The anatomy of an Amazon product description

Even after manufacturing your product; even with Amazon FBA doing all the dirty work, the heavy lifting, and dealing with angry customers, your job as an Amazon FBA seller is not done. Amazon FBA only handles the logistical side, the practicals of the whole operation. You know your product is the bomb; the problem is that nobody else does yet.

What, you think that just because it’s in the world’s biggest shop that people are going to pick it up by chance?

Fix up, look sharp. After the roaring success of our last article that told you all about why and how to use CRM in your FBA sales endevour, we realised that our Amazon brothers and sisters out there need help. Let’s get that bomb product marketed. Take a seat; class is in session. We’re looking at the anatomy of the Amazon product description, and which words we can use to make it bang.

The success of your product on Amazon depends on two things. Those are real, trusted customer reviews, and the complicated ‘A9 Algorithm’ powering the all-important search engine. The higher up on that list of search results you can get your product, the more likely people are to notice and buy your product. In turn, when those customers leave positive reviews, it’s more likely to encourage more customers to buy your product in the future.

The Amazon FBA process is a snowball rolling down the side of a mountain; difficult to get going at first… but once you’re going, you’re gone.

Your product listing is the one thing you can control to get the snowball moving. It contains all the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) keywords that you need to get it to the top of those search results every time. It is also how you communicate your brand, its values, and where it sits in the market, which are all key to persuading a customer to buy. You need to build trust, and show why you’re better than the rest.

An Amazon product listing is made up of three different parts: the title, the key features, and the product description.

The Title

The title of your Amazon listing is something similar to the subject line of your marketing email. It’s all about grabbing attention, being clickable, and explaining what’s inside as concisely and as honestly as possible. In terms of SEO, there is a delicate balancing act to play. The A9 Algorithm places more weight on SEO keywords in the title as opposed to in the rest of the listing. Still, if your title is as many keywords as possible, your brand looks unprofessional and untrustworthy.

It’s best to follow this simple formula, and see where your keywords fit in afterwards.

It’s a good idea to experiment with some A/B testing of your titles once your Amazon shop gets up and running, to find out which versions get higher click-through rates and sales. It’s also a good idea to do your research, and have a look at how your direct competitors are putting their titles together; you can do this with a simple search and browse around their shops, as well as by looking at the autocomplete suggestions when you start to type the name of your product into the search bar.

Apart from the obvious exclusion of inappropriate content, obscene or offensive materials, links or contact information, plot spoilers, death threats, reviews or requests for reviews, and external advertising, there are some basic rules in the Amazon style guide that you should follow.

The title isn’t about detail, it is about being seen. Your title is limited to 200 characters. However, it is recommended to keep it as close to 80 characters as possible in order to maintain a concise message of what your title is.

The Key Features

The key features are made of up to five bullet points; those five bullet points can hold up to 100 characters of product information each. They should be used to highlight the five, key features you want your customers to consider, such as dimensions, age appropriateness, country of origin, and warranty information. Bullet points are indexed for SEO keywords, meaning this is your first real opportunity to get some organic keyword usage in there.

Here are Amazon’s main style guide recommendations to consider for your bullet points.

• Begin each bullet point with a capital letter
• Separate each phrase in a bullet point with a semi-colon
• Do not include punctuation at the end of a bullet
• Write in fragments, rather than full sentences
• Do not include pricing or promotional information
• Spell out measurements (foot instead of ft; inches instead of in)
• Avoid subjectivity; write facts
• Be specific, not vague

Features tell, benefits sell. It might seem counter-intuitive in the ‘key features’ section, is to write the potential benefits for a customer first, and then write the features that provide those benefits at the end of the bullet point. Your customers aren’t impressed by numbers anymore, they’re impressed when something can solve their problems. Like this.

Again, your key feature bullet points should be as concise as possible. Cramming SEO keywords right up until the 500th character might get your product seen, but it doesn’t get your product sold once a customer visits your listing. Write in sentence fragments rather than full sentences, and appreciate that less is more. Your Key Features section needs to pique a customer’s interest in going on to read the full description and customer reviews.

The Product Description

The product description is the largest part of your Amazon listing, capped at 2000 characters. It describes your product, conveys your brand value, and plays a vital role in your Amazon SEO keyword ranking. Maybe you can incorporate some of the key aspects of brand storytelling in your description. Amazon's official product description style guide tells us what not to include in our product descriptions.

Where the title and key features section of your listing were focussed on the science of attracting attention and piquing interest, the product description is more about the art of sounding sexy and alluring with your words. Before, customers might have simply leaned towards whatever was the closest, cheapest, and most available thing at the time. Now, customers have a choice; they can take however much time they want to read as many product descriptions as they can.

Imagine being shot with a gun. It’s not horrifying anymore; after all the films you’ve watched and all the video games you’ve played… you’re numb to it. Now imagine a nail being rammed up your toenail. Now, that’s horrifying.

The same old, tired words are used in product descriptions these days. As consumers, we’re numb to words like best, top-of-the-range, and must-have. Your product descriptions need to have originality in their vocabulary. The most effective product descriptions contain sensory adjectives to help customers to feel, smell, taste, and hear a product when they physically can’t, and potent, active verbs to help your customer feel something as they research your product.

We’ve put together a glossary of sensory adjectives you can use to give your product descriptions some impact.

Your Amazon product description is made up of half science and half art. The science is hitting your SEO keyword targets to get as many eyes on your product as possible; the art is fitting those keywords in to make your text organic. The science needs to be perfect, but the art simply needs to create something that resonates with a user and helps it stand out above the million and one other descriptions out there for products similar to yours on Amazon.

As a good copywriter, you should know what the rules are. As a great copywriter, you should know when to break them.

Class dismissed.

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