E-COMMERCE: November 2016

As we all know, your product descriptions are hugely important when selling online. They are part of my eCommerce “Holy Trinity” along with pictures, titles & video.

There is some of the confusion surrounding Amazon descriptions and what is and isn’t allowed in the Amazon catalogue.

A quick search online will throw up plenty of forums stating that absolutely no formatting is allowed in Amazon descriptions at all. It must just be plain text which describes the product, however this is incorrect:

You CAN add HTML formatting to Amazon product descriptions.

And in this article you will learn about ALL the HTML tags you can use.

Basic Formatting for Amazon Product Descriptions

Basic formatting is allowed on your Amazon descriptions and we’ll show you how you can do it, and what a difference it will make to entice more sales!

It is no secret that we think descriptions are a hugely important ingredient in your perfect listing recipe. As you may remember the first E-commerce in Plain English Podcast covered “Descriptions that sell” If you haven’t heard it yet, then click the link and give it a listen.

The key for your description is to make it concise, descriptive (obviously) but most importantly, easy to read.

With a bit of formatting help we can make descriptions really easy to read and therefore increase the likelihood of a conversion into a sale.

How NOT to Make an Amazon Product Description

Take a look at this product on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0047WHHIA/

The title is straightforward and states exactly what the product is. However the picture is dire, it’s obviously been resized, includes a watermark and you’re not supposed to have any background on product images on Amazon.

Not only is it all in capital letters which is a huge pet hate of ours ( all CAPS which is a bit, ok very, very annoying ), however scroll down to the product description area.

It is all bunched together and all in capital letters and only over two lines it makes it very easy to miss if you are just scanning the page.

It doesn’t look professional and makes it look like an incomplete product page.

Seriously, would you buy this product?

Amazon Product Descriptions Using HTML

We have several examples of HTML formatted in Amazon product descriptions.

While none of these are “amazing” examples, they’ll clearly demonstrate what you could be doing with your product descriptions.

Example 1 – Good “All Round” HTML usage
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004X9TTJC/

In this example you can see that the creator of the Amazon product description, has used the combination between sentences and bullet points on their product description.

Example 2 – Delicate use of Bold HTML tags
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B005JC6BCU

This product description has “strong” HTML tags being used to highlight the key information. This case because it’s part of a “Suite”, these factors are really important to a buyer.

Example 3 – Using a Tablehttp://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00L9AA4JC/

And finally this product is demonstrating that you can include HTML tables in Amazon product descriptions and also basic colour coding too.

While none of these examples are 100% spot-on, I’m sure you agree these look better by employing some basic HTML to the descriptions and they sure beat the one-long-sentence that you find on most 3rd party sellers products.

Note: Amazon removed the original example we had for you, however we did grab a screenshot and you can see this in the image above. Click the image for a larger version

How to Create a Comprehensive Amazon Description With HTML

With a few simple HTML tags you can quickly emphasize and structure your descriptions. Make them clearer and easier to read than a plain text paragraph.

We imagine that you’ll already know these tags already, but just in case you don’t, here are a few you can use when entering your Amazon product description.

Here we have a a very quick intro to HTML.

You have an opening (eg <b>) and a closing tag (eg </b>) if you want to cause an effect to whatever is in between the tags.

If you want to insert one piece of formatting on the page then you only need to add that tag once per effect (no opening and closing). Now that isn’t very easy to explain but the below examples should help.

Bold/ Strong Tags: <b> & </b>

These are a simple bold tag. Everything that is in between these tags will appear in bold text.
This is perfect for sections of a description that you want to separate or important parts you want to highlight. An example of how to use this would be: “<b>Technical Specifications</b>”

Line Break: <br>

This is the tag for a line break. You can insert these to insert a line break in your description.

Perfect for making sure there is a difference between two paragraphs or drawing attention to a different section of your description. An example of this would be: “this is the end of one paragraph. <br> This is the start of the second.”

Bullet Point Lists: <ul>, <ol> & <li>

These are the tags needed to create bullet or numbered points in your listing.
The UL tag stands for unordered list and everything in between them, will be put in bullet points. The li tags are there to differentiate the different bullet points. It’s really simple when you see it in practice so here you go:

The bullet point list:

<ul>
<li> This is a bullet point </li>
<li> And so is this one</li>
</ul>

And this would make:

This is a bullet point
And this is one

The one we’ve missed out is the use of OL instead of UL. OL tags make numbered bullet points and an example is below:

The numbered bullet point list:

<ol>
<li> This is a bullet point </li>
<li> And so is this one</li>
</ol>

And this would create:

This is a bullet point
And this is one

See easy peasy!

More HTML Tags You Can Use on Amazon

It doesn’t stop there either!

There are a whole collection of HTML tags that you can use, here is a small example of them:

<em> italic text
<h2>, <h3>, <h4>, <h5> for headings
<hr> for a horizontal rule
<pre> for pre-formatted text
<strong> an alternative to using <b> tags (but not suggested)
<sub> for _subscript
<sup> for ^superscript

And just like HTML on web pages you can string them together like we saw in the previous example.

In Summary

By utilising these simple HTML tags you can make a massive difference to how your Amazon product description looks, and increases the chances of someone buying your product.

Amazon wants its marketplace sellers to create listings that fit in with their catalogue. However there are limitations to how much formatting you can do, unfortunately you won’t be able to go to town like a true Amazon listing such as there Kindle descriptions, those are really expensive and the last time we checked, a single fully customised product page costs over £300.

So no pretty graphics, embedded video’s or photos are allowed, we are going back to basics here but it can make a massive positive difference if done properly.

With just a little bit of time & effort spent getting your product descriptions right and making them easy for potential customers to read then you greatly improve your chances of converting on Amazon.

Remember you create your Amazon product once and it stays in the catalogue forever so make sure you make it as good as it can be from the beginning as it saves having to go back and edit it again later unnecessarily.

If you’ve found this article helpful, let us know in the comments box below.

Why Does Amazon Suppress a Listing?

Amazon cares about customers and sales, knowing what they care most about helps put their use of listing suppression into context. They want to protect the buying experience and ensure listings that don’t meet their quality expectations are not shown in their marketplace.

What Does a Suppressed Listing Mean?

When a listing has been suppressed it means Amazon determined the listing to have a problem and not compliant with there marketplace standards. When your listing is suppressed it will not show up in the search results on Amazon.

What is the impact to your sales of a suppressed listing?

The impact of a suppressed listing is that it will no longer show up on the search results in Amazon and your sales on that listing will be dropped to 0.

It Isn’t Always Easy to Detect a Suppressed Listing

To detect a listing suppression (see this article for more details on how to detect if your listing has been suppressed)

To check if your listing has been suppressed you can

How to Fix Your Suppressed Listing

To identify and fix suppressed listings, follow these steps:

In your seller account, click the Inventory tab and select Manage Inventory.
Select Suppressed in the top navigation pane.
If you have suppressed listings, you will see "Suppressed" in the top navigation pane. If you do not have any suppressed listings, you will not see this option.
Select a viewing option, such as All Suppressed Listings, or only a specific type of suppressed listing, such as Image Missing.
Select a listing and click the Edit button, and then select Edit (top option) or Manage images.
On the Amazon Product Summary page, select a tab with an alert indicator.
Suppressed listings are indicated by a red exclamation point. You may also see Quality alerts, which are indicated by a yellow triangle.
After you have resolved all alerts for a listing, click Save and finish.

Suppressed Listings alerts usually disappear from the Manage Inventory page within a few minutes of saving your updates. However, alerts can remain on the "Listing Quality and Suppressed Listings Report" for 48 hours or more.

For Professional Sellers

If you have a Professional selling plan and update your listings using inventory files, you can still use Manage Inventory to make changes. However, you must also update your inventory files or you may overwrite the changes you submitted through Manage Inventory.

To avoid this duplication of work, follow these steps:

On the Inventory tab, select Inventory Reports.
From the drop-down menu, select Listing Quality and Suppressed Listings Report.
Click the Request Report button.
When your report is ready, the message in the "Download" column will change from "Not Ready" to a "Download" button.
Click the Download button to download your report.
Using the Listing Quality report, modify your inventory files and save your changes.
Upload your updated files.

5 Most Common Mistakes You Need To Avoid To Ensure Your Listing Isn’t Suppressed

1. Title – Too long

It depends on your category but one of the fastest ways to get your listing suppressed is to have too long of a listing title. Here is a great article from Seller Labs on the impact of long titles on your listing getting blocked.

2. Title – Promotional

If your title is too promotional including “best” “cheapest” “top rated” or similar than your listing will quickly get suppressed.

3. Image - Missing an Image

Amazon doesn’t want their listings to look incomplete and the image is one of the 2 most important parts of the listing. Therefore Amazon will suppress a listing until an image is displayed.

4. Image – Image not compliant

The most common reason if you have an image on your listing and your listing is suppressed due to your image not being compliant it is likely due to your main image not having a white background. There could be other reasons your main image is not compliant but this seems to be the most common reason a listing is suppressed due to the image not being compliant.

5. Missing Key Information

Amazon wants their marketplace to have listings with all the information necessary for their customers to make informed buying decisions. If you are missing any of your critical information there is a good chance that your listing will be suppressed. This critical information is most commonly the UPC, Bullet Points, Description and Brand Info.

Friday, November 25, 2016

Amazon Product Descriptions using HTML