How to improve your products for advertising

Throughout this guide, we’ll use a fictitious brand, KitchenSmart, to bring our recommendations to life, and make it easy for you to replicate your own products.

1. Create a strong product title

Think of your product title as a way to make a first impression with shoppers.

An informative, easy-to-read title lets shoppers quickly know key facts about your product and can help encourage them to click on your ads. We recommend making titles approximately 60 characters long. Being concise helps ensure that your title won’t be truncated in your Sponsored Product creative, which helps provide shoppers with an accurate view of what your product is.

What should you include in your title? Consider the following:

• Brand
• Product line
• Material or key feature
• Product type
• Color
• Size
• Packaging/quantity

Here’s an example.

KitchenSmart sells an espresso machine. They might create a product title like this:

KitchenSmart [brand] SmartEspresso [product line] Silver [material] Espresso Machine (15") [Product type, height]

Where to make these changes: Vital Info tab

3. Include 3+ bullet points

Once a shopper clicks on your ad and lands on your product detail page, you want to provide them with the information they need to make an informed purchase decision.

One way to help do this is by including at least three bullet points that give them a clear overview of your product’s key features: contents, uses, dimensions, operational considerations, age rating, skill level, and country of origin are all ones to consider. Keep your bullet points concise and written with shoppers’ needs in mind.

Use these tips to craft your bullet points:

• Begin with a capital letter
• Format as a sentence fragment (don’t use end punctuation)
• Reiterate important information about the title and description, where applicable
• Avoid promotional or pricing information

Here’s an example.

Let’s look at how KitchenSmart might write bullet points for its espresso machine:

• Fully automatic espresso machine [contents]
• Grinds beans, brews specialty drinks, and prepares milk froth [uses]
• Operates at the touch of a button [operational considerations]
• Crafted in Italy [country of origin]
• 10" x 17" x 15" high [dimensions]

Where to make these changes: Description tab

4. Craft a helpful product description

With your product description, you can go beyond the simple features included in your bullet points and capture your product’s benefits, uses, and value proposition in detail.

As a best practice, you should always write descriptions for your products. Treat your description like a short narrative: use complete sentences, check your spelling and grammar and be concise but informative. Accurate, engaging copy can help you turn ad clicks into purchases.

Here’s an example.

When writing a description for its espresso machine, KitchenSmart takes the opportunity to show shoppers what makes their product special (and their brand interesting):

Get a café-style brew right at home in minutes. Combining a modern design with classic Italian craft, the SmartEspresso Espresso Machine is simple to use, easy to clean, and delivers rich, flavorful espresso drinks whenever you want them. (Morning, afternoon, evening, or all three). The unique milk system mixes milk and air in the built-in frothing chamber, adding an irresistible layer of foam to your cappuccino or latte. Sleek silver construction complements any kitchen. Imported.

Where to make these changes: Description tab

5. Include relevant search terms

To help customers find your products on HAQM, it’s important to add words they might use when shopping for what they want to buy. Search terms should focus on elements that are most relevant to your product, so aim to include generic words that enhance the discoverability of your product: key features, materials, size, use, and more.

Advertising can also help you gain insights on which search terms to apply to your product detail pages. Leverage the search term report available in advertising console to find queries shoppers use to find your products and add these to your product title, bullet points, and/or product description.

Here’s an example

When entering your search terms, use single spaces to separate them. Don’t use commas, semicolons, stop words (‘and,’ ‘by,’ etc.), or subjective claims like ‘best.’ HAQM accounts for misspellings, capitalization, and pluralization, so you don’t need to worry about those.

What are some search terms that KitchenSmart might add for its espresso machine?

coffee cappuccino latte espresso frother kitchen automatic beverage barista cafe coffeehouse drip tray water tank stainless steel dishwasher

Where to make these changes: Keywords tab

6. Add A+ content to your product

How can you help make your products even more compelling to shoppers? Be sure their detail pages feature A+ content.

Available to those enrolled in HAQM Brand Registry, A+ content lets you describe your product features with enhanced images, text placements, and stories. You can go to “A+ content manager” and select between Enhanced Product Description using basic modules offered by HAQM Ads to create enhanced content or add additional content types via Brand Story, including your logo, brand picture, and brand description.

A couple of tips for using A+ content:

• Tell your product/brand story: Add rich images, text, and comparison modules to share your brand story and build awareness.
• Reduce customer returns and negative feedback: Help customers make a more informed purchase decision by proactively answering their questions, leading to fewer returns and fewer negative customer reviews.
• Encourage repeat purchase behavior: Enable customers to explore your other products and increase repeat purchases from your brand by providing more information about your products.

Here’s an example.

You can see here that KitchenSmart has really enhanced their brand presence, and showcased their product, by utilizing the features that A+ content allows.

Where to add: A+ content

Keep your products reasonably priced

For many shoppers, price plays an important role in their purchase decisions. In addition to your product title, image, and other information, Sponsored Products ads include the price of your item. You can also add the list price if your price offer is below the list price. List price is the suggested retail price of a product as provided by a manufacturer, supplier, or seller. This is not the offering or cost price. If you are unable to provide a list price, enter a value of 0. Shoppers may be more motivated to click on your ad, and ultimately make a purchase, if you offer great prices for your products.

Consider these tips when determining your price point:

• Research other products and offers similar to yours
• Take shipping costs into account
• Consider free shipping to help increase sales

Where to assess: Update price offer

Include products that are in-stock

Your products need to be in-stock in order to be the featured offer and be eligible for inclusion in a Sponsored Products campaign. If a product you are advertising goes out of stock, it will be automatically paused within your campaign.

Our tip: have a plan for products that tend to sell out quickly. Remember, advertising can increase the traffic to your product detail pages, which can result in more sales. You can monitor your inventory under “Manage inventory” in Seller Central, or within the Inventory Dashboard in Vendor Central.

Where to go to check your inventory status: Review your inventory

Choose products displaying the featured offer

The featured offer is the section of the product detail page where customers can add items to their cart or buy now. When multiple sellers offer the same product, HAQM combines the offers into one product detail page, so we can present customers with the best experience.

In order to advertise, your product must be eligible to be the featured offer. We recommend choosing products that regularly display the featured offer to help maximize your visibility and sales. You can refer to your business reports to see how often your products are the featured offer.

How can you become the featured offer? Check out these tips to help boost your chances.

• Keep your products reasonably priced
• Review your inventory
• Offer multiple shipping options, and free shipping if possible
• Offer great customer service, which can help generate positive ratings and reviews

Here’s an example.

This product from KitchenSmart is likely to become the featured offer.

How to sign up to be the: Featured Offer

Advertise products with a Prime badge

If your advertised product offers Prime Shipping, the Prime badge will automatically appear in your ad creative. This can be a compelling feature for shoppers as it lets them know they can get their product quickly, with no additional shipping costs. We recommend advertising products that offer Prime Shipping to potentially engage more shoppers.

What if none of your products offer Prime Shipping?

If you’re a seller, consider using Fulfillment by HAQM (FBA). With this, you can store your products at HAQM fulfillment centers and take advantage of HAQM’s customer service and returns. In addition to that, your products will be eligible for fast, free Prime Shipping.

Here’s an example.

This KitchenSmart product displays the Prime badge when shoppers are browsing through HAQM.

Advertise products with positive reviews

When it comes to buying a product, sometimes the most important factor for shoppers is the opinions of other shoppers. That’s why we recommend advertising products with five or more customer reviews, plus a rating of 3.5 stars or higher. You’re investing in ads to help drive traffic to your product and encourage sales, so help improve your opportunities by choosing well-reviewed, well-rated products.

Applying our recommendations

We’ve now gone through our tips to help improve your product detail page. It’s best practice to apply all these recommendations.

When multiple sellers sell the same product through a single detail page, HAQM automatically combines the best product data from across various seller submissions to ensure customers get the best experience. You, other sellers, and manufacturers can contribute product information on a product detail page, as we’ve listed in this guide. When evaluating your contributions, we consider your sales volume, refund rate, buyer feedback, and A-to-Z Guarantee claims. You can see more about this on our help page.

Next steps: Where to find personalized recommendations

As a registered advertiser, there are several places within the ad console where you can view your recommendations.

• Products Page - View your recommendations on ASIN level all in one place
• Campaign Manager Ad Groups page
• Advertiser Notification Center