Whether you’re new to selling on Amazon or you’ve been selling there for a while, you may be keen to increase your sales. After all, you can never have too many sales.
But how should you go about doing this?
The fact is, there are many ways you can increase sales on Amazon, including several strategies proven to get results.
In this guide, we look at 12 of the most important strategies you can focus on. You may be doing some of these things right already, but there may be a few that you haven’t yet optimized.
If you’re struggling to make enough sales to turn a profit, or you’re already getting a good number of sales but you want to get more, it’s time to focus on optimizing your sales strategies.
Getting all of these factors right will put you in a very good position to increase your Amazon sales.
So take a read through this guide and optimize every area of your business to boost sales and profits.
TL;DR
- There are many potential strategies to improve your sales on Amazon.
- These include optimizing your listing for keywords, using professional images, boosting your positive reviews, using advertising, and more.
- Consider all your options and make changes to your strategy to give your sales a boost.
How To Improve Amazon Sales: 12 Effective Strategies
Let’s take a look at our top 12 recommended strategies to increase sales on Amazon.
1. Optimize Your Listing for Keywords
Number one on the list is to optimize your Amazon listings for keywords.
Amazon works in much the same way as a search engine like Google. People search for a product using keywords, and they’re presented with a list of products in the results.
For example, someone might search for a “flying drone toy for kids.” Amazon will then determine the most suitable products to display that have the best chance of matching the search query.
Of course, not everyone uses the same keywords. Some keywords will be common in most searches, while others might be more specific.
Amazon uses its algorithm to determine which products show up to the shopper in the results. Your goal should be to make sure your product listings show up as high as possible in the search results using good Amazon SEO practices.
One thing you don’t want to do is simply stuff your listing full of keywords and aim to get to the top of the search results page. A listing packed with keywords that make the information hard to read is not going to do you any favors.
In fact, even if you optimize your listing properly, it’s not enough to suddenly send your listings soaring to the top of the search results.
The algorithm takes many factors into consideration when determining which listings get to the top. These include your reputation as a seller, the price of your product, and more.
However, using suitable keywords is one of the major factors. And if you haven’t optimized your listing for keywords, your visibility in the results will almost certainly be reduced.
So how do you go about doing this?
The best option is to use a keyword tool to research the most suitable and relevant keywords to include in your listing.
There are many tools on the market you can use to find relevant keywords, all of which offer something a bit different. You’ll have to pay to use most of them, so you might want to try a few out by using their free trials to determine which is the best for you.
These keyword tools typically analyze the best product listings that are relevant to your own product and determine which keywords they’re optimized for. That way, you can get a good idea of the keywords you should ideally be using in your listing to avoid missing out.
Some keywords are more important than others, and you should use these in prominent places like the product title and bullet points. For less important keywords, you can use them in the product description.
Once you have a list of keywords and you have ordered them according to their importance, you can set about creating your Amazon product listing.
Again, try to avoid keyword stuffing, which simply involves packing in as many keywords as possible in the product descriptions. Shoppers don’t just want to find a long string of keywords, and Amazon isn’t going to reward you for including a long list of keywords in your description.
Instead, focus on creating a real description that highlights the most important features of your product. Shoppers want to know what the product is and why they should buy it, and your goal should be to make the copy convincing.
At the same time, incorporate the most important keywords naturally into your copy to make sure they’re present in the listing.
It’s quite a skill to create persuasive copy that incorporates keywords. But if you get it right, the results can pay off, increasing your chances of your product showing higher up in the search results.
This will help to get more visibility for your listings, which can increase conversions and boost profits.
2. Provide Complete Information About Your Product
Another strategy to boost product sales on Amazon is to make sure you’re providing full and detailed information about your product in the listing.
In this case, you may well be getting lots of visibility for your listing in the search results, but you’re failing to convert this traffic into sales.
There could be many reasons why this is happening, but one potential problem is that you’re not providing enough information about your product.
Online shoppers who use Amazon want to find all the information they need about a product when deciding whether to buy it or not. There’s no one to ask like there is in a store, so they want to get access to the information right there in the listing.
This means you need to provide full details about the dimensions of the product, the materials it’s made from, the brand name, its weight, whether it has a warranty, and so on.
You should also provide clear instructions about how to use it properly. With some products, this is more important than others because it’s not immediately clear how the product works.
Remember, Amazon shoppers can’t pick up your product and feel it in their hands, so the more descriptive you can be, the better.
One option shoppers have is to ask you about your product when they land on the listing, and you can provide answers. But this is also a hassle for them, and it adds friction when what you really want is for them to click on the buy button.
If you face a lot of competition, it may be easier for the shopper to go to one of your competitors’ products and order that instead.
One good trick is to use the questions that people are asking you and add the information to your listing to clarify common customer doubts and concerns.
If they’re asking a question, this is usually because the information they’re seeking isn’t clear from the product description.
Perhaps you do include the information in your listing, but it’s not prominent. In this case, you may want to change your listing around and put this information nearer to the top.
So, whenever a potential customer asks you a question, consider whether you have already provided the information in the listing. If you haven’t, edit your listing to make this clearer.
You can get a lot of information from the questions that shoppers ask regarding the information that is most important for them. It can be a good source of information regarding your potential customers’ key pain points, so don’t ignore it.
Whenever you get multiple questions about the product that are in the same topic area, this is even more important. Numerous questions on the same subject suggests that the issue is an important one for your customers, so consider changing your listing to put more focus on these areas.
You can do the same thing with your customer reviews. If people regularly highlight issues that they were not aware of in the reviews, make a note of these.
For example, several reviewers might state that they liked the product but that it was larger than they thought it would be. Or several reviewers might state that it works in a different way than how they assumed it would.
Use these to clarify the points in your listing so that your potential customers have all the information they need to make an informed decision. Keep on optimizing your listing and improving it by adding new information, and you may find that this leads to more sales.
3. Use Professional Images
Keywords are important in your listing, as we’ve already mentioned, and so is the need to use persuasive and informative copy. But the images you use are one of the most important factors of all.
Why are images so important? There are several reasons.
First of all, it comes down to professionalism. Shoppers want to know that they can trust you as a seller. This is the case whenever someone buys something online. They don’t know you, after all, and they need to make a quick judgment call about whether they want to buy from you or not.
As such, they look for clues. Sometimes, they may not realize they’re doing so, but they’ll be aware of these warning signs all the same.
For example, if your listing is littered with spelling mistakes, this is a red flag. It suggests that if you’re not prepared to check your listing for spelling mistakes, you might not be the sort of Amazon seller who focuses on providing the best experience for customers.
Images are even more obvious. If you use blurry images that you’ve clearly taken yourself on an old phone, this reflects badly on your brand.
It gives the impression that you don’t take your business seriously. The fact is, whether that’s true or not, it can have a negative impact on sales.
A professional image makes a positive impression, showing that you’ve gone out of your way to make your listing professional. This suggests you’re a professional seller—the sort of seller who will provide good customer service and sell a quality product.
Remember, people are always worried about getting scammed online. No one wants to buy a product that breaks on its first use. Even when customers are using Amazon, and they know they can return the product, they still won’t want to risk it. So use professional images to increase the trust factor.
The second reason why images are so important is that shoppers can’t see your product in real life. They can’t pick it up, look at it, or feel what it’s like to hold it in their hands.
Images will always be second best to seeing a product in real life, but you can make them better to provide a better experience for shoppers.
That means using all the images you’re allowed to use and showing your product clearly and in detail with crisp, clear images that shoppers can zoom in on.
Provide a few lifestyle images of your product in use. For example, if you sell a dog toy, include at least one image of a dog playing with it. This helps to show customers what it will be like to use the product once they have bought it, and it can help make your product look more appealing.
You should also use images that give a sense of perspective. It can be difficult for shoppers to know exactly how large or small something is, even if you include the dimensions. Including a photo of someone holding the item or placing the item next to another item, like a mug, will clearly show how large or small it is.
Getting your image strategy right can involve making an investment, especially if you hire a professional photographer. But it’ll be worth it if you can generate more sales.
4. Use Repricing to Win the Buy Box
One of the big reasons why you could be missing out on sales is that you haven’t got a solid pricing strategy in place.
What does this mean?
Essentially, you‘re pricing yourself out of sales by charging too much for your product compared to those of your competitors.
When people shop on Amazon, they’re looking for the best products at the best price.
Let’s say your product is similar or identical to another product on Amazon (which is common). In this case, shoppers will very often compare prices, and the price will have a big impact on whether they buy your product or the other one.
As such, you want to make your product competitively priced while also ensuring you make enough money from your sales to make a healthy profit.
But prices change on Amazon every minute of every day. Your competitor may drop their price suddenly, meaning your product is now not as appealing to shoppers.
You need to react fast by dropping your own price to beat it.
Obviously, if you did this manually, you’d spend hours every day monitoring price changes and reacting to them. That’s where automated repricing tools like Repricer come in.
With Repricer, you can set up your repricing strategy and let it do the hard work for you. You can also set minimum and maximum prices for your products, so you never go too low and get stuck in a race to the bottom.
But you can also do much more. For example, you can set a good repricing tool to increase your prices when there is less competition to get more for every sale and boost profits.
Price is also a big factor in winning the Buy Box. With a good repricing strategy in place, you can increase your chances of winning the Buy Box and staying there, which can lead to a significant increase in sales.
So, if you haven’t yet explored repricing, start today. Develop a pricing strategy for all your listings and get more sales.
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5. Differentiate Your Product
One of the potential problems you may be facing is that your product doesn’t stand out enough.
As you know, Amazon is a very competitive marketplace, especially in some niches. That means standing out can often be difficult.
You may have dozens of competitors, all selling very similar products. How can you get across that yours is the best and that shoppers should pick your product over competing items?
There are different ways to differentiate your products, and one is to make the price more appealing, as we looked at in the previous point.
Another method is to create bundles.
Bundles consist of two or more products that are often purchased together. The idea is that you make it more convenient for customers to order two or more products they might otherwise have to buy separately.
You can also set a more attractive price for multiple items than if the shopper were to purchase them both separately.
Another option is to get a better version of a product. If you sell an item that’s very similar to other products on Amazon, find a way to make yours better. This could be an additional feature or a unique benefit that the other products don’t provide.
That way, your product is still very similar, but provides shoppers with an extra reason to choose yours.
Take a close look at competing products and think of ways you can make your product different, better, and more appealing. If you succeed, it could well lead to a sales boost.
6. Get More Reviews
One of the most important factors for Amazon shoppers is social proof. On Amazon, that means customer reviews.
People shopping online are always worried about getting scammed, buying a product that’s low quality, or ending up with something different than what they thought they were getting.
They can’t physically check the product, and they don’t know you personally. As such, trust is a big issue online.
We mentioned this previously with the images, and how using professional images helps to make you look more trustworthy.
But reviews are even more important.
A long list of negative reviews is the worst thing you can have on your Amazon listing. Many shoppers won’t be willing to risk parting with their money in this situation. But having no reviews or very few reviews can also hurt your sales.
People want to see lots of positive reviews to have the confidence to buy from you. There will always be a few bad reviews, and that’s to be expected. In fact, getting 100% positive reviews is often not realistic.
As long as you’re selling a high-quality product, you’re not misleading buyers, and you provide good customer service, you should naturally be able to build reviews over time.
Failing to have enough positive reviews is often a problem when you’re selling a new product. However, you may simply be selling a product that, for whatever reason, is failing to get enough reviews.
In this case, you may want to make some more effort to get more reviews.
You might be interested in the Vine program. With this, you send free products to people who have been carefully selected to provide genuine reviews. Vine doesn’t guarantee good feedback, but if you have a good product, your reviews should be positive overall.
You can only sign up to Vine if you have fewer than 30 reviews, but it’s worth looking into. It could be an excellent way to get a good number of reviews in a short period.
Another great way to build upon your feedback is by using an automated review process. Reaching out to your customers can be very time-consuming and takes your focus away from other areas of your business. It’s better to streamline this process and using software such as Feedback Express helps you to follow up with your customers after a purchase to help you obtain more reviews.
Alternatively, you can request reviews manually. Amazon provides a tool in Seller Central for this.
This may be a task you want to outsource to an Amazon VA because despite taking a lot of time, it’s a manual task that’s easy to do.
Many customers will simply forget about leaving a review unless they have a very strong opinion. If you give them a gentle reminder, they’re more likely to review your product.
The more reviews you get, the more social proof you have, and the more confidence potential customers will have in you—which could all lead to a sales boost.
7. Use Amazon Advertising
Sometimes, no matter what you do, it feels like you can’t get the visibility you need for your product listings. If no one sees your products, it’s very difficult to make more sales.
We’ve looked at the need to optimize your product listings for keywords to help them get more visibility in search. But there are other things you can do too, and one of these is to use Amazon advertising.
Amazon sellers have several advertising options to choose from. However, not all of them are suitable for small businesses. For example, audio ads are more suited to large businesses with bigger budgets.
But you can use Amazon PPC ads in the form of Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display ads.
These are all slightly different, and the easiest way to get started is with Sponsored Products.
For this, you don’t have to be enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry (which is essential for Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display). You can also get started in just a few minutes.
Start by going to Seller Central and clicking the Advertising tab. You can then visit Campaign Manager and create your first campaign.
Choose a product you want to start advertising. The easiest way to get started is to run an automatic-targeting campaign. In this case, Amazon does the work for you by choosing the keywords and managing all the bidding.
You just have to set your daily budget. Start with something small, like $5 or $10 a day, to see how it goes, then get started.
Your ads could start appearing very soon in the search results and get in front of your target audience. As such, you could even find that you start generating more sales from the first day.
You’ll probably want to switch to a manual campaign after a few weeks once you’ve gathered some initial data from your automatic campaigns. You can then focus on keyword research and experiment with your search terms and keyword bidding strategy.
Then, keep optimizing over the weeks and months to generate more clicks and sales.
Related: The Complete Guide to Advertising on Amazon in 2024
8. Market Your Products Off Amazon
Amazon provides an excellent way to market your products to Amazon shoppers with its advertising options. But don’t stop there!
It’s also a good idea to market your products off-site and direct more potential customers to your product listings. There are several ways you can do this.
For example, if you have your own website, one option is to create an email list.
You can encourage visitors to sign up to find out about your new products and special offers. When you have a large list, you can send regular updates to encourage readers to buy your products on Amazon. This can be a highly effective way to send more traffic to your listings.
Another option is to use social media. Millions of people use social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram every day, and these platforms can be great places to get more attention for your Amazon products.
Post regular updates about new products you’re selling, provide tips and advice surrounding how to use your products, launch special promotions for social media followers, and send users to your product pages on Amazon.
If you build up a large enough following, you could find social media to be an effective way to drive more traffic to your Amazon listings and boost sales.
You might want to experiment with video marketing as well. YouTube is one of the best places to do this. Create a channel on YouTube, post engaging videos about your products, build your subscriber numbers, and get more visibility. You can then encourage viewers to visit your Amazon store.
There are lots of ways to market your products off Amazon. It takes time, and there will be an investment involved, but it can be worth it if your marketing activities lead to more sales.
9. Use FBA
One simple option is to sign up with Fulfillment By Amazon, or FBA, if you’re not already.
With this, you send your products to Amazon’s warehouses. Amazon then takes care of looking after your inventory, shipping your product directly to the customer with Prime shipping, and managing customer support.
It’s an effective way to scale your business and reach more customers, and it could give your sales a boost.
With faster shipping, no need to worry about storage, and return management, it’s a good option for sellers. But shoppers often like buying FBA products because they already know that Amazon has superb customer service.
Products will also be Prime-eligible. Many Prime customers will shop for these, so you open your product up to more potential customers.
It will also help to maintain good seller account health. It’s easier to meet Amazon’s standards with FBA, which means you can focus more on winning the Buy Box.
10. Improve Your Customer Service
This is one of the most important strategies you can use to improve your Amazon sales. It’s easy to focus on marketing, advertising, optimizing listings, and more. But customer service is crucial, and it can have a big impact on your sales over time.
As we’ve mentioned already, shoppers want to trust you. They’re wary about buying online, even on Amazon. Will you cheat them? Will you deliver a broken product and then cause problems when they want a refund?
By focusing on providing an excellent customer experience, you can give buyers a lot more confidence in your service. This will encourage customers to come back and can help you get more future customers.
Answer users’ questions quickly and professionally, and always be friendly and polite, both on Amazon and when replying to social media comments.
Provide more information about your business, including who you are, what matters to you, and why you’re selling your products, to make it more personal.
Always act fast when you receive complaints and take them very seriously. Be honest in your descriptions, and don’t over-promise and then fail to deliver.
All of these things together can have an enormous impact on your Amazon business. For a start, it’ll help you to get more positive reviews, and as we’ve already mentioned, that’s a great way to increase sales.
Even if a customer has a bad experience because, for example, the product arrives broken, good customer service can make a big difference. If you’re quick to react and solve the problem professionally, the customer may well leave a positive review, giving potential customers more confidence in buying from you.
eDesk helps you to reduce customer response times and streamlines your customer support by bringing all of your support tickets into one place – no matter where you’re selling.
11. Focus on Your Most Successful Products
If you have some products that are particularly successful, you might want to put a greater focus on these to increase your overall sales.
It can be tempting to put lots of effort into products that aren’t selling well. But you may be able to put in less effort and get better results by focusing on your top products instead.
That could mean advertising them more, spending more on your advertising and marketing budget for these products, putting extra effort into optimizing your listings, and updating the listings regularly.
You may find that it’s not worth selling the products that aren’t doing well. If you’ve been selling a product for a while and you have done everything you can, but it’s not selling as you expected, it may be time to replace it with something different.
Always track what’s doing well and what’s selling best. Use this to get more ideas for other products you could sell that may be more successful.
12. Sell in More Territories
Another potential way to increase your Amazon sales is to start selling in more territories. If you currently only sell in the USA, for example, you might want to look overseas.
One of the great things about Amazon is that it makes this quite easy to do with the FBA Export program.
Sign up for this, and you can then start selling your products all over the world. Amazon will take care of order fulfillment, so you don’t have to worry about it.
You could also get a North America Unified Account to list your products on the Amazon.ca and Amazon.com.mx marketplaces.
Using Amazon Global Selling, you can list your products on other Amazon sites like the UK or in other countries in Europe and beyond.
You can then ship your products to those countries to Amazon fulfillment centers, and Amazon will take care of shipping when orders come in.
By selling your products in different countries, you could reach a much wider audience and take your sales to the next level.
Conclusion
Amazon can be a tough place to sell due to the amount of competition, but it’s also a great platform for your eCommerce business.
While competition may be tough, there are many ways you can stand out and steps you can take to make your listings more effective and more visible in search.
This guide provides you with 12 strategies you can focus on. You may be doing some of them right already, so focus on those you haven’t mastered yet.
If your product listings are receiving lots of traffic and orders, but you’re not getting many reviews, make this your main focus.
If you rarely seem to win the Buy Box, focus on developing a repricing strategy using a tool like Repricer.
Analyze your Amazon business closely, constantly look at ways you could improve it, and work on increasing your sales over the next few months.
