I probably don’t need to tell you how important our mobile phones are, and the need to optimise your Amazon store for mobile, in 2024 as these vital devices are now in the pockets and bags of 5.2 billion people worldwide.
You may not, however, be aware of the importance of mobile optimisation for your Amazon Brand Store.
The latest figures show that 80% of shoppers now use a mobile phone to browse products online with 62% having made an online purchase with their phone in the past six months.
Amazon makes up a significant chunk of these sales which means that, if your store isn’t mobile optimised, you’re in danger of getting left behind in terms of sales.
Quite simply, your mobile-centric competitors are nabbing your customers on a daily basis.
With shopping by phone rapidly becoming the most popular method of making a purchase, we consulted with our Amazon SEO experts to put together the following guide to optimising your Amazon Brand Store for mobile.
Optimising an Amazon Store For Mobile
An Amazon Brand Store offers sellers a great opportunity to create a curated brand and to showcase their products at little to no cost. This is particularly helpful for new and emerging brands looking to make their mark on the e-commerce market.
Optimising your Amazon Brand Store for mobile unlocks the door to a huge amount of new traffic which can lead to a significant increase in sales. In order to optimise your store for mobile, there are a few things that you need to pay close attention to:
Keyword Research
Optimising for mobile should always begin with comprehensive keyword research.
This journey begins by researching the highest volume search terms, words and phrases and then incorporating these into your store and your home page as well as throughout your digital presence. Once you have this locked down, its time to organise your products in terms of search volume demand.
In plain speak, this means that the products which command the highest level of demand should be placed most prominently on your page; preferably right at the tippety top.
The reason for this is simple; your most popular and best selling items should be really easy to find for your customers as, the more clicks necessary to find a product, the greater the chance that the customer will go scrolling away to your competition.
Imagery
I’ll let you into a secret - Amazon wants you to focus on selling your products via mobile - so much so that it actually nudges you along with mobile exclusive features including images and video.
When building your store, you’ll notice that, when uploading images, some of Amazon’s tiles offer the option to upload a different or separate image which will only appear on mobile phone search results.
Vendors and Sellers are now also able to upload short videos which can be a really effective way of keeping customers engaged long enough to send them sailing through to the checkout. For this reason, it’s absolutely worth investing the time in producing some great photographs and videos to accompany your products.
When producing videos, a good rule of thumb is to keep them to around 15 seconds and to keep the messaging simple for the best results.
Amazon Listings
As well as optimising your store for mobile, you’ll also want to optimise each of your individual listings as this goes hand in hand with optimising your store in order to increase visibility and conversions.
When doing this, there are four main factors to look at and, these are:
Product title
It may seem like stating the bleeding obvious but, your product title can make or break your listing as it’s likely to be the first thing that a customer will see.
Amazon allows you up to 200 characters for your product title (may be less for certain product categories) - and you need to make them count.
While this gives you some wiggle room for your normal listing, your potential customers will only see the first 80 characters for mobile.
This presents a challenge as you need to come up with a title which will be displayed in full on a mobile screen but which will still impart the desired message.
A good format to follow for this is brand name + product type + main feature or selling point.
An example of this would be ‘Bluetooth TRANSMITTING Record Player + Wireless Portable Speaker (FM Radio, MP3)’. This product title includes all the salient information necessary to tell the customer what you’re selling.
Description of the product
So, now that you’ve got a cracking product title to reel the customers in, its time to turn your attention to your product description.
While you have a little more wiggle room here, Amazon still only allows you one paragraph with a maximum of 200 characters before your text disappears into the ‘See More’ zone. This means that you need to think about your product’s main or unique selling features in order to include these in the first 200 characters.
For this, its really important to know who your target customer is and what they’re looking for if you want to engage them. In many cases, a customer will have a list of desired features in mind so, if you match these to those in your listing, you’re onto a winner.
My top tip here is to answer a question in your 200 characters which is likely to appear in the Q&A section of your listings.
Bullet points
During the last two sections, you may have gained the impression that Amazon is a bit stingy with sellers - and you’d be right.
This theme continues with bullet points as only three of these will be displayed on mobile and, this is a really good reason for doing your target customer research as outlined above.
When a customer is browsing products, they’ll generally have a ‘hit list’ of required or desired features and, so, these should be addressed within your top three bullet points.
Again, your FAQs and reviews of your products and those of your competitors can be really helpful in establishing which information you should include in your bullet points.
Imagery and video
As I’ve mentioned, imagery is incredibly important when it comes to selling on Amazon and, as such, is deserving of your time and attention. As well as providing an attractive accompaniment to your product description, images can be hugely helpful in clarifying your description.
When considering a purchase, most customers will be looking for three main factors; the brand name, the type of product and the size or quantity of the product. Use your main image - or Hero Image - to back up your product description by ensuring that your imagery demonstrates all three of these elements.
The Hero Image
Your Hero Image or packshot is undoubtedly the most important part of your listing and should reflect not just the product but your brand as a whole. Amazon has some pretty strict guidelines when it comes to the use of images and you should always study these before starting out.
When tackling your images, you should take note of the following:
Representation - Amazon states that your listing needs to accurately represent the product for sale and, images should not contain any items which are not included in the purchase. This means that you should avoid including any accessories or other items in your photography that will not be in the box when it lands on the customer’s doorstep.
Size - When optimising for mobile, you need to keep in mind the size of the screen that the product will be viewed on. For best results for mobile, you should keep images simple and uncluttered.
Mobile ready Hero Images are sometimes tweaked slightly to make them more efficient for the customer to view and you need to make sure that this doesn’t bend Amazon’s rules too far as it may lead to your image being rejected (although Brand Registry sellers have the option to file a claim to prevent this).
Common thinking on images for Amazon are that the product should take up 80% of the entirety of the product and, where possible, sellers should show photographs of the box or packaging as well as the unwrapped product.
Put yourself in your customer’s shoes
The only way to get a proper idea of how your listing comes across for mobile is to try it out. By doing this, you can see exactly what your customer is seeing and, therefore, often identify any issues which may be harming your click-through and conversion rates.
Optimising your brand store and product listings is a vital activity and one which many sellers make the mistake of ignoring - and then wonder why their conversion rates are taking a nosedive. While this article should point you in the right direction when it comes to optimising for mobile, for the best results, it's a great idea to enlist the help of a professional Amazon agency to help supersize your mobile optimisation.
