How I achieved 40 %+ Amazon conversion rate on my listing

Having a high amazon conversion rate is crucial for your Amazon listing. It gives you more sales, boosts your ranking, and lowers your ACOS.

I spent hundreds of hours optimizing my Amazon listing for higher conversion. It resulted in a conversion rate of more than 40 %. This means that out of all Amazon customers that clicked on my listing, more than 4 out of 10 purchased the product.

In this article, I will teach you all about conversion rates on Amazon, and share the strategies I used to turn almost half of my listing visitors into paying customers.

What is conversion rate?

Conversion rate is simply the number of visitors that converts (make a purchase), divided by the total amount of visitors.

As an example, let’s say that the last month 1 000 visitors clicked on your Amazon listings. Out of these 1 000 visitors, 12 completed a purchase. This means that your conversion rate is 120 / 1 000 = 0,120 (12 %).

Why is conversion rate important on Amazon?

Your conversion rate on Amazon is extremely important on Amazon for several reasons.

• It will determine your sales and revenue. A listing with a higher conversion rate simply generates more sales and higher revenue. A listing with a low conversion rate generates fewer sales and less revenue.
• It will either boost or lower your ranking. Just like you, Amazon wants to sell as many products as possible and promotes listings with high conversion rates. A high conversion rate indicates that your product is relevant and popular among customers. Amazon will be more likely to show listings with high conversion rates further up in the search result (both for the organic result and paid ads).
  If your listing has a low conversion rate, Amazon will be less likely to show it high up in the search result.
• It directly affects your ACOS/ROAS. The higher your conversion rate is, the more room you will have for your advertising. This means that you can outbid your competitors and still be profitable. Additionally, Amazon might show your listing on top of the paid result even if your bid is lower than your competitor’s. The reason for this is that Amazon’s algorithm takes conversion rate into consideration when deciding which listings to show.
  If your conversion rate is low, the opposite will happen; your competitors will outbid you, your ACOS will be higher, and your paid ads will not be promoted by Amazon.

Basically, increasing your conversion rate leads to a positive cycle on Amazon. You will generate more sales and you can spend more on paid advertisement, meaning that you will get more visitors to your listing. This results in more sales, which in turn boosts your ranking and gives you even more clicks in the search result.

How to calculate Amazon conversion rate

As shown above, you calculate your Amazon conversion rate by taking the number of orders, divided by the number of total visitors.

To find your own conversion rate on Amazon you should do the following steps;

• 1; In SellerCentral, click on Business Reports.
• 2; In Business Reports, click on “Sales and Traffic by Parent Item”.
• 3; Set the date range you want to check (standard is set to last 30 days)
• 4; For the ASIN you want to check, look at “Unit Session Percentage”. This will be your conversion rate for the ASIN. You can also calculate the conversion rate yourself by taking “Total Order Items” and dividing it by “Sessions”.

Calculating how conversion rate affects your revenue

Let’s take an example of how your conversion rate directly affects how much money your Amazon listing makes.

Assume that we have an Amazon listing that gets 1 000 sessions a month. The product price is 40 USD and the conversion rate is 10 %. The revenue for the listing will be (1 000*0,1) * 40 = 4 000 USD revenue.

Let’s assume that we optimize the listing and reach an conversion rate of 14 %. Our revenue will now be (1 000*0,14) * 40 = 5 600 USD. An increase in revenue of 40 %. And in addition, we can also start expecting more visitors as Amazon most likely will push our listing up in the search result.

In the table below you can see how an increased conversion rate will affect your monthly revenue.

Monthly listing sessions: 1000

Sales price: 40 USD

What is a good conversion rate on Amazon?

Although there is no definite data, it is estimated that the average conversion rate on Amazon is around 10 %. This is way higher than the average for all e-commerce which is estimated at around 2 – 3 %.

Why average is not a good measurement

I suggest not getting too hung up on the average Amazon conversion rate. Remember that this is just average across all categories. Some categories will naturally have higher conversion rates than others.

Why? Simply because for some products, customers are more interested in just making a purchase as fast as possible. Not a lot of time is spent on comparing different options.

For other product categories, customers are more likely to “shop around” before making their decision.

As an example, imagine that you go to Amazon.com to buy toothpicks. The product costs on average 4-5 USD, and there is not a lot of variation. A toothpick is a toothpick. Most likely, you will click on a listing that looks good and purchase the product right away. I would expect the average conversion rate for this category to be fairly high.

On the other hand, let’s say you are going to Amazon to buy a stroller for your newborn. In this category, products range in quality and price, all the way from 50 USD up to 700 + USD. Most likely, you would spend more time looking at different products, reading reviews, and probably also comparing to other options outside of Amazon. Hence, I would expect the conversion rate for this category to be lower.

How to increase the conversion rate for your listing

In total, I have spent hundreds of hours on conversion optimization on Amazon. Below I share the strategies I used to increase my conversion rate to over 40 %.

As you will see, a big part of conversion optimization is about understanding your customers and what they want.

Make sure you deliver an excellent product

This might be a no-brainer, but if you do not nail this, all the other strategies on this list will be useless. An excellent product means high quality, nicely packed, and that your product actually delivers what your listing promises.

If you have dissatisfied customers that leave negative reviews and return your products, all your conversion optimization work will always be an uphill battle.

Provide amazing customer service

Reviews are extremely important for your conversion rate. In addition to providing an excellent product, make sure to also give your customer amazing customer service.

For me, this meant having the mindset that “the customer is always right”.

I provided a long warranty, and in case a customer would have any issue with a product I would apologize and offer a full refund or a free replacement. This meant that even customers who were initially dissatisfied still had a good experience in the end.

This resulted in less than 1 % of 1-star reviews and a 4.8 average star rating.

Address your customers’ pain points

To understand your customers’ pain points, you will have to do some research. Read reviews, or even better; talk to people that bought your product.

Ask them why they buy your product. What pain points and problems does your product solve for them?

After you have figured this out, address the pain points in your listing copy and images.

Let’s say that you sell a lunch bag for kids. Through your research, you have found out that a pain point for many parents is that their kids spill on their lunch bags, and that water goes through the outer material. So it is important for them to buy a bag with a waterproof material that can easily be cleaned.

Of course, you then need to address this in your listing. Preferably both in the bullet points and in an image.

Promote the benefits of your product

A mistake that I see a lot of sellers are doing, is showing a product’s functions instead of features and benefits.

Let’s assume that you are selling a car cleaning cloth with a new kind of microfiber that absorbs water much easier.

Even though you can briefly mention the material your cloth is made of, you should focus on the benefits; quick water absorption. Show examples of how fast your cloth absorbs water compared to a regular cloth. Maybe do a test yourself and compare before and after.

Many sellers focus way too much on the technical details of the products, instead of actually promoting the benefits that the product provides for the customer.

Show why your product is superior to the competitors

Competition on Amazon is fierce. Most customers will look at several different product listings before making a purchase decision.

So why should a customer choose your product over a competitor’s? That’s your task to explain!

Show why your product is superior, and remember to do it with benefits. Your customer probably does not care that your microfiber is made with 30 % less polyester and is 40 % thicker. But they do care that it absorbs twice as much water as a standard microfiber cloth.

Answer your customers’ questions and concerns

If your customer has not bought your product before, they will most likely have some questions and concerns. You need to answer them in your listing.

You can find common questions about your product by scrolling down to the question section. I suggest checking both your own, and your competitors’ listings.

The example above is from a listing selling a laptop stand. Many customers are asking what kind of laptop sizes the stand fits. This would for sure be something to include in the listing. For example, you could write “Fits all laptops between 11 – 21 inches”, and demonstrate it with a clear image.

Do A/B tests with tweaks to your listing

Even though you have done your research and found changes that might make your listing convert better, you have no idea if it will actually result in a higher conversion rate.

Luckily, it’s possible to do Amazon A/B testing in Seller Central.

In order to run A/B tests in Seller Central, you will need to have Amazon Brand Registry. Your listing/ASIN must also have generated enough traffic in the last couple of weeks to conduct a test.

In Seller Central, you can test the title, images and A+ content, bullet points, and description.

I advise first focusing on the things which might have the biggest impact, which is often the main image and title.

Test different pricing

It can also be a good idea to A/B test your pricing. It could be that you could increase your price and still have the same amount of sales. Or it could mean lowering your price and selling much more.

Let’s say that you are selling a product for 30 USD. You sell on average 100 units a day. When you run an A/B test, you can see that you could increase the price to 34.99 and still have the same amount of sales. Your sales per day would then be 3499 USD, 499 USD more than before.

But you could also test lowering the price (if you have enough margins for it). It could be that when you lower your price to 27.99, you suddenly increase your sales to 140 units a day. Now you are making 3918 USD a day in sales. And since you are selling more units, Amazon will also boost your ranking.

You can not do A/B testing for pricing in Seller Central Experiments. Instead, you would have to do it manually. My recommendation is to test Price A for 2 weeks, and then switch and test price B for 2 weeks. Afterward, you can evaluate the conversion rate and sales for the different prices.

Offer more variations

If possible, a good way to increase your Amazon conversion rate can be to offer more variations of your product. This could be e.g. more sizes or colors.

By doing this you would capture more potential customers.

Add video and A+ content

This is low-hanging fruit for many listings. In general, adding video and A+ content will increase your conversion rate.

For the video, remember again to address customers’ pain points and show the benefits of your product.

As for A+ content, this is a great place to not only show your product in action, but also to promote your brand and what it stands for.

Always keep optimizing

How did I achieve a 40 %+ conversion rate? I used the strategies above, and I was never satisfied. Optimizing your Amazon listings is not a one-time fix.

I always kept optimizing with the mindset that even a few percent increased conversion rate would be worth it. I went over my listings over and over again to find new improvements that I could A/B test.

Some changes made a big difference, some made a small difference, and some made no difference at all.

The key is to continuously run A/B tests that can potentially increase your listings conversion rate. Even if each tweak just gives a few percent increased conversion rate, this will add up over time.

Summary

Working with conversion optimization is extremely important for your Amazon business. Still, few sellers are doing it in a strategic way.

By using the strategies above and continuously working on increasing your conversion rate, you will definitely get an edge over most of your competitors.

Sometimes it can be very useful to get an outsider’s perspective on things. If you would like me to have a look at one of your Amazon listings and give feedback on how we could improve the conversion rate, send me an email at martin@onepercentsellers.com.