Becoming Retail Ready on Amazon
What does it mean to be retail ready on Amazon? Anytime we talk about advertising and couponing it is with the disclaimer that listings must first be retail ready. Anytime we talk about creating distinct images or writing effective copy it is with the aim of becoming retail-ready. But what exactly is it to be retail ready on a 21st-century marketplace?
The definition of retail-ready is vague. It’s less of an endpoint than a threshold to be passed beyond, the bare minimum before brands can expect to see real growth.
Grocery e-commerce is an interesting world because it introduces a factor of credibility that most shoppers haven’t considered in supermarkets. Buying food in stores includes many decisions, but never the decision about whether a brand is trustworthy. On Amazon, though, anybody with an internet connection can sell goods that consumers will put in their bodies. With this new version of shopping comes the need for sellers to establish trust. Retail ready on Amazon is the unmarked point at which a customer can land on your product detail page and know that the product is made and sold by professionals; that for all their decisions about flavor, size, or price, there is no question about credibility.
Retail ready is no single thing, and it encompasses aspects of selling that arise throughout your journey on Amazon:
1) Done Before You Begin
There are pieces of retail-ready that were already established before you ever found yourself on the world’s largest e-commerce marketplace. Factors like list price and key product details, which have been meticulously solidified for other platforms, can and should be implemented into your new Amazon listings.
2) Proactive Preparation
There are aspects of being retail ready that take some work with Amazon specifically in mind. For the most part, these should be accomplished as you are setting yourself up to sell, and can then be tinkered with retroactively as needed.
SEO
Amazon SEO deserves to be researched with an eye for the category you hope to participate in, considering the established sellers you hope to compete with. Amazon is a search engine, so research those listings that appear at the top of the search results and see what kind of language it is that they’re using, then find a way to blend that with your own brand’s personality.
Images
Amazon allows you to include up to nine images, including the main image, or else eight images and a video. (Only seven of these slots will be visible on the listing, but the other two can be clicked into by curious shoppers.) Utilize at least the seven slots that appear, and if you have a video then include that too. Part of being retail ready is signaling to shoppers that this is a professional listing and the product they’re looking at will be true to its descriptions. A factor for this is in the presentation, and there is a sense of slapdashery in only including three images.
Additionally, images should account for the fact that shoppers might not care to read the bullet points on listings. The images should be able to stand alone as a resource for understanding your product. In a world where consumers cannot stand in a grocery aisle holding food items, your imagery should give shoppers a sense of what it’s like to turn the package over in their hands. This doesn’t mean you should try to replicate the in-the-aisle experience by uploading seven or nine images showing different angles of the product. Instead, use the advantages of a virtual marketplace to call out any distinguishing factors or ingredients in your product, show creative use cases, identify brand tenets and display some personality.
Brand Touches
For those with a professional seller’s account, listings should have A+ Content attached, and the A+ Content should remain up to date as products are added and removed. Similarly, you should have a Brand Storefront and should check in periodically to make sure that all listings are linking to that correctly. Sometimes Storefront links fall off and in their place is just a link to search results. Small touches like these aren’t noticed when kept up with, but when they are missed they reflect poorly, like a scuffed box on a shelf.
3) Retroactive Preparation
Then some aspects can only come once you have begun to list your products.
Reviews
Retail ready is a moving target, and one of the core components is having reviews attached to listings. A product being advertised with only 1 review to its name will stand very little chance of being clicked on, let alone converting a sale.
Brands cannot solicit reviews in exchange for free products, this is strictly against Amazon’s rules. But brands can reach out to their friends and families to mention that a long-beloved item is now being sold on Prime, that purchase and subsequent review would help establish some momentum. Amazon’s guidelines dictate several practices to avoid, so be sure to stay within bounds of what is appropriate.
For brands with pre-existing listings, there is a nice workaround for getting reviews attached to new listings: put them in a variation. If you introduce a new flavor, or add a new size option for your current flavors, by adding those listings to a variation they will inherit all of the reviews already attached to the pre-existing listings.
Communication
Once products are listed and begin to sell, with or without the help of advertisement, there will be customer questions to answer, which will appear on the product detail page. When there are returns or refund requests, reply as promptly as possible and work to remedy the customer’s concerns.
This question feature also acts as an opportunity to improve your listings. If you find certain questions or clarifications coming up repeatedly, it’s probably worth adding that information to your imagery and bullet points for future shoppers.
Posts
This is a form of social media where brands add content to their storefront, a way of keeping in constant touch with your most loyal customers. There may be no immediate payoff for upkeeping the Posts feed, but it is one more instance of allowing shoppers to see your presence on the platform and your brand personality. If you already curate content for other social media platforms, consider utilizing those pieces for Posts.
Inventory Inventory Inventory
Retail ready is vague. As a concept, it has to do with listings, but there is also the fact of your company being retail-ready. In this sense, your operations need to be established and prepared to keep Amazon inventory in stock. This is the number one shortcoming we’ve seen for small businesses who are starting to gain momentum on Amazon, which is keeping the listings active. Once inventory runs out, any sales momentum will run out with it.
Amazon might misplace a shipment of inventory for some time, or it might take 2 months to check in even though the previous shipment took only 2 weeks. There have been instances recently when Amazon reduce a seller’s maximum inventory levels and then the next week reduce them again. In cases like these brands need to be flexible and operationally sound to keep up with the dual demands of enthusiastic customers and platform restrictions. During Amazon’s famously high-traffic winter months, the receiving times for inventory are incredibly slow while sales might be spiking due to increased customer traffic. It’s important that your operations stay on top of the demands and the delays because no amount of product detail page preparation will grow your sales if the listings cannot stay live due to inventory shortages.
Staying Beyond the Threshold
Retail ready is a threshold to be crossed. But the threshold can move, and as your brand grows and listings gain traction you should consider revisiting them periodically. Analyze your copy to ensure the keywords are still relevant, check that the top reviews are positive and if not then reach out to a network of brand-friendly shoppers to upvote good reviews, A/B testing the main image to see if adjustments might be beneficial. Continue to improve.
Amazon may be the largest marketplace in the world, but it is also relatively new, and the seller side is in constant flux. Retail ready is a threshold to be crossed, but it’s also a check-in to be performed periodically — it’s so many small touches that cumulatively identify a thoughtfully-constructed listing.