The Double Whammy (in a Good Way) for Amazon Sales

Amazon sales – what is it that is unique about selling on Amazon instead of on your own website?

Fundamentally, it’s a ready made source of buyers. The biggest pool of ecommerce buyers in the world who go to Amazon to make their purchases.  Wow.

Meaning you can put your product in front of those buyers. An incredible, amazing thing. What an opportunity. No wonder soooo many small businesspeople have succeeded in setting their lives free through the Amazon opportunity.

But, to get that amazing Amazon traffic to YOUR product – you have to rank at the top of the Amazon search results (for search phrases relevant to your product).

And that is where everything comes to a point. Ranking on page 10 of Amazon? You might as well pack up and go home.

The (Good) Double Whammy

People talk about a lot of “ranking factors” – but there is one, overarching, single most important ranking factor. And really only one (when you look medium term).

Get right just this one factor, and you’ll have a million dollar business in time.

…Conversion rate!

Yup, that’s all there is to it. Conversion rate. Let me explain this statement, because you might rightly tell me that things like sales per day are ranking factors.

Sure, those are ranking factors, but ultimately they’re a subordinate ranking factor to conversion rate.  Sales per day is a combination of traffic (which is dependent on ranking) and conversion rate.

Ranking for a certain search phrase is dependent on sales per day, and conversion rate, and the relevancy of your listing to the keywords used (ie you need the keywords IN your listing).

So we are going in a circle. What’s the common factor? Conversion rate.

Look at it this way:

  • If you have a high conversion rate, you will sell more per day for the traffic you’ve got.
  • And if you have a high conversion rate, giving higher sales per day, you will climb the rankings, giving you more traffic, that will convert at your high conversion rate.

It’s a virtuous circle!

So conversion rate is king.  Conversion rates like this from our own Amazon business (yup that’s 55%+ conversion rate)!

(Conversion rate is units sold divided by unique visitors.  So we are selling more than 1 unit for every 2 visitors to our product page).

(Conversion rate 55.88%, sales over a 1 week holiday shopping period).

All you need to do is get started with a couple of dozen sales to friends and family, and Amazon will, slowly but surely, begin to elevate your listing in the rankings.

You can speed it up of course, with promotions and external traffic… But if you are happy to wait, rankings will come to you if your conversion rate is good.

The Alternative Approach

Sure, you can rank anything by driving sales to your product from external sources (email lists, advertising) – spend enough money on deep discounts and you can rank.

But you are wasting your time and money if you do that with a listing that has a poor organic conversion rate, because as soon as you stop the promotion, your rankings will plummet.

Next time, I’ll post a little information on improving your listing’s conversion rate. There is one key thing I hear many people teach that you SHOULD do, which actually has the potential to REDUCE your conversion rate.

High conversion rate is a double whammy. In my (very limited) opinion, it is the single most important thing to focus on in your Amazon business.

10 Comments

  • Bookalicious Books

    Reply Reply December 19, 2017

    I totally agree with John that conversion rate is the most important ranking factor (and not just in Amazon search engine). It makes 100% sense, and I suspect Google is doing the similar thing with their organic rankings.

    The higher CTR rate and conversion rate means that visitors/customers like the content or product, which means higher relevancy and eventually rankings.

    Nice One JP!

    • John Pearce

      Reply Reply December 19, 2017

      Agreed – with Google the equivalent is click through rate from the organic listings. Click through is definitely an SEO ranking factor.

  • kieron penrose

    Reply Reply December 19, 2017

    Hi JP

    56% is an impressive conversion rate, especially if this is sustainable for you.

    1, Is this just during the Xmas period, or over a number of months?
    2, Is it boosted due to a price / subsidized promotion or is this organic and at full price?

    I’d be interested in the key factors which are driving this high conversion rate for you and look forward to your next insightful blog post.

    Top 13 factors for me:

    – High quality, appealing main image which stands out versus your competitive set
    – Competitive price point
    – Amazon Prime
    – Other Amazon endorsements e.g. best seller badge, Amazon choice, etc
    – Lifestyle secondary images which show the benefits of the product in use by attractive people in the same demographic (easier for the buyer to associate themselves, imagine themselves using your product)
    – Good title
    – Consistently high review rating
    – Emotionally charged, persuasive bullet points (‘pace and lead’ in NLP terms). The cost/pain without/before having the product compared to the benefits/value of having the better product, utilizing your buyers (reviewers) language from researching the pros and cons mention on yours and similar products
    – Top 2-3 visible customer reviews from genuine (verified) ‘WOW’ / raving fan reviewers, and zero visible negative reviews
    – Drive external traffic to a storefront page rather than direct to your product page
    – EBC
    – Q&A section which pre-empts and persuasively answers and frames most likely objections
    – Extended ‘refund or replace’ peace of mind product guarantee

    Look forward to reading your list and insights.

    Thanks
    Kieron (UK)

    • John Pearce

      Reply Reply December 19, 2017

      100% agree with all Kieron! Thanks for the extensive post.

      It was 100% organic traffic at full price over the week period shown in the image!

  • Christina

    Reply Reply December 19, 2017

    Thanks for this eye opener John; it makes sense of course. After all, Amazon likes successful sellers and their algorithm reflects that.

    I would dearly love to know the answer to this though:

    What is the one key thing you hear many people teach that you SHOULD do, which actually has the potential to REDUCE your conversion rate?

    I hope I haven’t done it, whatever it is!

  • Tim Costin

    Reply Reply December 19, 2017

    Hey John,

    I am curious to know how well your [product] is doing. The reason I ask is that I tried your technique when I joined AMS4 and joined ASM Masters, but it didn’t work for me.

    I asked all my family and friends to purchase my product, like you did, and gave them all refunds via a check in the mail. They purchased the product at full price. I also had them leave reviews, but only a handful of them actually followed through.

    Even though I still have an active account with products listed, I have given up working on Amazon for several reasons. The main one was that I found it near impossible to rank on the first page of Amazon. And ASM Masters was using techniques and software to ‘game’ Amazon, and I pointed out to them that this would come back to bite them in the butt, and it did.

    So, I am not a fan of trying to game the system, but if there are techniques that are honest and doable, then I’m all for it.

    • John Pearce

      Reply Reply December 20, 2017

      Hi Tim – well if there is a “secret” to moving up the rankings in a 100% white hat way, it is in this post. If there are buyers for your product, and if you conversion rate is good, Amazon will move you up the rankings. Conversion rate is the key. If your conversion rate is low, Amazon wont move you up, period.

      You don’t need to be on the first page fr the main keyword, depending on the amount of traffic. I’m not on the first page for my main keyword, but on the first page for many, many, many secondary and longer tail keywords. Amazon traffic is so huge, you can make a very good income without ever getting to Page 1 for your primary keyword.

      Remember the family and friends technique is just for getting initial reviews and the very first few sales – so it’s an essential starting point but wont help down the road.

  • Susan Fox

    Reply Reply December 21, 2017

    Hi John,

    The more I study SEO and all the puzzle pieces of it, the more I am finding that what I call “classic topic relevancy” works. When I say “classic” topic relevancy, I’m talking about things that apply to a person’s everyday needs or wants within a certain set of need/want criteria parameters.

    For example, a classic need is food. Everyone, no matter if it is 1892 or 2025 needs to eat food to live. There are other things like good health, training, specific tools to achieve specific goals, etc., that will ALWAYS sell well because you MUST have these things to live life. It is by intimately understanding classic topic relevancy and using it appropriately as a “marketing lifestyle” choice that conversion rates rise and stay high.

    I am learning a lot about online marketing technology (I am a freelance copywriter.) But, repeatedly, the thing I see is by being consistently relevant, using consistent formulas and writing copy that sounds reliable and turns out to BE relevant, reliable and trustworthy to my target audience, conversion rates remain high.

    In other words, your copy MUST be relevantly trustworthy. You build honest business relationships when you deliver on promises you make to customers. Being trustworthy is a part of being relevant.

    Relevancy has layers to it. When you communicate through all the layers, conversion rates are high. So, just be natural about your relevancy. Treat people the way YOU want to be treated like in the Golden Rule. Show genuine CARING in your marketing copy AND in delivering the value you say you will deliver. Natural relevancy includes showing genuine caring. By marketing using natural relevancy, conversions are high.

    Thanks for sharing your experience and expertise, John. I appreciate how you are making things simpler for me to understand when it comes to SEO.

    • John Pearce

      Reply Reply December 21, 2017

      Hi Susan – some very good points, thank you. Don’t confuse SEO with Amazon, although of course there are many many parallels – but the details are different.

      With Amazon, a lot of the trust is provided by the Amazon platform. It’s one of the big advantages. Yes, of course you have to be relevant to the search phrase (what the user wants) too.

      Thanks!

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