother’s Day”), these do not deliver impressions as they would with standard search engines.

Social media and product-specific audience understanding is an important factor in understanding how users express purchase intent on Amazon through key competitor brands and product search behaviour. The key is to assess the impact of a keyword to capture product purchase intent.

Audience insights

Regardless of which platform you’re using to advertise, having detailed insights into your target audience is crucial.

Targeting the people most likely to convert increases the product rank within the Amazon store.

The ATOM technology is able to collect a custom audience out of those users clicking through to a 3rd party site.

This provides a full tracking journey of users, and gives insights into things such as who has the highest intent to proceed to check out – data which is not available through Amazon itself.

Being able to see those users with a higher purchase intent is invaluable when it comes to building audiences that can be retargeted.

Use your audience data to inform your creative

Highlight key features of the product that are likely to resonate with this particular audience in the creative, and you are more likely to drive clicks through to your Amazon page.

To drive high intent traffic to Amazon, think about the formats used on other social media platforms too, such as Carousels on Facebook. They are really useful when you want to showcase more than one product in your Amazon store and allow users to browse whilst remaining on the platform.

We’ve made sure that our ATOM technology works with all Facebook ads, including Carousels, video and Canvas ads, building audiences that can be retargeted and lookalikes for prospecting.

Make the most of Amazon’s great user experience

One key aspect of the Amazon user experience is the reliance on positive reviews to inform the purchasing decision.

You can use this in your creative to promote your products by including a starred rating on the ad itself. It means the audience is already assured in advance of the quality, value and/or utility of your product before they have even reached the Amazon page itself.

Use the Amazon logo in the ad creative too, to increase trust among your audience. The logo will increase response to your ads too as the brand is well recognised and seen as a sign of authentication.

Maximise order value

Where you can, maximise customer spend by featuring more than one product from your range across the different platforms.

The ATOM technology works with ads containing both single and multiple products. For example, an ad creative may feature a birthday set containing three or four different products.

In instances like these, the one-click functionality means that the user will see all four products in their shopping cart, maximising the order value from each individual customer.

Maximising organic listings

It’s important to maximise organic listings as this is where the majority of sales are going to come from.

Use sponsored ads such as headline search to accelerate organic search position and ‘dominate page 1’ with your product and product variants (e.g. different sizes or bundles of 2 or 3), and then work to constantly optimise to maintain your position.

There are many techniques you can use to do this including product page optimisation, SEO keyword strategy, sponsored ad units, fulfilment and delivery, ratings reviews (pushing customers to leave reviews) and then the driving of high quality traffic to the pages via the ATOM.

Prioritise Amazon

The key is to look at the wider picture, particularly where ads driving to Amazon fit in the user journey. Ensure that brand awareness has already been established. This means – rather than Amazon being an afterthought – it is front of mind with Amazon conversion ads integrated into a wider social marketing approach with a strategic plan.

How can we help?

Our GDPR compliant technology, The ATOM has completely revolutionised marketing on Amazon with its deep audience insights, look-a-like targeting, improved conversion rates and the removal of competitor noise from product pages.

If you want to maximise the sales potential available through Amazon by having your ads powered by the ATOM, get in touch to find out how we can work together.