Quick Wins for Amazon Sellers this Holiday Shopping Season

Businesses in Amazon’s eCommerce orbit are still reeling from Amazon's ugly October surprise. Especially for sellers on Amazon.

To recap, in late October, Amazon forecast its Q4 retail sales to be $140 billion to $148 billion, far short of analysts’ average estimate of $156 billion. Meanwhile, Adobe predicted that US e-commerce sales in November and December would rise just 2.5% from the prior year.  All of this is because consumers are more price conscious amid inflation and fears of a pending recession. Independent sellers on Amazon’s website, who account for most unit sales, began bracing for a possible rough holiday season.  

Since then, a clearer picture of the holiday shopper has emerged rapidly: being cautious and holding out for retailers to put more products on discount as Cyber Week, the busiest time of the holiday shopping season, approaches. But they’re not looking for the cheapest deals intended to clear inventory. They are willing to spend on the products they want, but they are trading down for less expensive but still durable and good quality alternatives, such as private labels.  

There is evidence that consumers are banking on the fact that discounts will only get deeper as the holiday progresses. Combine this with continuing economic uncertainty, and consumers have many reasons to shop as late as possible this year. This creates a risk that retailers will run out of inventory and have less capacity to handle last-minute shoppers than ever before.  

It might seem like there's little that a seller on Amazon can do this deep into the holiday season. But with Cyber Week around the corner, sellers can pull a few levers to help improve your product rankings and conversion potential. It’s all about doing a gut check on some fundamentals to ensure your inventory is visible for the shoppers who do come to Amazon (albeit with tighter budgets): 

• If you’re selling premium products, rethink how you describe the value of them, down to the text overlays for product photos. How might you tweak your copy so that your nice-to-have product feels more like a need to have for a budget-minded shopper? And have you tweaked your copy everywhere a shopper might find it? Are you considering the total experience you provide on your website, socials, and ads off Amazon?  
• Mind your ratings and reviews. Are there any negative reviews torching your products (especially your expected holiday sellers) that you need to respond to and course-correct? Amazon’s algorithm will penalize in search rankings the products filled with negative reviews at a time when you can't afford to have your products harder to find in search. 
• Make sure your products are fully in stock. Amazon will also penalize products in search ranking that are suffering from frequent out-of-stock notices.  
• Set up coupons for Prime members. This under-used feature is a terrific way to draw eyeballs to your inventory.  
• Review your product titles and descriptions carefully within your above-the-fold copy to ensure they are optimized for value-oriented shoppers based on how shoppers are searching, including hidden back-end-key words on your product display page. These can be evaluated via Amazon SEO. 
• Create UX-friendly content. This means creating data-backed content that is native to and optimized for Amazon's platform on all devices. 
• Capitalize on Amazon A+ Content to give your listings an edge. As described on Amazon’s Vendor Central page, Amazon A+ Content allows vendors to create enhanced product listings. The goal of A+ Content is to improve the conversion rate – the percentage of visitors to the product detail page who actually go on to buy that product, especially if your product has many features. Vendors can choose from modules providing predefined layouts of images, headings, text, product comparison tables, and more. Basic  A+ Content  templates are now free, if you use the self-service option.  
• Use a first-party approach to show off your products' benefits & features. Are there valuable selling points that you're missing from a lack of voice of customer (VoC) data? 
• Consider your strategy for cross-selling similar but lower-cost items alongside your premium items. If you sell both high-end products (e.g, 4K televisions) and alongside lower-cost products geared toward value-based shoppers, feature the lower-cost options on your product description pages alongside premium products to appeal to a wider range of shoppers. 
• Re-examine your search campaigns on Amazon. Are your keywords aligned with what value-based shoppers are looking for? 

There are, of course, several strategies any merchant can take in order to maximize their use of Amazon Ads. For instance, Sponsored Display makes it possible to engage with shoppers on and off Amazon with self-service display ads, which is great for extending reach. Advertisers can engage audiences browsing specific detail pages, on the Amazon home page, on Twitch (owned by Amazon), and across third-party apps and websites. But this late into the holiday season, it’s a challenge for even the nimblest sellers to adjust their Amazon Ads strategy. That’s a conversation for post-holidays and beyond. And we’re glad to have it with you at Investis Digital. 

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