Amazon A+ Content: Boost Conversions and Reduce Returns

What is Amazon A+ Content?

Amazon A+ Content is the tool that enables brand owners to describe product features in an advanced way: add detailed descriptions, charts, videos, high-quality images, custom copy (e.g. brand stories). A+ Content feature is designed to help sellers and vendors increase traffic, conversion rate and sales.

If you've been on Amazon for a while, you might know A+ Content as Amazon Enhanced Brand Content (Amazon EBC) if you're a seller, or Amazon Enhanced Marketing Content if you're a vendor. While the name has now been streamlined to read Amazon A+ Content for sellers and vendors alike, the idea behind it remains the same.

Seller and Vendor Requirements for Amazon A+ Content

In order to take advantage of the additional visual content using Amazon EBC, sellers need to be registered with and approved by Amazon’s Brand Registry. Alternatively, participants of Amazon’s managed selling programs, such as Launchpad or Amazon Exclusives, automatically have access to A+ content as well.

Eligible sellers can add Enhanced Brand Content (Amazon EBC) to any ASIN that they own according to the Global Catalog Identifier (GCDI) and have an offer for. Amazon A+ Content can be added to both parent and child ASINs.

Attention: If you registered your brand with the Amazon Brand Registry 1.0 you will have to repeat the process for Amazon Brand Registry 2.0

Using A+ Content is a little easier for vendors - you automatically qualify for adding enhanced images and text to your product listing.

The limits of Enhanced Content on Amazon

There are two scenarios where adding A+ Content to your product listing is not possible:

• You might run into problems when content has already been published by a retail vendor for an ASIN before - in this case, Amazon won’t allow you to add additional A+ content.

• Since brand registry is not available for products in media, video, digital or books, sellers in these categories are not able to take advantage of Amazon EBC features.

• We have put together a handy A+ Content Module Guide that makes the planning process quick and easy by providing you with the layout and best use of the Amazon A+ Content templates.

Are there any differences in A+ Content specs for Sellers and Vendors?

There are only a few differences in Amazon A+ Content specs for sellers and vendors. The relatively recent change of name from Enhanced Brand Content to Amazon A+ Content highlights the alignment of enhanced content for sellers and vendors. Apart from the eligibility criteria, it seems that the only difference that persists is the Premium A+ Feature (video, interactive content) only vendors have access to - at a considerable price.

Is Amazon Enhanced Brand Content Indexed?

A recent experiment (December 2019) re-confirmed: In contrast to the product description, A+ Content is not indexed on Amazon. Keywords added to the available text and image options did not yield any search results.

However, the A+ Content text and images are still indexed by Google, which could help your product appear in the SERP of the search machine.

A+ Content also indirectly helps to improve your ranking if it increases your conversion rate. A better conversion rate leads to more sales and more sales lead to better rankings.

How much does Amazon A+ Content cost?

As of now, Amazon EBC is free of charge for sellers and vendors.

Vendors can opt for a premium version that includes interactive content features and is only available by invitation from a vendor manager - and supposedly comes at a steep cost.

While there is no monetary cost to Amazon A+ Content (yet), the creation of the visuals and the copy does take time. We will talk about a simple cost-benefit analysis later to determine when it pays off to put in the effort to create Enhanced Content for your product listings.

What are the benefits of Amazon EBC?

According to Amazon, A+ Content has the potential to increase your sales by 3-10%. More specifically, adding more visuals and copy to your product listing can result in:

• Higher conversion rates: For your Amazon business, conversion rate is one of the most important metrics to understand - in the end, there is no point to potential customers clicking on your product listing but not actually buying the product. We have devised a Brand Analytics Hack that helps you determine which competitors have the best conversion rates and why – and Amazon EBC / Amazon A+ Content could be a deciding factor. The additional images and texts help customers better understand and visualize how your product solves their needs (and wants) and can thereby inspire the final click on the ‘Buy’ button. Learn from the competition to overtake them in the long run.

• Reduced return rate: a deeper understanding of your product and its benefits ensures that customers can make a better purchase decision and don’t feel the need to return your item afterward

• Better reviews: following the logic above, more information and better purchase decisions lead to happier customers leaving raving reviews

• Reduced ACoS and increase ROI of PPC campaigns: getting people to click on your PPC campaign is one thing, inspiring them to buy the product another. Convincing and appealing A+ Content helps with the latter, thereby reducing the costs of each advertised sale to increase your overall ROI

So there’s some pretty significant potential in Amazon A+ Content - but how can you leverage that?

How do I use A+ Content to boost conversions and reduce returns? (Including Amazon EBC Examples)

There are a few ways you can make effective use of Amazon A+ Content. Let’s go through some of the content strategies and look at best practice examples:

1. Showcase your product’s unique value proposition

In any type of content marketing, it is important to focus on the benefits the product brings to the customer - which problem/need/want does your product address and solve. The additional visuals and text available in A+ Content are the perfect spot to showcase what makes your product so special and effective.

The example below shows clearly how Amazon A+ Content helps put the features and benefits of a product into the spotlight. Through an interplay between text and image, the seller manages to highlight more than 8 unique selling points of his/her product.

2. Provide relevant product details that help drive purchase decisions

Especially when it comes to bigger purchases, customers want to get as much information as possible about the product they are about to spend a considerable sum on. Providing as much relevant product details as possible can (a) accelerate the purchasing process as people understand that your product is exactly what they’ve been looking for, and (b) manage expectations as they understand exactly what they are getting with their purchase.

Linenspa sets the stage for their microfiber comforter through Amazon EBC. By describing and visualizing relevant product details - such as the reversible design, the allergen information, or the available colours - the seller provides all necessary information for customers to make an educated purchase decision.

3. Break down complexity and make your content easy to digest

This is especially relevant for products that combine multiple features and functions and can solve a variety of needs at once. Videos, images, and a precise and focused copy can help customers truly understand the applicability and use of such products.

4. Answer the most common customer questions

A good way to go about creating Enhanced Brand Content on Amazon is by checking out the question, review, and comment section in your product listing. A+ Content is a great way to address unanswered questions in a visual and engaging way, thus giving your customers the feeling that you are addressing their concerns before they could even voice them!

5. Differentiate your product from the competition

Amazon is a highly competitive marketplace. It is getting more and more difficult to find products that have a reasonably high margin and where the niche is not overwhelmingly crowded with other sellers trying to secure their piece of the cake. One way to stand out from the crowd is through appealing content marketing – for which Amazon A+ Content is almost the only option you have. Furthermore, adding Amazon EBC can help you push down some of the ads that platform is placing on your product listings, thereby making sure that customers aren’t getting distracted by the competition.

Tip: The Comparison Chart Module is especially useful for this. In case that the current listing is not exactly what the customer was looking for you can use this module to showcase other products from your range and avoid customers buying from another seller.

Let’s compare products with and without A+ Content. Below you can see a very zoomed out screenshot of the product listing of COSRX Sun Cream. Yes, there are some sponsored products below the Product Image and Bullet Points. However, the sponsored products are overpowered by the bright yellow image in the Enhanced Content section, and the customer’s attention drawn towards scrolling down.

Scrolling down a bit further, the seller provides a comparison of their products, so that customers can get the product best suited for their needs. There is no comparison with other sellers’ products to be seen.

Keep in mind, however, that this is not always the case. Even if you provide a comparison chart of your own products, Amazon can add a comparison with competitor products. Nevertheless, the customer will have to scroll down for longer to get to that, increasing the time they spend checking out your products.

A very different story evolves looking at a sunscreen product listing without A+ Content. In the screenshot below you can see how the customer’s attention is immediately drawn towards all the other available options, with two rows of sponsored products popping up below the Product Image and Bullet Points.

Scrolling down even further, a comparison chart is visible. But in contrast to the previous example, this is not a comparison of different products from the same sellers. This comparison chart is added by Amazon, and shows similar products from different sellers. The probability of customers checking out and purchasing competing products thereby increases manifold.

6. Use Amazon EBC to communicate your brand story

While price is a very powerful factor in purchase decisions, an engaging and captivating brand story can swing the balance in your favor. Your brand might be in existence for a few hundred years, showing a long history of quality and experience; or you might be supporting disadvantaged communities, helping them to secure a livelihood - you will want to tell your customer about that! A good brand story provides assurance of product quality and highlights your brand values. Helping customers understand your brand better is crucial especially if your products are priced comparatively high, competing on a platform that is known for its bargains.

Wattne, for example, offers reusable ziplock bags to reduce the amount of plastic waste. The A+ Content section on Amazon is the best place to tell the story of the product and how exactly it helps to make a positive impact.

7. Increase customer engagement

While online shopping has been normalized to a great degree, it is still lacking the physical interaction of customer and product. Imagine you are buying a new fridge online - there is no way you can actually open the door, pull out all the drawers, check the freezer and make sure all your Tupperware fit (just as you would in an actual store). However, images and videos can create an experience that brings the customer as close to the product as possible without it actually standing right in front of him/her. These visuals create a unique engagement beyond what is possible by the limited amount of images and text available in the traditional product listing.

When should I add Amazon EBC to my product listing?

Since A+ Content is available free of cost, you can aim to add A+ Pages to all your eligible product listings. However, keep in mind that taking and editing the images, writing the copy, and designing the layout costs valuable time and money. To be strategic about your investment into A+ Content, you should start with products that meet one or more of the following criteria:

• A premium price and strong margin (good return on investment - ROI)

• Unique product with noteworthy benefits and features or new/complex product that needs elaborate explanation and illustration

• One of your Best Sellers

• A+ Content is common among competitor products

• Amazon uses a product comparison widget on your product page that drives away traffic

Tip: A+ Content is not an easy fix for a product that isn’t selling well. On the contrary, A+ Content is more of an accelerator for a product that is already showing a strong performance on Amazon. We, therefore, recommend using the 20/80 rule - start with adding Enhanced Brand Content to the 20% of your products that are creating 80% of your profits. Increasing their conversion rate will create the biggest monetary return.

How do I design Amazon A+ Content that converts?

The central objective of adding Enhanced Content to your Amazon product listing is increasing conversions. Simply adding a few images and sentences won’t do the job - your content should be flowing, convincing, and appealing. Here are a few tips and tricks to develop design best practices:

• Make it feel like a landing page. The best way to understand your A+ Content is to view it as a landing page. You are convincing your customer that your product is exactly what they are looking for and want to inspire them to take one action – hit the ‘Buy’ button.

• Plan your content like a journey. What should customers see first? And then? How can you end on a positive and exciting note? It is also important to ensure that the copy corresponds with your images to create a good flow

• Focus on what’s important. Simply putting random photos and text that might look nice but doesn’t provide additional value won’t help you reach the desired outcome. E

  ach section of your Amazon EBC should focus on a specific point you want to bring across – most likely how the features of your product create a specific benefit to the customers. Clear and concise content that is easy to read and digest should be the focus of your A+ section.

• Stay in your brand guidelines. Branding on Amazon is already very limited - A+ Content is where you can let it all out. Make sure to match your fonts and colors with your brand to create brand recognition.

How do I upload my A+ Content? (Including downloadable Amazon A+ Content templates)

Uploading Amazon EBC to your product listings it pretty straight forward: simply find the A+ Content section in the ‘Advertising’ (sellers) or ‘Merchandising’ (vendors) tab and follow the instructions. It might be useful to plan your content beforehand to make sure that you have all the necessary images and texts at hand for upload.

There are a few different modules available in Seller Central. These can be mixed and matched to your liking. Have a look below and pick the ones most suitable to the story you want to tell:

• We have put together a handy A+ Content Module Guide that makes the planning process quick and easy by providing you with the layout and best use of the Amazon A+ Content templates.

Here are some more useful facts for a smooth and effective upload:

• Optimization for Mobile. You don’t have to worry about adjusting your content for mobile devices - Amazon will resize images and fit texts automatically. However, it is unfortunate that customers first have to expand the description box to view the A+ Content on mobile.

• Image Resizing. You should make sure that your images are meeting Amazon’s sizing requirements. Nevertheless, Amazon does resize images that are too big, smaller images are not adjusted. Make use of the image crop and scale option in the content creator to make sure your photos look and feel good. For general guidelines on image size check out the table below:

• Image Alt-texts. With each image upload, Amazon requires you to create image keywords, i.e. alt-text. This can be a simple sentence describing what is depicted by the image.

• Input language. The content creator for A+ is super easy to use - you can simply drop and drag different module options for images and text and directly input your content. No HTML required (or allowed for that matter).

• Sometimes less is more. If you cannot fill all the available spaces in a module do not despair – Amazon will automatically reformat the template to fill the white space and make it look good.

• Bulk Upload. Once you have created A+ Content for a product and it has been approved by the Amazon team you can apply it to multiple ASINs. For similar products, you can also duplicate your available A+ Content template and make edits so that you do not have to start from scratch. This is especially useful for parent and child ASINs that only vary in color, size, or other basic features.

• Language. It is possible to create language variations for the same marketplace, if, for example, you want to add Spanish content to product listings in the US. However, it is not possible to copy content across marketplaces.

• Waiting times upon submission. The maximum waiting time for approval/rejection is 7 days, however, most accounts state that feedback is provided within two working days. If Amazon finds violations or grounds for rejections (see below) you are required to make adjustments and re-submit your content. Overall, you can have a maximum of 20 EBC requests pending at a time.

Is there something I shouldn’t put into my Amazon Enhanced Content?

Amazon provides a specific list of elements that pose violations and grounds for rejection if they appear in A+ Content:

• Referencing your company as a seller or distributor, or providing any company contact information

• Mention of competitor products or seller authorization

• Pricing or promotional information

• Shipping detail information

• Inclusion of copyright, trademark, or registered symbols

• Boastful comments

• Time-sensitive products (hard sales copy)

• Customer reviews from Amazon or any other site

• Editorial or third party quotes from external sources (magazines, television shows, etc.)

• Blurry or low-quality images

• Lifestyle images not showing the product (with the exception of brand story photos)

• Too many duplicates of the product images from the main image block

• Warranties or guarantees

• Attempts to mimic Amazon logos

• Logos from other organizations

• Links to other websites or (verbal) redirects to other sites (inside or outside of Amazon)

• Grave grammatical or punctuation errors, misspelling, strings of all caps text

• Abusive images

• Criminal activity

• Violations of category requirements or Selling on Amazon Policies

• Content written in languages other than the local marketplace language

• Adult product content

• Subjective language

• Unverified claims, e.g. safety claims, energy-saving claims, drugs, beverages, food, health products

• Images containing watermarks or unreadable text - font size must be greater than 16

How do I know if my Amazon EBC is working?

After adding your Amazon A+ content to a product listing it is important to keep an eye on the conversion rate to understand whether the additional content is performing well or not and hence measure success. 

Experienced sellers recall their experience with Enhanced Content as a very iterative process. It can happen, for example, that conversion rate goes down once your enhanced content goes live. This is important to know, as it is a strong indicator that the content is not tailored to your target audience. After a few adjustments, however, most sellers report positive experiences with A+ content and its effects on Conversion Rate.

However, knowing THAT A+ Content increases your sales is great, but knowing WHAT content works best is even better.

New Feature: ‘Manage Your Experiments' - find out which Amazon A+ Content works best for your brand and products

Amazon recently released a new feature that enables sellers and vendors to A/B test their A+ Content. This is a great opportunity to use experiments to build a library of best practices and really understand what kind of text and images appeal to your target audience.

How do Amazon A+ Content Experiments work?

In a controlled experiment, Amazon separates your product listing visitors into two groups, where each group will see one version of your A+ Content. Hereby Amazon ensures that the displayed content is the same across devices as well as over time. So no matter when a customer logs in, or which device he is browsing on, s/he will always see the same version of your A+ Content.

Who can use the new A+ Experiments feature? 

The new feature is live for every vendor and brand registered seller. In order to start experimenting you need to select an ASIN that already has assigned Amazon A+ Content and can be considered high traffic (roughly several dozen unit sales per week). All eligible ASINs will be displayed in your A+ Manager for your selection.

What should I test with A+ Content Experiments?

Using the new A+ Experiment feature, you can practically test anything in regards to your A+ Content: images, text, structure, voice, content. However, it is important to keep in mind that it is more effective to test one item at a time. Otherwise, you can’t be sure why the conversion rate is different between the two versions of your content.

Some good ideas to start testing with could be:

• The structure of your A+ Content, shuffling around images and text for better flow

• Adding new features to your A+ Content, such as comparison charts

• Using different images - lifestyle images could provide a great testing ground

• Change the voice of your text according to who you think your target audience is

How long should I run Amazon A+ Content Experiments?

You can choose any duration between 4 and 10 weeks, change the duration, or cancel the experiment at any time. However, we would always recommend to let the experiment run for as long as possible as the data becomes more reliant. Most importantly, don’t stop the experiment early because it looks like there is a clear winner - only time can tell! 

How can I track the success of my A+ Content Experiments on Amazon?

Over the duration of the experiment, Amazon compiles information on the percentage change of units sold after the ‘change’ in content. If the change in units sold is positive, version B works well, if it is negative, version A is your winner. This gives you a clear indication of which content version creates more sales. It looks something like this:

In addition, Amazon provides you with the projected one-year impact of the better A+ Content version, broken down into three scenarios. This tells you the projected amount of incremental units and sales in the best, most likely, and worst case. If you want, you can also download the data into an excel sheet. 

How do I set up Amazon A+ Content Experiments?

You can find the new Amazon A+ Content Experiment feature in your A+ Content Manager in your Seller Central or Vendor Central. The dashboard of Manage Your Experiments looks like this:

Here is how you get started: 

1. Decide what you want to test - start with a hypothesis regarding a content feature that could be working better for your audiences, such as different images, new headlines, or a different structure. Once you know what you want to test, click the ‘Create a new Experiment’ button. The list of eligible ASINs will appear for your selection.

2. Set up the experiment in 2 minutes. On the left-hand side, a workflow appears, that takes you through the different steps to get your experiment on the way.

3. Create two versions of the hypothesis - you can now add an alternative version (B) of your A+ Content in the ‘Manage your Experiments’ feature. The easiest way is to simply copy the A+ Content you already have and make the changes you decided to test.

4. Start the experiment - Your new Amazon A+ Content needs to be approved, which can take up to 7 days. Once that’s done and dusted, you can start the experiment and let it run for a few weeks/months.

5. Check your results - track the impact of the two versions of your units sold and stick with the content that performs better.

6. Keep testing - you should continuously improve your A+ Content to ensure the best content-audience fit.

We recommend to keep improving your A+ Content for product listings you are promoting via PPC Campaigns. This increases the likelihood of customers actually buying your product after clicking the ad (aka rising conversion rate), thereby contributing to lowering your ACoS and increasing your ROI.

• We have put together a handy A+ Content Module Guide that makes the planning process quick and easy by providing you with the layout and best use of the Amazon A+ Content templates.

Check Your PPC Conversion Rates with the Benchmarker

Amazon A+ Content / Amazon EBC can be a great tool to maximize the success of your PPC Campaigns. While Bid Adjustments and SEO for product listings ensure that your ad pops up on top of the right search results, Enhanced Content can help increase your conversion rates once a customer has clicked on your ad.

With the Benchmarker, you can see how your products' conversion rates stack up against your competitors, and make sure that your A+ content has the intended effect to drive sales and revenue.