Put your products in front of the right customers -- understand where and how shoppers find what they want on Amazon.com, and list your items accordingly.
Browse Path
On Amazon.com, the rule of thumb is to put your items where most of the similar items are. This means choosing a specific, intuitive category and subcategory for your item when you list it.
A quick search on Amazon.com for any search term will show you which categories have the most items. For the generic term “Item”, Home & Garden is currently the winner with over 200,000 results. If a buyer were to try and filter through all of those for a specific product, they would lose interest long before buying anything. So putting your item in a precise, intuitive category is a much more effective way to increase the discoverability of your items.
Once you have the core category down, there are several sub-categories that allow buyers to further narrow the results. But remember, creative browse structuring does not help you or the buyer. Remember the last time you searched for something in your local department store for what seemed like hours, then finally asked a sales associate for help, only to discover they'd put it somewhere that made no sense? Candles with the pots and pans. Panty hose with the toiletries. Not the kind of shopping experience you were hoping for, was it?
You might be wondering “Where in the world do I choose the browse path during the listing process?” If you have the ability to create a detail page, you are walked through a series of screens, choosing the best placement of your item; this is the browse path. If you are adding a listing to an existing page, then you will be using the existing browse paths for the page, so you will not have to go through these steps.
Search Terms
When good browse paths are combined with good search terms, buyers will find your items even more easily despite the millions of other items on Amazon.com. In essence, search terms add your item to more browse paths!
Knowing the right words to add is a matter of knowing the item you are selling and the customers that are looking for your item. Here are a couple things to keep in mind when adding Search Terms:
1) Do not duplicate any of the words or terms in the title.
2) Do not duplicate any of the words or terms from the brand name.
3) Do not use a competing brand (for example, if you are selling Colgate toothpaste, do not use Crest as a search term).
Title
Buyers see item titles in the search results, and are what they use to click through to the detail page, so good titles are essential.
Titles should be accurate and descriptive, yet concise - a too-long title can work against you - it is confusing and looks unprofessional. Think of a title as a headline in the newspaper: you want it to get their attention, excite their curiosity and ensure that buyers know what you are offering.
An example of a great title is one we found in heating and cooling equipment: "Honeywell 38002 Enviracare Universal Replacement Pre-Filter"
With this type of title you get:
- Buyers looking for a specific brand - Some buyers search by brand, then look for a product within that brand.
- Buyers looking for a specific product - Buyers who know they need Honeywell model 38002 filters will know you offer them.
- Buyers browsing for an add-on or re-occurring cost item (such as furnace filters) - These buyers are researching, and a good title lets them know the relevant information right upfront.
Want to learn more? One of the best research tools you have available to you is Amazon.com itself. You can explore (browse) and search for items. See the results of search terms or similar items before you list.
