You have product listings live on Amazon, and perhaps you’re already making sales.
But how can you grow your sales without knowing exactly what needs to be improved?
One word: data
Data sheds light on the blind spots in your business.
Without data, you can’t make informed decisions (ie: you’ll be winging it).
One KEY metric to track is the Amazon Conversion Rate: the number of people that buy your product after seeing your listing (which can be up to 15%)
By the end of this guide, you’ll know exactly how to track and boost your conversion rate — no more shooting in the dark.
Let’s dive in.
Conversion Rate Fundamentals
In this chapter, I’m going to walk you through some of the basics.
You’ll learn:
- What Amazon conversion rate is
- How to track yours
- What makes a reasonable conversion rate
- How conversion on Amazon compares to a typical eCommerce store’s conversion
Let’s get to it.
What is Amazon Conversion Rate?
Conversion means many things to different people. For example,
- Number of e-mail subscribers
- Landing page visits
- PDF downloads
But for sellers, the Amazon conversion rate is the percentage of page visits that result in a sale.
For example, if you get 20 visits on your page, resulting in only two purchases, the conversion is 10%—meaning only 10 in every 100 visitors would buy from you, typically.
You can calculate Amazon conversion rates for specific products by dividing the total number of purchases by the number of people that visited those product pages.
So, what is considered a good conversion rate for your online store on Amazon?
Read on to find out.
How to Improve Amazon Conversion Rate
Image credit: AdBadger
Sadly, there’s no agreement on a specific number.
As a rule of thumb, high conversion rates should:
- Maximize your return on ad spend, ROAS (and minimize wasted spend!)
- Boost your product ROI
- Let you stay competitive
… but some merchants report that their Amazon average conversion rate is between 10% and 15%.
Why?
Because it all depends on who buys your product on Amazon—Amazon Prime users or non-Prime buyers.
Prime members are your best buyers. They typically convert at 74%, whereas regular buyers convert at 13%.
These numbers only make sense if your product page is getting eyeballs (aka visitors).
What’s the point of 50% conversion rates if you have only four visitors landing on your product listings a month?
Although 50% conversion is desirable, that traffic volume can’t sustain the business long-term.
The bottom line?
The conversion is only as good as the quality AND quantity of traffic your product listing page gets.
But traffic isn’t the end-all and be-all of your conversions.
Your sales conversion rests on your answers to these questions:
- How affordable is the product? Higher-priced products typically convert slower.
- What’s the level of the competition? Higher competition means a lower conversion.
- Where are the visitors coming from? Prime customers convert better than non-members.
- What’s the traffic volume? You need traffic to convert visitors into buyers.
Now that you know what a reasonable conversion rate is, or at least how to determine one, it’s time to track your conversion rate. Let’s find out how.
Tracking Your Amazon Conversion Rate
Monitoring your conversion rate enables you to:
- Benchmark your performance
- Uncover your growth potential
- Understand the areas needing improvements
And you can find this information in your Amazon Seller Central account.
But you’ll need to do some calculations. Don’t sweat it, though; it’s simple enough.
Head to Amazon and sign into your Amazon Seller Central account.
Hover on the Reports tab. Click Business Reports to open the Sales Dashboard.
After finding the dashboard on the Business Reports page, select Detail Page Sales and Traffic by Parent Item under By ASIN at the left panel to reveal your performance metrics.
Select your date range, choose a calculator, then divide the Total Order Items by Sessions.
And there you have it—your conversion rates.
Simple, right?
Amazon Vs. eCommerce Conversion Rates
Amazon enables sellers to leverage its broad audience base and its fulfillment systems.
But an eCommerce store offers you full ownership, giving you complete control over all aspects of your business, including your:
- Processes
- Branding
- Customer experience
- Storefront layout
But which of these options is right for you?
Which one converts better—Amazon or eCommerce?
Let’s look at the numbers.
According to a recent survey, an average eCommerce website converts at 2.86%—a far cry from Amazon’s 10%-15%.
Conversion rates in the US are even lower for eCommerce merchants at an average of 2.63%, perhaps due to Amazon’s strong presence.
However, these lower conversion rates jump to 4.31% when you consider global data.
Either way, Amazon is the clear winner.
The Process of Improving Amazon Conversion Rate
Trying to increase Amazon conversion rate is not rocket science.
Take a close look at the conversion rate formula:
Number of purchases for product X divided by Number of visitors on product’s X’s page
We understand that in order to boost your conversion rate, you need to get more of these visitors to buy your product (Important! As mentioned in chapter 1, the conversion rate doesn’t really matter if you don’t have enough traffic first)
In this chapter on the Amazon conversion process, you’ll learn what top sellers do behind the scenes to improve their conversion numbers.
Let’s get to it.
Do More of What Works
The first step to achieving a good conversion rate is to take stock of your current position—where you are right now.
Use the data in your Seller Central account to learn how you’re performing.
Pro tip: Plot your monthly conversion rate on a time series graph spanning 12 months to uncover historical patterns and insights.
For example, you can match your price points throughout the year to sales.
Seek patterns in your
- Pricing
- Promotions
- Sales
How does that help?
You’ll know what’s worked for you so you can do more of it.
Highlight your Product’s Benefits
Highlight the product benefits—not just the features—in the title, bullet points, description, and copy.
Why?
Shoppers don’t often buy because of features.
So, why do they buy?
Value.
They buy because they see value.
Consider using benefit-focused copy to set clear expectations and to align your offerings with your buyer’s intent.
Make the product shine in the headline and product descriptions.
Use short and punchy sentences to connect to shoppers on an emotional level.
I love this listing from the HP Store.
Pro tip: Only emphasize benefits that address your customers’ pain points and features that differentiate you from your competitors.
Optimize Your Listing for More Traffic and Sales
Amazon is all for relevance. To stand out, you must optimize your listing in accordance with the shopper’s search intent.
The A9 Algorithm—Amazon’s algorithm for search rankings—uses sales performance, keyword relevance, pricing, and product availability to let shoppers discover products.
To hack this algorithm:
- Research keywords that shoppers use to discover products
- Use these keywords naturally in the headline, bullet points, and search terms without stuffing them
- Audit product categories monthly for better opportunities
- Emphasize key product benefits
- Optimize for the Buy Box
- Protect and enhance your listing by registering your brand on Amazon’s brand registry
Pro tip: Optimize your title, bullets, and description’s byte count.
Build Credibility with Reviews
Shoppers often read reviews to guide their buying decisions.
And sadly, research shows that 92% of shoppers will hesitate to buy if there are none. Meanwhile, 94% will not buy at all due to negative reviews.
For example, these kinds of reviews can hurt your credibility.
You can’t control what people say about you.
But you can respond to as many reviews as possible to control the narrative.
Pro tips:
- Upsell your happy and loyal customer: Recommend products when you reply to their reviews—even if they don’t see it, someone else might.
- Respond to more reviews on time to control your product’s narrative.
- Offer unhappy customers generous compensation.
Stand Out with your Images
The marketplace is noisier than ever.
In fact, the attention span of shoppers has fallen below that of a goldfish—it’s about 8 seconds now.
Meaning?
You must grab the buyer’s attention FAST or lose them.
But how do you get your voice heard?
Of course, by stealing shoppers’ attention, be it on their desktop or mobile device, with BOLD images.
Fortunately, these guidelines can help you meet Amazon’s image standards and also stand out from the crowd.
Apart from those Amazon guidelines, use these image best practices to boost your sales conversion:
- Make sure your product takes up about 85% of your main image space.
- Study your best-performing competitors’ main images and improve on what they have.
- Show off your products from different angles—use up your allotted image space.
- Add high quality images that show what it’s like using your product.
- Add text to images to highlight relevant product benefits.
- Zoom into different features or parts of the product.
- Demonstrate how the product is used with instructional photos.
- Set clear expectations with “Before” and “After” photos.
Pro tip: Hire a professional graphic designer or an Amazon product photographer for your images.
Write Killer Bullet Points
Keywords are just that: the words that shoppers search for on Amazon.
Use your allotted text to give shoppers exactly what they came on Amazon to find. Again, align your product offering to their search intent.
Wondering how?
- Do your keyword research and use relevant keywords in the title, bullets, and back-end search terms to make the product discoverable.
- Don’t obsess over product features; focus on the benefits when writing the listing copy
- Avoid text-heavy product descriptions. Instead, captivate shoppers with short but engaging sentences.
- Write for the buyers—use their everyday language.
- Clear shoppers’ doubts with a guarantee or warranty, if available.
Pro tip: Optimize your character counts and use bullets to torchlight key product features from a benefits perspective.
Keep Your Pricing Competitive
Sellers feel that Amazon often gives unnecessary attention and preference to low-priced listings.
Of course, you might feel that it’s not fair.
But you can’t change it. You might as well benefit from it.
Amazon considers product price as a ranking factor.
Perhaps, it’s obsessed with shoppers getting the best value for their money.
And there’s nothing wrong with that.
But joining the game with a customer-focused pricing strategy helps you beat the A9 Algorithm.
You get the chance to win the price war (and your shoppers’ hearts, too!)
Pro tip: Audit your pricing strategy regularly to remain competitive.
Most sellers lower their prices to beat the competition and then gradually raise their prices to profit from their high-ranking products.
Factors That Affect Conversion Rate Optimization
In this chapter, you’ll learn the factors affecting conversion rate optimization.
In the end, you’ll walk away knowing your five conversion killers and how to package your offerings to win sales.
Let’s go over all this.
Value Proposition
Shoppers buy for value, so your messaging and offering must align with that.
Use the following formula for an optimal conversion rate:
Right Messaging + Right Offer + Right Price
Usually, when one of my client’s listings is not converting well, this means that one or more of these three elements are not aligned.
Let’s break it down:
Right Messaging
You should know everything about your customer base. The more you understand your target audience, the more your messaging will truly speak to them
You need to know exactly what they need to hear in order to decide if your offer is a good fit for them or not. Messaging includes your title, bullet points, images, description, or video in some cases.
Right Offer
The right offer includes the actual product you are offering and your USP. Unfortunately, in some cases, the actual product being sold is the problem due to a lack of preliminary research.
Right Price
This takes a little bit of testing, but it is crucial that you find that sweet spot.
Any perceived mismatch between these three KILLS conversions.
Pro tip: Use benefit-driven copy to set clear expectations and ensure that those expectations align with your ideal shopper’s pain points.
Obviously, a lower price can boost a product’s conversion rate. However, it’ll hurt your profit margin. Meanwhile, a higher price may hurt your conversion rate but increase your profits.
So if you decide to use this approach, it’s important to look past pure conversion rate numbers and focus on revenue.
Search Relevance
Most shoppers now begin their product searches on Amazon.
In one study, 63% of respondents said they started the product research on Amazon.
A survey by Raymond James, a financial services firm, found that more than half of shoppers begin their product discovery on Amazon while only 26% still rely on search results from search engines.
Screenshot as Seen on Geekwire
Not showing up on customer searches or being irrelevant to the searchers’ intent undermines your conversion.
So, don’t just seek to rank; make the listing relevant to what shoppers are looking for.
Pro tip: Make your listing relevant with the right keywords, quality content, filters, and categories.
Seller’s Credibility
The businesses and brands that gain the most trust win the most sales.
More data suggests that 77% of B2C customers buy based on the brand names they trust—so you need to show credibility in order to sell.
Pro tips:
- Add the brand name to the product title.
- Cultivate reviews.
- Aim for the Best Seller or Amazon’s Choice tag. This is HUGE.
- Reply to questions and reviews.
- Join the Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA Program) for faster shipping.
No Distractions
Shoppers are often impatient. Don’t make it worse.
You only have eight seconds—the average human attention span—to make an impression.
Maximize that tiny window.
Pro tips:
- Avoid unnecessary details.
- Cut to the chase!
- Use short and punchy sentences.
- Use bullets.
- Grab attention with high-quality images and add as many images as Amazon allows.
External Tools To Boost And Measure Your Amazon Conversions
This chapter covers the external tools that let you measure and boost Amazon conversions.
Here, you’ll learn everything you need to sell better and smarter.
I’ll cover all the tools that help you stay on top of your game. And I’ll show you how I use them.
Seller Central
Amazon Seller Central is not an external tool, but it’s a key factor worth discussing.
It’s where you begin your journey as an Amazon seller.
Seller Central offers you everything—directly and indirectly—you need to succeed.
Your Seller Central account helps you…
- Set up a storefront
- Manage inventory
- Accept orders
- Set prices
- Manage communications
- Promote your product
It also allows you to monitor your business performance, including tracking important metrics like these:
- Number of times shoppers viewed your products
- Total sales or units sold
- Conversion rate
- Sales and Amazon PPC ad campaign reports
- Number of returns
- Customers reviews
Vendor Central
The Vendor Central is just like the Seller Central, but it’s for vendors who sell to Amazon itself and not to Amazon visitors.
Vendor Central allows manufacturers and distributors to sell directly to Amazon— and in bulk—enabling them to sell as a first-party merchant.
As you’d imagine, not everyone can use Vendor Central—it’s by invitation only.
So, what’s the point?
If you plan to sell to Amazon directly, then you’ll need Vendor Central.
The platform simplifies the process of doing business with Amazon.
It provides you with rich insights into your performance, including:
- Order fulfillment
- Billing
- Chargebacks
Now, let’s discuss external tools.
Helium 10
Helium 10 positions itself as a tool for sellers who want to succeed on Amazon.
It promises to provide sellers with all the tools they need as Amazon merchants.
It provides a hub for managing and growing a thriving Amazon business and gaining deep insights to stay ahead of the competition.
The all-in-one platform offers you these benefits:
- Product research tools
- Tools for performing keyword research and keyword targeting
- Listing optimization tools
- Analytics tools
- A market tracker
It also comes with a hijackers and product monitoring feature that safeguards your product and brand from usurpers.
SellerApp
SellerApp brings everything a merchant would need onto one platform, including tools for:
- Sales
- Marketing
- Operations
Specifically, SellerApp provides you tools that let you
- Optimize your listings
- Discover keywords
- Automate ad optimization
- Access product intelligence
- Track sales
- Manage inventory
- Perform other seller functions
Also, SellerApp’s alerts keep you on the know 24/7.
LandingCube
LandingCube helps sellers launch, rank, and grow their Amazon businesses.
This platform promises to let you generate momentum that leads to organic sales.
Thinking of building amazon landing pages? LandingCube has got your back.
Want to set up a retargeting funnel? Yea, sure.
How about running rebate campaigns to incentivize sales? You can do that, too.
Building leads across channels like Facebook, Google, and others? Go for it!
LandingCube promises to allow you to do all these things in a few clicks.
But, of course, you’ll have to test the tool to find out.
Amazon FBA Calculator
The Amazon FBA calculator is not an external tool, but it’s vital to your business success—it lets you stay competitive and profitable.
This calculator removes the need for a complicated, error-prone conversion formula; it helps you get straight to the numbers.
With this calculator, you can estimate the following:
- Fulfillment costs
- Net profit
- ROI
You may also use it to determine a product’s profit potential by playing with different price points.
The Amazon FBA Calculator also helps you discover the best fulfillment methods.
Amazon Conversion Requirements and Strategies
This chapter walks you through advanced conversion strategies.
Top Amazon sellers regularly see desired results with these strategies.
Learn more below.
Offer Shoppers Instant Gratification
Shoppers hate to wait; they love instant gratification—they crave immediacy.
Amazon does this well by letting shoppers know when their orders will ship, providing fast shipping, and offering real-time order tracking.
But you can reiterate this in your product description, especially when marketing or promoting your product outside of Amazon.
Let shoppers know you ship fast and that they can track their orders in real-time.
Recap your return policy and make it simple to understand.
Also, use an FAQs section to provide them instant help and answer all their questions.
Let shoppers know they can return the product and get a full refund if they have any issues.
Go Beyond Amazon’s Organic Traffic
If you’re just starting out on Amazon, then relying on organic traffic won’t help much.
Why?
Because your product won’t rank high in search results right away. You’ll need ads to drive initial sales.
There are 2 types of ads you can do:
1- Amazon advertising (Aka Amazon PPC ads)
Amazon PPC ad campaigns can also help you get your product in front of more people who use other keywords to search for the product.
The fact is, optimizing your listing for all search queries is near-impossible. So you can’t capture all your relevant keywords organically.
In turn, your product will have limited discoverability. You’ll be left vulnerable to your competitors.
The solution?
Support your organic strategy with Amazon promotion. This effort can help you win the battle over product discoverability.
Need I say that several top sellers leverage this tactic?
Sponsored products dominate Amazon categories, making them easily discoverable.
2- Ads outside the Amazon Platform (Facebook & IG digital marketing, E-mail list, influencer marketing with a discount code, etc.)
You can drive high-targeted supplemental traffic to your product pages from outside Amazon using paid ads on third-party platforms like Facebook, Google, and others.
Pro tip: Create a landing page, promote to a broader audience, and build your list. Nurture your audience, remarket them, and send them to your Amazon store.
Influencer digital marketing (through discount codes, etc.) is super powerful because you are putting your product right in front of your consumer base.
The conversion rate is much higher in influencer digital marketing campaigns.
Play Hard To Get
Shoppers hate missing out on good deals.
Offer your landing page visitors time-sensitive deals to create a sense of scarcity, triggering their FOMO (Fear of Missing Out).
Most purchases are impulse purchases. So you can leverage FOMO to drive more sales.
Image credit: Mailerlite
A study found that 60% of millennials make reactive purchases within 24 hours of experiencing FOMO—so use this to your advantage.
Pro tip: Incentivize email list subscription with time-limited offers. Use a countdown timer to put landing page visitors on the spot.
Use Videos to Skyrocket Conversion
It’s no news that videos drive conversions; it’s evident in the numbers.
Videos improve landing page conversion by 86%.
Furthermore, sites that use videos see a 4.8% conversion rate—a 65% lift in conversions over those that don’t use videos.
That’s HUGE.
So how do you sell more on Amazon with videos?
It’s simple—use explainer videos.
Explainer videos highlight your product’s benefits, how it solves customer pain points, and how it is used.
But be careful: this works only if you’re brand-registered on Amazon and can access the feature. It’s a big conversion booster, though!
Complete Your Amazon Brand Registry to Drive Even More Conversions
Amazon Brand Registry can open up a whole new world of benefits, protection, and sales which you would never be able to access by simply having a standard account.
Look:
Amazon wants to give their buyers an exceptional experience, and having your brand registered is one way to align with Amazon’s objective.
So what’s in it for you?
Surprisingly, quite a lot!
Let’s explore the benefits.
Gain More Content Real Estate with A+ Content
A+ Content or Enhanced Brand Content is a goldmine that you can use as an answer to a poor conversion rate.
If you’ve seen those Amazon listings with very attractive and rich media, then you’ve seen brand-registered products.
Brand-registered Amazon sellers can use their A+ Content access to flaunt their product features and tell their brand stories.
But here’s the kicker:
Amazon acknowledges that the A+ Content is able to drive higher conversions and traffic.
Pro tip: I highly recommend having a professional team of writers and designers work on the A+ content for you. (That’s what my team and I do!)
Go Big with A++ Content or Premium A+ Content
First, A++ Content and Premium A+ Content are the same thing.
But not everyone used to be able access the Premium A+ —not even brand-registered businesses (I say used to be as there has been a recent change, read on..)
Why?
Well… it’s a paid feature. And it costs a lot of money.
I mean… a LOT of it.
The simple explanation is that Amazon has prepared the Premium A+ Content offer for big brands.
And top brands are already signed up.
Why?
According to Amazon, Premium A+ content users enjoy a 15% higher conversion rate than regular brand-registered businesses!
Here’s an example:
This is the Samsung store on Amazon:
The Premium A+ Content is one of the few things rival brands agree on—it’s good for business.
And yes…
Amazon brings rivals together here.
Just like Samsung’s store, there’s…
…you guessed it…
And you know what?
These businesses negotiate their Premium A+ Content status on an individual basis with Amazon.
No publicly declared sign-up fees.
But here’s what I know:
Some sellers report that brands pay anywhere from $250,000 to over $500,000 to access Premium A+ content features.
Ka-Ching!
However, the good news is that right now Amazon is rolling out this feature for free to many sellers! We don’t know for sure how long this will be, but if your store has access to the Premium A+ content, then make sure to use it before it’s too late!
Hey, before you scroll away:
Remember that you can start where you are right now.
Look at the bright side:
Over 35,500 sellers make between $1 million to $500 million selling on Amazon every year.
That’s just under the population of Liechtenstein.
Image credit: Marketpulse
So, it could be you after all.
FAQ
Here, I’ll attempt to answer some of the questions I often hear people ask about Amazon’s conversion rate.
What is a Good Sales Conversion Rate on Amazon?
Amazon products typically convert at between 10%-15%. So any conversion rate above this average is impressive.
And conversions below that range suggest you can improve something—product images, copy, offer, price, or description.
Why is Amazon’s Conversion Rate so High?
Amazon has a high conversion rate because it attracts bottom-of-the-funnel shoppers —customers at an advanced buying cycle stage with an accelerated sales velocity.
Image credit: Spinutech
What are Amazon Sessions?
The Amazon sessions or product listing sessions metric tracks the number of times a user visits within 24 hours regardless of their page views.
It’s often lower than the page views, and a close match usually indicates a high bounce rate, perhaps due to a high price or a poorly worded product description.
Image Credit: Skubana
What is an Amazon Unit Session Percentage?
The Amazon unit session percentage is the percentage of shoppers that place an order each session. For example, if you receive 15 orders in 30 product listing sessions, your order session percentage is 50%.
What is Amazon’s Average Offer Count?
The average offer count tracks the average amount of offers displayed for sale on your page.
What is Amazon’s Average Conversion Rate?
As mentioned earlier, the average conversion rate on Amazon is reported to be 10%-15% among sellers.
What is Amazon’s Conversion Share?
The conversion share measures the percentage of a product’s share of a search term conversion.
For instance, if your product has an 11% conversion share for the search term “laptop bag,” it means 11% of shoppers searching “laptop bag” on Amazon bought your product.
Now, It’s Your Turn
I hope you enjoyed this definitive guide!
Which technique are you going to implement first? For example, are you going to start with optimizing your listing? Or maybe you want to try videos first?
Whatever it is, make sure you take instant action today.
