Amazon Prime Day has become one of the most anticipated ecommerce events for both customers and brands alike. Just like a championship game, much of the success in the moment relies on the preparation and practice that takes place over the course of the year. As brands gear up for this Prime Day, and begin planning for Q4, it's crucial to understand how the quality of your listings sets the foundation for a successful day.
Key Takeaways
- As brands gear up for Prime Day, setting a foundation of solid listing health plays a pivotal role in driving success.
- Optimizing PDPs, monitoring account health, and tracking performance metrics are vital steps in preparing for a successful Prime Day strategy.
- By focusing on a clear and clean listing experience, brands can expect increased conversion and maximize the impact of higher traffic days.
What to Expect
With changing macroeconomic conditions, this year's Amazon Prime Day is expected to prioritize deals and sales more than ever before. The focus on lower prices and deal-heavy environments stems from customers' desire to stretch their dollars after the challenges of the previous year.
What does this mean for listings? Sam Wyrick, Spreetail’s Sr. Director of Channels Operations puts it this way:
“In this environment, getting base level conversion optimization right is more important than previous years. Brands have less wiggle room to mess up. If you’re lowering retails to keep competitive on Prime Day and spending to drive traffic through advertising on top of that, yet the basics of your listings are not optimized, then that is like burning dollars in my perspective.”
How to Get the Basics Right:
1. Plan your Prime Day listing strategy early so you can prioritize correctly.
Depending on your resources, optimizing all your listings to the highest standard could take months. For brands looking to make the most of Prime Day, a good way to prioritize is to work backwards beginning with the listings that will be your brightest stars.
Sam Wyrick suggests identifying the listings that are going to anchor your Prime Day strategy as early as possible then work in the correct sequence (prioritizing listing optimization first) to make the most of the increased traffic.
Sam W.: “There's a sequence to doing this right. First, make sure your PDPs (product detail pages) are optimized for the top things that are indexing and driving traffic to listings. Then tackle creative content that drives conversions. Make sure you have engaging and creative bullets and the right imagery. (Amazon suggests more than 7 images) These are the basics. Then you can move to lifestyle imagery and videos to take your listings to the next level.
You always want to do this work first because if you drive traffic to listings through paid efforts or lower prices and customers land on a digital shelf and it's not great; That's obviously not going to lead to the conversion you're after and so it's almost like wasted effort.”
2. Focus on account health, brand protection, and winning the Buy Box.
Monitoring account health, especially during peak seasons like Prime Day, is essential for preventing GMV loss. Amazon's expectations for sellers continue to rise, making it crucial to stay on top of notifications and violations that can affect account health.
Sam W.: “The worst thing that can ever happen to a seller during a peak season is account health issues.
What's so unique about Spreetail is that we have an in-house, expert team and proprietary software that monitors account status24/7. We do everything we possibly can to partner with our brands and Amazon to keep listings live and avoid missing out on sales from down periods.”
Brands should also be working throughout the year to ensure that they have a good grasp on who is selling their products on Amazon. Focus on competition around the Buy Box for listings that will be heavily featured on Prime Day. Losing the Buy Box on Prime Day can ruin months of anticipation and preparation.
Sam W.: “Finding a brand protection partner can help brands regain control over their Amazon business. Rogue sellers can easily erode your prices and the perceived quality of your products if not kept in check. If you're losing the Buy Box to someone you don't think you should be losing to, you should ask yourself, ‘how did they get my products?’
At Spreetail, we partner with Vorys eControl to help our brands regain control over their pricing, listing quality, and customer experience. I recommend every brand look into a partnership with a brand control expert.”
3. Learn from this Prime Day to be better next time around.
Measuring performance during Prime Day can give brands a unique perspective on their listings. Compare traffic and conversion rates to category averages to help identify optimization opportunities. Additionally, analyze competitors' performance for insight on indexing relevant keywords. Monitoring pricing competitiveness within categories is another critical metric to track.
Sam W.: “Most brands see higher conversion on Prime Days, not only because they're driving deals and promotions, but also because the customer comes ready to shop. This is often the highest conversion numbers brands see all year. What we can learn from these numbers are areas of opportunity. If your listings are not performing despite competitive pricing, increased traffic, and stronger intent from customers; that really is a red flag that something can be improved from a listing standpoint. Those listings should be on the top of your list to improve for the next time around.”
Looking ahead to the next Prime Day, brands should start considering their product focus early on from lessons learned on this Prime Day. Optimizing PDPs and content sequencing takes time so decisive planning is crucial. Implementing tools like Buy Box protection during non-peak seasons can further strengthen brand presence and protect against price erosion when the pressure is on.
Prime Day at Spreetail
The Channels Operations team at Spreetail has been diligently working to get brand partners ready for Prime Day. One notable effort has been the consolidation and optimization of product listings to enhance the customer shopping experience. By streamlining and reducing confusion, brands can improve conversion rates and ensure that customers have a seamless purchasing journey.
Sam W.: “A lot of the work we have been focused on leading up to this Prime Day is around reducing confusion for the customer. We took all these very non-strategically placed listings/variations and combined them to streamline the shopping experience of the customer.
100% of your revenue comes from traffic and conversion. There's nothing else. I know it's a very simple statement, but if you have traffic flowing, but your conversion isn't there, it doesn't matter. It's all about how your listings look, feel, taste, smell. A customer who's, confused because the listing just looks kind of sketchy, or is confused because there's 12 different listings for the same product: that customer is going to convert less.”
If you are interested in partnering with Spreetail to optimize your listings on Amazon (and 11 other marketplaces), get started by talking to our buyers.
B2B Creative Marketing Manager
