Amazon is the most popular online marketplace used by quite a large number of sellers and buyers. However, it is fairly simple logic to say that it isn’t enough to merely have your product on Amazon. One of the best ways to ensure you are making sales is to have your products appear at the top when prospective buyers search for what you sell.

More than 80% of the total sales on Amazon takes place on the first page. In fact, to be more specific, more than 65% of all the sales involves the first two results alone. Knowing the first page is the honeypot every big bear on Amazon wants to get, how do you make that honeypot yours? Getting your product to the top of Amazon search results actually takes some time. It is a process and you have to deliberately work towards making it happen.

Meet A9, Your Key to Amazon front page dominance.

If you are serious about getting on Amazon front page, the guy to meet is A9. Okay, maybe A9 is technically not really a guy, but it is quite an important factor in your quest for front page dominance. A9 is the Algorithm that controls Amazon search results and ultimately decides which products appear on the front page when you make a query.

Once the prospective buyer hits the search button, what A9 does is to pull a catalog of products to fit the buyer’s query. These results are then sorted in order of their relevance to the buyer. “Relevance” is a term most SEO experts are familiar with it. But while many might consider “Relevance” more of Google’s way of doing things, it is almost the same for Amazon too. Rather than answer the question of which result answers the searcher’s query most accurately, A9’s goal is to answer the question of which product the searcher is most likely to buy. This translates to conversion at the end of the day.

But how does Amazon decide which products are more likely to be purchased than the other? It isn’t something random or a product of luck at all. Instead, Amazon makes use of a combination programmatic analysis, human-like judgment, and important business performance metrics to determine who gets to appear first. This essentially means the ranking is done, even before users search for your product.

Since Amazon tracks every single user’s activity on the site, even down to hovering the mouse on a product, the goal of the algorithm is to use the data collected from every user to maximize the Revenue per customer

Based on the understanding of Amazon’s algorithm we have discussed, it is safe to say that all the steps a seller needs to take to increase their chances of getting listed on Amazon’s front page must be targeted at maintaining relevancy, increasing their chances of conversion and the probability of satisfying the customer. Essentially, products that fit these criteria the most are the ones that are more likely to appear on the front page. So how do you do this?

How to increase the relevance of your product to search results?

1. Title: it is possible you have at some point found products on Amazon with surprisingly long names that practically make no sense. What these sellers are trying to do is to cram as many keywords into their product name as possible which is one of the metrics that determines relevance to search results.
2. Product description and features: Amazon is so particular about the features of the product that appear on its first page. Most top-ranked products usually have their features listed in clear and concise bullet points. The goal here is to make the features both informative and keyword loaded.

Your product description should be focused on ensuring engagement. It is where you elucidate on your product features and you should focus on making it as appetizing as possible. Other important details that can influence your ranking in this aspect is your product specification (technical details) and search terms you want in association with your product.

Conversion rate related factors

1. Sales rank: The more sales you make, the higher the rankings are, and higher rankings lead to more sales. While this might sound like a vicious cycle, preference is given to the bestselling products. They are more likely to appear on the front page of search results.

2. Customer reviews: Amazon not only ranks product based on positivity of reviews, but also the number of reviews and also the seller’s response to reviews as well. Another point related to this is the Questions and Answers question section of your product. Most of the highest ranked products have high numbers of Q&As.

3. Image quality: The product image is another area Amazon is so serious about and has continued to tighten its policies on. In fact, for some product categories, a minimum quality of 1000×1000 pixels are compulsory before your product can even be listed at all. Amazon believes its “hover to zoom” feature has a huge impact on conversion and having good quality pictures is compulsory to offer that feature.

4. Pricing: Another factor, which hugely influences predicted conversion rate of the product is pricing. Amazon is more likely to list products that offer the best deals to buyers first before products with less competitive pricing.

In addition to these conversion factors, Amazon also measures your product page’s bounce back rate as well as how much time buyers spend on your page as part of the factors which influences product ranking.

Customer satisfaction

It makes sense that Amazon’s algorithm will rank products based on past records of the product’s performance. Customer satisfaction is one of the ultimate things Amazon looks for to determine which product appears on its front page. Here are some of the things to do in order to perform well in this area.

• Avoid negative reviews: While getting positive reviews from your customers is important as it might help with conversion and customer retention, Amazon makes it clear that positive reviews are not part of the criterion it considers. What you should really be concerned about are the negative reviews. Amazon tracks negative feedback and it has a way of bringing down your rankings.
• Process orders fast and ensure that you always have items in stock. This point is pretty straightforward, a buyer that is always running out of stock is less likely to be listed on the front page of search results. Amazon also tracks response time as it has a huge impact on customer satisfaction.
• Other customer satisfaction metrics you need to be concerned about include the Perfect Order Percentage which as the name implies refers to how smoothly your orders are processed as well as the Order Defect Rate which is the exact opposite.

Conclusion

In all, getting listed on the first page on Amazon depends on a combination of deliberate efforts geared towards ensuring that you make your product visible by making them easier to find (relevance), more likely to be bought and keeping your customers happy. These shouldn’t be too hard for any serious-minded seller.