Table of contents
Tip #1: Stay in stock
The risks of running out of stock online are greater than if you operated a physical store, and here’s why: the Amazon algorithm prioritizes products with a history of recent sales and conversion rates. These are two things out-of-stock items don’t have. So, if you run out of stock, the system completely wipes out your product.
That’s not even the worst of it. If your product remains out of stock for an extended period of time, the algorithm has a hard time picking it back up. You also run the risk of losing impatient customers. In the United States, a recent study showed that 52% of shoppers abandon their entire shop if there is just 1 item they can’t find.
Tip #2: Monitor search and don't be afraid to change strategy
Shoppers on Amazon don’t have time to scroll through endless product listings. Generally, they expect to go to the site, find the item they want, and check out in a matter of minutes.
Amazon shoppers tend to click the first few search terms that pop up. In fact, two-thirds of shopper clicks go to the top 3 search results that appear on their screen.
Tip #3: Increase ad spend
If you’re not spending more money on Amazon – both during Prime Day and in the weeks leading up to it – you’re leaving sales on the table. To illustrate how important increasing your advertising budget is, let’s use big retail holidays like Black Friday and Cyber Monday as examples.
These times of year warrant an increase in ad spend. On average, we recommend upping your budget by 150% to 200%. You should consider doing the same for Prime Day.
To get the most out of your paid strategy:
- Use the Amazon Search terms report and Google Trends data to find popular keywords
- Target key search terms with high search volume and low share of search
Tip #4: Optimize product pages
Optimize your product pages according to what customers are searching for. Here are a few best practices:
- Include the full brand name and a sub-brand if relevant to popular search terms
- Use bold, clear, and mobile-friendly visuals, including a variety of images.
Our research shows that 95% of customers who purchase a product look at all the images above the fold.
Tip #5: Make reviews work harder
Customers online continue to seek product recommendations from their peers. Not only do product reviews increase the perceived value of your products, but they also build hype and anticipation around certain days - like Amazon Prime Day.
Reviews also provide valuable feedback and insights regarding what real customers think about your products. As a general rule, aim for 4* or above ratings on your online products.
Bonus tip: Keep on top of competitor activity
It’s important to remain aware of what your competitors are doing so you can capitalize on the traffic they're generating. Monitoring high-performing search terms will help you achieve this, as will analyzing all the terms your competitors won over the same period in previous years.
Don’t ignore terms with lower search frequency rank. For example, ‘bluetooth headphones’ was the 35th most searched term on Amazon in November 2020. ‘Headphones bluetooth’, which ranked at 5,395 in the same month, had a significantly lower search frequency but was still a highly-searched term.
Now that you've got these quick tips, you should be all set. Good luck with Prime Day!
