Month: April 2016

Amazon Rank algorithms Explained

A time comes when the critical thing matters the most. If you are an Amazon seller, you understand that to sell on Amazon successfully, you must know and apply specific ranking strategies. There are many ‘how to’ formulas out there that try to explain various ranking strategies. It is good to pursue them and find out what works for you. This is because what works for another may not necessarily work for you. However, Understanding Amazon’s ranking algorithm is the ultimate game changer. It is the sure way to succeeding as an Amazon seller. It enables you to forge your own optimization strategies that set you apart from your competitors. The Amazon ranking algorithm is so fundamental that your success or failure literally depends on how well you understand it. Understand the rules of the game and apply them with your unique moves and experience unlimited success. To succeed at tweaking the influential factors within your control, you have to be well acquainted with the logic behind ranking algorithm.

Why Ranking High Means Better Sales

Most buyers hardly search for products beyond the first three pages. This is true for Google as well as Amazon. Unlike Google, which displays just ten results per page, Amazon displays sixteen. It follows that a product ranked among the forty eight of the first three pages of the search results stands a much higher chance of purchase than those ranked in lower pages. Therefore, to succeed at Amazon as a seller, focus your ranking efforts at hitting the top three pages. The higher, the better.

Stepping in Amazon’s Shoes

If you intend to understand Amazon’s ranking criteria well, step in their shoes and learn why they do what they do. Yours is a balancing act, because you also have to step into the buyer’s shoes to know their search preferences. Amazon’s major objective is to have as maximize purchases from its site. This they do by displaying products in form of search results with a view that buyers are likely to click on them and place an order. Amazon applies two steps to achieve this goal, as explained below.

1. Filtering Matching Products

The first step is to filter matching products according to possible search queries by users. It would be very hectic for a user to scroll through all the over 470 million products on Amazon. It is incumbent upon Amazon to narrow down the results, based on the user’s query, to the specific category of the product needed. For a product to be eligible for selection as a result for a search query, it must have all the keywords posted in the search query. In this case, various aspects of a product are captured. These include the product, description, brand, seller’s name, bullet points and color, among others. As a seller who is intend on achieving a higher ranking of your product, you must fill in this information regarding your product to stand a chance of appearing among the top results.

2. The Matching Products Are Ranked According to Purchase Likelihood

The various factors considered by Amazon during this second step are categorized into two: Performance factors, which show ho popular with the customers a product is, and relevance factors, which show best a product matches a search query. Performance factors are based on CTR (Click Through Rate), rate of conversion and actual sales, while relevance factors depend on the keywords used and their positioning. Thus, Amazon’s logic here is to show users ‘performing’ products, with a view that they will continue performing, as well as products that fit in the search query in terms of keywords.

CTR shows how often users click on a product after it has been displayed to them. The higher the CTR, the more popular a product is, and vice versa. Most clicked items are raked higher than those less clicked. On the other hand, conversion is about the second click by a user after making up his mind to purchase a product. Amazon’s logic is that a product that has been clicked the most and sold the most is more likely to sell more, especially to new users. Hence the reason why it is ranked higher. It should be noted that CTR and conversion rate go together. A product cannot have a very high CTR and very low conversion rate. This only implies that users are very impressed with a product at first glance, but that is where it stops. It means first impressions are not good enough to warrant the subsequent purchase of the product. Such products that attract high CTR but very low conversions eventually drop in ranking.

CTR is influenced by such factors as rating, feature preview, cost of delivery, availability, title, brand, image, price, FBA/prime, product category and bestseller label, among other factors.

As a seller, you can really boost your product sales, not only by observing the above factors, but also by how you choose your keywords. You may not be able to directly influence sales, but at least you have control over the factors that influence the sales. So, be aware that both relevance and performance factors matter. They are very complementary in their contribution to your products ranking.

Ebook Pricing: 3 Factors you Should Consider

How do I price my ebook? This is one of the most asked questions. Although different authors have different strategies, this article will look at the common strategies that can help you sell your ebook and attract sales.

The best price for an ebook depends on factors such as:

  • Goals of the ebook
  • Market niche where you plan to sell it
  • What other authors of the same genre of books charge

Goals for the ebook

The first thing an author needs to contemplate is why are they writing the book? The pricing of your content will be determined by what you want to accomplish. Some authors write content to lure readers to buy something from their sites. In such a case, you might need to offer a free book to convince readers to buy a more expensive product.

Market Niche where you plan to sell the ebook or kindle

There are various approaches for selling ebooks. When you decide to sell on your website, you book would cost different compared to when you sell on sites such as Amazon with various programs. You can also sell it on mass platforms where other dozens of books are sold.

Look at what other authors of the same genre of books charge

First, it is important to learn that you do not have the price the same as other authors. But, its pays to know how the same others with your genre or content offer especially if your book will also feature in the other sites alongside your competitor’s books. If you are working on a fifty-page book and intending to sell it at $30 while other authors are also selling something similar to the same length at $3, you will not see many sales if the two are being sold on the same platform. However, if you are selling from your site, you might have the freedom to control pricing without considering the competition in the market. If you look at Amazon, you will see that the most bestseller ebooks have a price ranging from $3 to $7. The lower the price, the more you are likely to sell.

You need to understand that lower pricing expand the audience, and that translates to better revenues. Pricing is one of the ways that authors get an entry level in the market. When you have a bigger audience, you are likely to get better revenues. However, content with small audiences would attract a higher price to break even.

People that already have an audience and reputation can always sell content at their set price because they sell the authority more than the ebook itself. If you offer unique content regularly, people would not mind buying your content at whatever price.

Amazon: Does Keyword Density have an impact on rankings?

With the internet becoming the dominant platform for buying and selling, people are looking for ways to ensure that they rank highly on the major e-commerce sites. This article will look if keyword stuffing improves your rankings on Amazon. Experiments were carried out to analyze the impact of different keyword ratios on Amazon ranking algorithm. Various experiments have been conducted with keywords placed on different Amazon listing.

Keyword Density

The keywords were placed at the bulletin points, product title, seller central search terms, and product description. Several groups of products were created for the experiment with each group consisting of four products with a specific keyword. The keyword was after that entered one to four times in different keyword fields as listed above and the other things remaining equal about the product. The search query was then done on the different products and rankings checked.

The results of the experiment showed no systematic relationship that existed between the ranking of the product and keyword density. It seemed ranking was not affected by the keywords on Amazon instead it is determined randomly for identical products with a specific keyword.

Insights from the experiment for Amazon Optimization

  • Rankings on Amazon is not improved or affected by repeating keywords in the different keyword fields.
  • Amazon algorithm does not punish repetition of keywords

Since you have realized that repeating same keywords does not improve your rankings on Amazon, it is better that you do not waste the space but instead, find many other unique, relevant keywords that would ensure that the product is highly listed with as many search terms. Make sure you put the important keyword in the title, bullets, description, and search terms.

Don’t Forget Google

While repeating keywords are not effective on Amazon searches, it remains an effective method for higher ranking on SEO. It means it is useful repeating the keywords when writing product description. Remember that Keyword repetition does not mean keyword stuffing. This is because a well-written product description with keywords would enhance rankings on the major search engines and there is enough space for more keyword, unlike the other keyword field that has limited space.

How to generate more Reviews on your Amazon Products?

Shopping trends have changed a lot over the past years. Many more people have taken to online shopping than ever before. This is informed by the increasingly busy modern lifestyles. Online shopping not only saves time, but also effort. However, the tricky part is knowing the worth of what one intends to buy. This is where reviews come in handy. Most only shoppers go through product reviews before making a final purchase decision. Hence the reason why as a seller you should manage your product reviews with utmost care. Knowing how vital they are, it is also prudent to learn how to generate them in order to stay on top of your game. Unfortunately, very few customers post reviews after using a product. Hence the reason why you should come up with ingenious ways of generating your product reviews.

Set Up an Email Campaign

One way of generating reviews is setting up an email campaign. The campaign keeps tabs on the customer from the time they make their purchase to the time they use the product and have an idea of how good it is. However, the campaign is not supposed to intrude and interfere with the private life of the shopper. It is only meant to influence the customer to get back and give a review of the product. Thus, implementation of the campaign should be systematic and and strategic. Not only will you see a surge in reviews, the communication channels opened up also help prevent negative reviews.

The Approach

Applying the email strategy needs caution, lest you become bothersome and intrusive to shoppers. Send only two to three emails per product purchase. Sending more emails than these may appear disrespectful, and the shopper may in turn choose to ignore them, especially when he feels they are a nuisance. So, how strategically do you send the emails?

Send Email 2 Days After Delivery

Let your first email be a plain customer service email. Send it a few days after delivery of the goods. Acknowledge their purchase of the product and inquire whether it was delivered on time and in one piece. Find out whether it is in good working condition. At this point, it is prudent not to ask for any reviews yet. Chances are they are yet to use the product.

Send Email 2 After The Shopper Has Used the Product

Give the customer a few more days to use the product before sending a follow up email. The length of time given depends on the nature and category of the product. By sending this email, you assume that the customer has used and evaluated the product. He should therefore be able to give honest, unbiased feedback about it.

Sending a third email maybe necessary or unnecessary depending on the response you get from the first two emails. So, use your discretion and creativity to decide whether to send one more email or to stop the campaign for this specific product and customer at this point.

The final step: Monitor feedbacks

Track your customers reviews by using our free tool for Amazon online monitoring in multiple countries.

Amazon: How to React to Negative Product Reviews

Positive product reviews and ratings is what drives sales of a product. The more they are, the more popular with buyers the product becomes. However, it is not always wise to focus much on the positives and forget that sometimes the tide turns. A single negative review and rating can go a long way in dragging down sales of a product. Most users visit the negative reviews to check for any issues they may have to handle while using the product. No seller would love to encounter such serious decrease in sales due to negative reviews and ratings. Perhaps knowing how to handle them could help tone down the effects of negative reviews and ratings.

Contact Customer to Revisit Their Review

This is probably the best option to deal with negative reviews. Try to convince the customer to revisit and review their comments retrospectively. The idea is to have the customer either delete the review altogether or revise it so the damage is controlled. At best, the customer revises the review so that it is positive. In this case you don’t have to worry about losing your vital review. At worst, the customer withdraws the review altogether. In this scenerio, you lose the review, but remember you lose its negative effect as well.

Contact Amazon to Remove the Negative Review

Here, the only possible option is the removal of the review. There is always that bad feeling associated with losing your review count, but you always lose its negative effect as well, which augurs well for you. It should be noted here that Amazon can only remove a review that doesn’t comply with its review guidelines.

Comment on the Review Publicly

If it isn’t possible to contact the customer to revisit and revise or remove the negative review, or if you can’t find good reason enough to convince Amazon to remove it, this option remains to be exploited. Publicly commenting on the criticism can help mitigate the effects of the review. The review is not removed, so its negative effect remains, but your response can help neutralize the effect or tone it down. You can do this by assuring the public that you have taken measures to ensure that such an issue never arises again.