Amazon’s marketplace is as lucrative as it is crowded.

To profit as a seller, you have to stand out against over two million merchants. But if you do grab buyers’ attention, you’re bound to make sales since so many shoppers flock to Amazon. According to Seller App, a good conversion rate for Amazon sellers is between 10 – 15 percent, depending on the type of products listed.

The key to reaching Amazon shoppers is maximizing your listings’ visibility. There are so many products on the marketplace, and buyers don’t have the time or patience to sift through every single one. Make it easy for buyers to find your products, and you’ll be on track to win greater sales.

To boost your listings’ visibility, we’ll highlight nine key ways to drive external traffic outside of Amazon and internal traffic within the marketplace to your products. Using these strategies will lead buyers to your listings, so they can make their way down your sales funnel and become a customer.

What visibility means for Amazon listings

For products in your own online store, promotion is straightforward. You spread product awareness outside of your store through ads and other marketing efforts to drive traffic back to your listing pages.

Amazon listings are more complicated. They require both external and internal promotion. And with so much competition in the marketplace, sellers have to craft their listings to be highly visible on Amazon’s website, not just outside of it.

External promotion

External promotion for Amazon listing involves using outside channels to drive traffic back to your listing. It allows you to hook shoppers who aren’t already on Amazon to check out your listing.

Here are a few examples of external promotion methods for Amazon listings:

• Social media: Create ads and connect with influencers to spread awareness of your Amazon products and link back to your listings on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
• SEO: Include keywords your target buyers are Googling to have them rank high in search engine results.
• Getting backlinks: Find opportunities to link to your Amazon listings — such as publishing blog posts — to increase your items’ visibility and drive external traffic to your products.

With external promotion, you can make your listings stand out to shoppers outside of Amazon and maximize your sales.

Internal promotion

Internal promotion on Amazon helps you get more eyes on your merchandise. The process involves you paying the marketplace to present sponsored ads for your products, which are higher in search results.

Say you’re an Amazon merchant and you want to sell women’s sunglasses. You won’t be the only merchant selling the accessory on the marketplace. As shown below, there are over 20,000 other listings offering “sunglasses for women.”

Sunglasses aren’t an exception — Amazon, across all products, is saturated with merchants. To beat the competition, you have to find ways to increase your product listing’s visibility on the marketplace.

Here are two examples of internally promoting your Amazon products:

1. Win the Buy Box. When sellers share a single listing on Amazon because they all sell the same product, there’s always a Buy Box — the first highlighted price option.

Winning the Buy Box means prime visibility, so it’s a key way of attracting buyers on Amazon. Amazon considers a multitude of factors to pick the Buy Box seller — mainly price, but also others like credibility, seller rating, and shipping type. For Mrs. Jessie’s Quick Curls, the hair product company themselves won the Buy Box. As you can see below, they are the seller boldly listed on the upper righthand corner. Competing sellers are listed on the lower right corner — receiving less attention.

2. Rank high on Amazon product search results. Most buyers won’t move past the first page of search results, so getting a high ranking is a critical way to reach shoppers. You can boost your product rankings on Amazon by applying our promotion tactics below.

According to Amazon Seller Central, the marketplace search engine considers text match, price, availability, selection, and sales history to rank listings. These internal promotion tactics ensure shoppers can easily find your listing in Amazon’s crowded marketplace and make a purchase.

9 ways to promote your Amazon listings

An ideal Amazon promotion plan has a mix of tactics — including internal and external methods. You have to understand both marketplace policies — Buy Box winning and search rankings — to maximize sales. Also, look at ways to drive outside traffic to your listing. In this guide, we’ve outlined nine strategies for driving traffic from inside and outside of Amazon to your listing.

Let’s dive in.

1. Optimize your listings with SEO

Search engine optimization attracts a wide range of buyers to your listing. Both shoppers who are already on Amazon and those who are using other sites can find your listing when you include popular keywords. With these additions, search engines — both Amazon’s and others — determine that your listing is a relevant result and rank it higher.

Two key tools identify the keywords your shoppers are searching for most frequently.

1. Google Keyword Planner: This free tool indicates the monthly search volume of keywords on Google’s search engine. Since Amazon listings can rank on Google, this tool is especially helpful.
2. Scope: This is a keyword tool specifically geared for Amazon. It allows you to track keywords’ monthly volume, ranking position over time, estimated sales, and more.

You can learn more about other SEO tools for finding keywords using this guide.

Once you’ve collected your keywords, place them throughout your listing, such as in the title and description. Detecting these popular keywords, search engines will recognize your listing as a relevant result for your buyers’ searches and rank it higher.

2. Buy Sponsored Product ads

Even with SEO, there’s no guarantee your Amazon listing will be placed higher in search results. The marketplace’s engine considers other factors for ranking — selling history, price, and more — so SEO alone doesn’t necessarily lead to higher rankings.

To gain more control over their listings’ visibility, Amazon sellers can pay for the marketplace to sponsor their products and place them higher in search results.

Sellers only pay when shoppers click on their ad, so the payoff with Amazon promotion is guaranteed. Your listings’ visibility is increased, so shoppers on Amazon can easily find your product and potentially make a purchase.

3. Share listings on social media

The average person spends nearly 2.5 hours per day on social media platforms. Given this popularity, sharing your Amazon listings on social media through your business’ accounts is a powerful way of getting your products in front of more buyers.

Since your followers expect to receive value from your posts, it’s best to avoid creating posts on your account that are basically ads for your listings. Instead, it’s better to share your listing in more subtle ways that are still helpful to your followers.

Here are three ideas:

• Use a social media promo code. Merchants with a Professional Selling account on Amazon can create a promotion link to share through social media about a discount they’re offering. Unlike a traditional ad, sharing a promo code gives users value by helping them save money. For more details on setting up this promo code, check out Amazon’s guide.
• Share content that includes your listing link. Post an informative, helpful blog post or video that includes a link to your Amazon listing on LinkedIn, such as a how-to video or listicle. It’s a great way to indirectly promote your products through social media.
• Host a contest or giveaway. Announce on Facebook or Instagram that any user who posts your Amazon listing in their story will be entered for a chance to win a prize. This reward will motivate users to share your listing and spread the word about your Amazon products.

By creating exciting and relevant content on social, you can promote your Amazon listings in a way that feels natural rather than invasive.

4. Run competitor analyses

For internal visibility on Amazon, your listings need to stay ahead of competitors’ products. In buyers’ searches, your products will fall behind competitors’ items in rankings if you aren’t monitoring how those listings are engaging shoppers.

To keep your listings high in Amazon’s search rankings, here are three factors to monitor in competitors’ listings:

1. Price. You want to keep your listings’ prices at or lower than competitors’. Not only because shoppers are looking for the best deals, but you also want to win the Buy Box if you’re sharing a listing with other sellers. Plus, Amazon highly prioritizes price in choosing the box winner.
2. Images. When Amazon shoppers are browsing through search results, they’re not only looking at price — they’re also checking out images. Visuals can be a very persuasive factor in encouraging purchases, so make sure your listing has higher quality images than competing items.
3. Text. If your listing currently isn’t ranking high for your product keywords, it might be because the listing text isn’t considered relevant by Amazon’s search engine. Analyze the text of the current top-ranking listings for potentially relevant keywords you can include to boost your product.

Finding ways to make your listing outshine competitors on Amazon will increase your product rank in the marketplace’s search results.

5. Partner with influencers

Just like products in an online store, Amazon listings can gain significant traffic through influencer marketing. When prominent individuals in your industry stand behind your product and link to your listing, it sends a message to communities of your key buyers that your listing is worth checking out.

To promote your listing through influencer marketing, start by coming up with a list of key individuals in your sector with a large base of social media followers. Brainstorm this list by considering your own personal network or use an influencer platform like Influence.co.

Once you have a list going, check out this guide to learn about the best ways to reach out to influencers and measure results once they share your Amazon listings.

6. Maintain strong product ratings

First impressions matter when you’re on a marketplace as competitive as Amazon. Buyers are browsing through thousands of products, so they won’t settle for items that seem to be low-quality.

A clear way to give shoppers a positive first impression of your Amazon listings is to maintain high-star ratings. When buyers are browsing through Amazon search results, the star ratings are visible for each product.

Along with the price, these star ratings are a major factor in whether shoppers decide to click on your listings. They can’t see your products in person, so this feedback from other buyers is especially meaningful to shoppers trying to make a purchase.

Here are three tips for maintaining high-star ratings on all of your Amazon listings:

1. Describe your item exactly as it is in your listing. False product details and images may boost sales initially, but ultimately they only hurt your Amazon business. Buyers who receive a product that’s totally different from the listing are bound to leave a low rating in disappointment.
2. Provide excellent customer service. If you don’t handle customer requests properly, such as shipping an item late or not being prompt in completing a return, you’ll upset buyers. Avoid receiving a low product rating by delivering the item as expected and promptly resolving issues.
3. Reach out to disappointed buyers. When a customer leaves a poor rating, reach out to the buyer to see if you can still resolve their issue. If you can fix their problem, they do have the power to edit their review. And if they do, it’ll improve your product’s overall score.

Ratings are a key way for buyers to quickly assess your Amazon products. Make sure your items’ scores stay high to keep buyers interested in your listing.

7. Maintain strong shipping performance

Shipping, at first, might seem totally unrelated to promoting your products. But on Amazon, your shipping performance is a key factor in your listings’ visibility.

Amazon wants to keep shoppers happy, so they discourage poor shipping practices by making shipping a factor in winning the Buy Box and ranking high on Amazon’s search rankings. With consistent shipping issues, you’re less likely to win the Box or to rank high in search.

Instead of hurting your visibility, use these three tips to maintain a strong shipping performance on Amazon:

1. Regularly check your shipping performance metrics. In Amazon Seller Central, you can monitor key shipping performance metrics — like on-time delivery rates — to ensure you’re consistently offering great shipping and pleasing customers.
2. Use Amazon FBA. By signing up for Fulfillment by Amazon, sellers no longer have to worry about providing great shipping as the marketplace handles fulfilling your orders. If there are any complaints about your shipping from buyers, the marketplace will remove the rating since they are responsible for shipping issues.
3. Use inventory management software. Adopting an inventory management program, like GoDaddy Marketplaces, keeps you on track so you can avoid understocking and being unable to complete orders. GoDaddy Marketplaces monitors when your stock is low across channels so you always know when to reorder.

Always provide good shipping, and you’ll increase your potential to rank higher in search results and at winning the Buy Box. With this visibility, Amazon shoppers can easily find your products.

8. Monitor your seller rating

Like shipping performance, your overall seller rating on Amazon also impacts your chances of winning the Buy Box and ranking high in Amazon’s search results.

Punishing low-rated sellers with less visibility is a measure to keep Amazon shoppers happy and sustain the marketplace. It ensures buyers are working with merchants who have a positive record and can provide great service.

To keep your listings visible on Amazon, follow these three tips to maintain a high seller rating:

1. Monitor your seller rating. On Seller Central, you can view the factors that contribute to your overall seller ratings — such as Perfect Order Percentage and Late Response Rate — and determine which ones need to be improved to increase it.
2. Be prompt in customer service. Set a daily reminder to resolve customer issues and respond to customer messages. The quicker you give buyers attention, the more impressed they’ll be with your service.
3. Determine whether negative feedback could be removed. Amazon has clear guidelines for providing feedback. Review this post to determine whether any of your negative feedback from buyers should be removed.

Overall, make an effort to keep your seller rating as high as possible. You’ll help your listings stay visible through the Buy Box and Amazon search results.

9. Launch a Lightning Deal

Beyond convenience, many shoppers come to Amazon for the marketplace’s low prices. With this interest, a primary way of attracting Amazon shoppers to your listing is by launching a Lightning Deal.

Lightning Deals are time-based, marked-down products buyers can find in Amazon’s Today’s Deals section. They draw a lot of attention and sales from Amazon’s shoppers not only because they appreciate discounts but also because their limited time frame motivates buyers to make a purchase.

Sellers have to pay a fee, and Amazon has to approve Lightning Deals before they’re launched.

Here are three of the key guidelines sellers need to meet for their Lightning Deals to be approved:

1. Lightning Deals run for four to twelve hours.
2. Lightning Deals can only run once in a seven-day period.
3. You should have your proposed quantity for the deal available at least seven days before the deal is expected to launch.

To learn more about Lightning Deal guidelines and setting them up, review this guide. With Lightning Deals, more buyers will come across your listings in the Today’s Deals section — driven to purchase within the limited promotion time frame.

Play with promotion to boost Amazon sales

Promoting Amazon products is unlike traditional marketing for a single store where you’re mainly focused on driving external traffic. You also have to find ways to increase your listings’ visibility internally on Amazon. The marketplace is competitive, so you have to find innovative ways to make products stand out against other sellers’ items.

To simplify promotion on Amazon, make the most of the nine key strategies here for boosting your listings’ visibility inside and outside of the marketplace. Experiment with these different methods, and track your results to see which ones lead to greater sales. The more you test these tactics, the better equipped you’ll be to win the attention of Amazon buyers — leading you to stay ahead of competitors.

With over 152 million shoppers worldwide and 19 million sellers on eBay, there are plenty of opportunities to sell your products but also a lot of competition. As of 2022, there are a jaw-dropping 1.5 billion seller listings on eBay, and each day the marketplace becomes more and more saturated.

With more merchants selling the same items, eBay sellers have to strategically create their listings to stand out and attract buyers. Visibility, pricing, and photos are a few of the vital components that influence your shoppers and whether or not they will ultimately make a purchase.

To help boost your sales, we cover 10 tips to craft a top-selling eBay listing that builds buyers’ trust in your products and encourages them to make a purchase.

How to create a top-selling eBay listing

The key to securing your online sales, eBay or otherwise, is building buyers’ trust in your business. When trust is high, shoppers focus less on the potential risks of online shopping and feel ready to make a purchase.

How do you build that buyer relationship? Appeal to shoppers’ intuitive reasoning.

According to Harvard Business Review, people rely on their associative reasoning system—based on personal experience and intuition — when making risky decisions, such as an online purchase. This finding means that the intuitive factors of your eBay listings — aesthetics, professionalism, visibility — often have the biggest impact on whether shoppers purchase your eBay products.

Considering this research, we’ve outlined 10 tips that speak to shoppers’ associative reasoning. By improving the intuitive factors of your listings with these strategies, you’ll build buyers’ trust in your eBay business and give a boost to your sales.

1. Use high-quality photos

Because online eBay shoppers can’t see your products in person, your item photos matter a great deal. Through color, image quality, and more, product photos help buyers assess whether they want to purchase the item.

To make the right first impression, here are a few tips for curating your eBay product photos:

• Use high-quality photos. Well-lit, colorful, high-res photos build buyers’ confidence in your products—they can clearly examine your items’ details, so they feel ready to make a purchase.
• Make sure they’re sized correctly. eBay requires photos to be at least 500 pixels on the longest side. Pictures should be 1600 pixels on the longest side to optimize for mobile.
• Offer a selection of photos. Include a variety of photos that show off your products at different angles to provide shoppers with a better sense of your items.
• Keep your images minimal. eBay asks that sellers keep product images clean with an uncluttered background and no text or borders. Besides meeting the marketplace’s guidelines, following these rules eliminates distracting elements and keeps buyers focused on your products.

With a curated selection of product photos, your listings will give shoppers a clear idea of what to expect from your products. Shoppers then have the knowledge they need to feel confident in making a purchase.

2. Apply SEO to your listings

Online shoppers don’t want to browse through pages of products. To save time, they’d rather opt for one of the first results they see. With this reasoning, a listing that ranks high in eBay’s search results will likely attract greater sales than one with a lower ranking.

These search rankings are determined by eBay’s search engine, Cassini. In deciding which listings will rank highest, it considers which would be most relevant to the shopper.

A key factor in determining this “relevance” is keyword usage. When the keywords in your listing match your buyers’ search terms, Cassini considers your product to be more relevant for that shopper.

There are a few key ways to find out which keywords your buyers are frequently searching.

• Use a keyword research tool. You can take advantage of the eBay-specific keyword tool Terapeak or use a more general keyword tool, such as Ahrefs or Google Keyword Planner, to generate a list of keywords that buyers are frequently searching.
• Conduct your own eBay search. Do a search on eBay for products that are identical and similar to yours, and note which keywords are most frequently used in the top-ranking listings. Since these listings rank high, these keywords are most likely searched frequently by buyers.

Once you’ve compiled a list of keywords, you can narrow down your list to the most popular words and phrases. Then, incorporate those keywords throughout your listing.

• Title
• Description
• Catalog specifics
• Listing specifics

While you want to distribute these keywords throughout your listing, avoid keyword stuffing. If you aimlessly add keywords that are frequently searched, Cassini will detect that your listing isn’t relevant to your buyers. Add keywords where meaningfully appropriate to keep your listings’ rankings high.

With a relevant distribution of keywords, your listing will be ranked high in target buyers’ search results and will, through greater exposure, achieve greater sales.

3. Promote with eBay advertising

Beyond SEO, you can improve your listings’ visibility with eBay Promoted Listings. Available to Top-Rated Sellers and eBay Store subscribers, this paid advertising program allows you to place your listings where they’ll get more exposure, such as the top of a search rankings page.

Shoppers can easily find Promoted Listings with their advantageous placements, so they’re more likely to buy those items.
But because Promoted Listings isn’t a free service, you want to ensure that you’re getting the highest value possible from the investment. Here are a few strategies for effectively placing promoted listings.

• Pick items that would benefit most from greater exposure. Items that are expected to receive a lot of attention, such as bestsellers and new items, will attract even more buyers with greater visibility through promotion.
• Pick a time for your campaign when shoppers are especially motivated to buy. Launching Promoted Listings when people are especially ready to make purchases, such as the holidays or special events, will most likely result in greater returns.
• Find an ad rate that boosts your ad’s chances of winning without hurting your budget. Consider your expenses and evaluate these average ad rates for eBay promotions to find an amount that works for your business.
• Test and track your results. Monitor your Promoted Listings dashboard in Seller Hub to determine if you need to improve the quality of your listings or adjust your ad price for greater returns.

Since it offers greater visibility for your products, eBay Promoted Listings allows you to attract more buyers to your items and generate more sales.

4. Maintain a high seller rating

Beyond SEO and promotions, visibility can also be impacted by your eBay seller rating. If you have negative feedback, the Cassini search engine will lower your listing’s ranking.

To ensure that your listing is visible (and that you’re keeping customers happy), you should always aim to meet eBay’s Top Rated seller benchmarks:

• Defect rate: Less than or equal to 0.5 percent, with three or fewer defects from unique buyers
• Cases closed without seller resolution: Less than or equal to 0.3 percent and two or fewer cases
• Late shipment rate: Less than or equal to 3 percent and five or fewer late shipments
• Shipping: Tracking uploaded within your stated handling time; carrier validation for 95 percent of transactions with U.S. buyers

Meeting these benchmarks consistently requires planning and diligence. Clearly understand what areas of your performance need improvement with these tips:

• Regularly monitor your ratings in Seller Hub. Check the performance metrics mentioned above in Seller Central consistently, and you’ll be able to catch if one is starting to slip and hurt your rating.
• Set a reminder to check messages from buyers. Shoppers value when sellers respond to their issues promptly. If you often forget to check buyer messages, set a daily reminder to respond.
• Convey an accurate dispatch time and shipping fees. Shoppers are quickly disappointed if shipping takes longer or costs more than originally expected. To keep buyers happy, always communicate accurate dispatch times and shipping fees.
• Ask buyers for feedback. Unless a major issue occurs, shoppers usually aren’t motivated to leave feedback. Give them some encouragement by sending a follow-up message one week after their purchase to request that they leave feedback. As a backup, you can use various tools to set up a feedback reminder to automatically request input from customers.

Implement these strategies, and you’ll be able to maintain a positive seller rating that keeps your listings’ rankings high.

5. Offer generous shipping and returns

When online shoppers are hesitant to purchase, they can often be convinced to buy when offered free shipping and fair return policies. If they end up not liking the item, they will appreciate that it won’t be costly or time-consuming to have it shipped back.

eBay buyers are no exception. The marketplace found that more than 60 percent of shoppers check return policies before completing an order.

If you don’t currently offer free shipping and free returns, consider how and why you might be able to switch to these policies and attract more shoppers.

• Evaluate your costs and whether any could be lowered. Are there any expenses that could be reduced? Finding room in your budget to accommodate free shipping and returns can be worthwhile if it helps you attract more sales.
• eBay now protects sellers who offer free returns if an item is returned damaged or used, enabling them the option to only offer the buyer a partial refund. Top-rated Plus sellers are required to offer free 30-day returns.

Switching to free shipping and return policies may seem risky and costly at first, but the investment is worthwhile. With the protections of these policies, reluctant buyers will have more confidence in your business and make a purchase.

6. Create a custom listing with software

Shoppers are attracted to listings with a professional look. A high-quality design builds buyers’ trust in your business as they associate a polished look with credibility.

Achieving this style, however, can be hard if you’re not a designer. Rather than hire an expensive freelancer, you can save money and still create a professional listing with software. Online programs, such as CrazyLister, provide templates to easily craft an eBay listing at an affordable price.

To take advantage of this listing software, choose your templates carefully.

• Avoid templates with too much clutter. If a template has too many elements — colors, text blocks, CTA buttons — shoppers are going to be distracted from your product and, as a result, might abandon the listing.
• Make sure the template is responsive with mobile devices. To keep your conversion rates high, it’s essential that your eBay listings are mobile responsive. According to BigCommerce, 6 percent of all U.S. retail sales in 2021 can be attributed to mobile ecommerce sales, and as Statista forecasts, that number is expected to jump to 10 percent by 2025.
• Highlight pictures more so than text. Visuals engage people more than text, so make sure your template showcases high-quality product photos to attract buyers.

Use custom listing software templates along with these suggestions, and your listing will have a professional look that builds shoppers’ trust and encourages sales.

7. List with eBay’s catalog

As an alternative to using custom listing software, you can achieve a professional look by listing items through the eBay catalog. Rather than creating your own unique listing, the eBay Catalog lets you share one with other merchants who are selling the same product.

For each catalog listing, eBay selects the product photos from sellers’ submissions, and the product info is presented in a standardized format. With this uniform look, eBay catalog listings look professional in the eyes of shoppers.

To list with the eBay catalog, your item needs to be brand new and match an identical item in the catalog. If your product isn’t already included, you can request that eBay add it in.

Offering a professional and refined look, the eBay catalog can help you impress and delight buyers, so they’re ready to make a purchase.

8. Select item specifics strategically

To maximize your products’ visibility, you’ll want to include relevant item specifics when creating listings. Item specifics are unique identifiers — color, brand, size — that help you distinguish your listing from similar products.

Item specifics will make it easier for buyers to find your item in a few ways:

• Item specifics help buyers find your items on eBay. Using the Refine column on the left of a product search, buyers can select item specifics to help them find your product.
• Item specifics help buyers find your item through a Google Product Search. For your eBay listings to appear through a Google Product Search, you need to include unique product identifiers that the search engine requires.

With more item specifics, buyers are more likely to find your listings through search engines — whether it’s eBay’s Cassini or Google — and move toward placing an order.

9. Have a competitive price strategy

As shoppers scroll through eBay listings, they’re comparing pricing, among other factors. To attract buyers while staying mindful of your finances, you want to find a price point that’s both competitive and fits your budget.

Finding that effective price point boils down to a few steps:

• Determine the cost of your product. Gaining a full sense of the expenses associated with your item will help you determine a price that’s profitable.
• Find out what competitors’ prices are. Search for your product type and note the prices of the top-ranking listings. You can find out pricing insights on your competitors in the Seller Hub. Keep current with updates on pricing guidance by checking out Seller Updates.
• Use psychological pricing to motivate buyers. Different methods, such as the Left Digit effect, can influence how shoppers perceive the value of your product and their willingness to pay. Understanding the psychology of competitive pricing will help you up your game as a seller on eBay and in ecommerce, in general.

After you’ve found a competitive price, you’ll want to consistently reevaluate your competitors and budget to make sure your price still works for your business and buyers. With a competitive price, your listing will attract shoppers and bring them one step closer to purchasing.

10. Make sure your listing is compliant

At the very least, your listing can’t attract shoppers if it’s not legally compliant. Failure to meet these standards can result in your listing being removed by eBay and disrupting your business.

eBay doesn’t pre-approve listings, so it’s your responsibility to make sure your listings are legally compliant. Examples of these legal requirements include:

• Not plagiarizing text or using images from other eBay listings without the owner’s permission
• Using brand names appropriately
• Making sure the listing is accurate to avoid intellectual property concerns

Review the full list of guidelines here for legally compliant listings. By being aware of these standards, you’ll be able to ensure that your listings are all compliant and won’t be removed, and your customers can keep shopping.

Follow these steps for long-term success

It may take some trial and error, but with these tried and true tactics, you’ll start to get the hang of which strategies work best to yield more clicks and purchases. With a strong foundation of listing best practices and tweaking as needed here and there, you will be set up for long-term success and greater profits in the future.

Image by: Bench Accounting on Unsplash

Amazon has come a long way from its humble beginnings as an online bookseller. Since its launch in 1994, Amazon has grown to become an ecommerce behemoth. These days, it’s one of the first places shoppers turn to buy anything from cleaning products to the latest tech gadgets.

And with $470 billion in sales globally, Amazon is the uncontested ecommerce leader and continues to grow and innovate.

This success took years to achieve and is due in part to Amazon’s strategic approach to growth. Although Amazon has now expanded into other avenues like streaming and food delivery services, any ecommerce business, regardless of where they start, can learn from Amazon’s example to grow their business and attract and retain more customers.

Here are six lessons that are at the center of why Amazon is so successful. Use them to make your ecommerce business more popular and profitable.

1. Highlight what other customers love

Long-term growth requires a customer-focused approach. When every aspect of the business prioritizes and anticipates the customer’s needs, your company is set to increase customer satisfaction and retention.

One way Amazon meets the needs of its customers is by tapping into the power of social proof through reviews and recommended products. On each product page, Amazon includes a section of recommended products based on what other customers who viewed that product have also viewed.

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Amazon gives its consumers the evidence and options they need in order to make a purchasing decision. Providing users with a “customers also bought/viewed” section taps into the consumer’s fear of missing out on the best or trendiest options. These sections also work to keep Amazon users engaged and continuously browsing.

Providing social proof pays off for brands. According to a Brightlocal consumer survey, 79% of people trust online reviews as much as word of mouth. Moreover, 94% said they are more likely to purchase from a business with positive reviews, and 92% said they are less likely to purchase from those with negative reviews.

What you can do

We live in an age where people share their experiences online, and reviews hold more weight than brand marketing.

Use this audience preference to your advantage by focusing on ways to make your customers happy. If you do a good job, your customers are more likely to share their experiences, which will help grow your customer base and increase your revenue — by lowering customer acquisition cost (CAC) and potentially boosting lifetime value (LTV).

2. Incorporate data analysis into your decision making

Amazon prides itself on its commitment to innovation and testing. They test every aspect of their business — from pricing to product selection — so decisions are based on customer needs and not what Amazon thinks customers might want.

As Bezos puts it, “Our customers are loyal to us right up until the second somebody offers them a better service. And I love that. It’s super-motivating for us.”

In part, it’s this constant threat of customers switching to the competition that drives Amazon’s innovation. Even though it’s the largest ecommerce retailer, with a worldwide revenue of $469.82 billion, Amazon is constantly in competition with other businesses.

Improving the products they already sell also helps Amazon achieve success. For example, as more customers choose to equip their homes with devices that make modern-day living more interactive and seamless, smart home devices increase in popularity. To compete with a smart speaker like Google Home, Amazon continues to upgrade its Echo to include more distinctive features. As a result, the Amazon Echo dominates the global smart speaker market.

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When it comes to features, Alexa on Amazon Echo was one of the first versions of voice-controlled tech. Amazon has gone further with its smart speaker tech to release the Amazon Echo Dot, a smaller, more affordable version, as well as the Echo Show to further cater to customers’ need to be connected.

What you can do

Be strategic about testing your products regularly and coming up with new ideas to meet evolving customer needs. For example, run A/B tests by selling limited edition products to test customer interest, send customer surveys, or use a Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey to find who your promoters are and how many, so you can cater to their specific needs. Combine these efforts so it’s easier to make decisions and create innovative products, features and services based on data.

3. Get to know your customers

Amazon is constantly tracking and learning about its customers. As customers search and add products to their cart, Amazon uses this behavioral data to make product recommendations. The online marketplace shows customers products related to items they’ve recently browsed and based on their search habits:

At the bottom of the homepage, customers can also see more recommendations based on recent purchases and a history of products they’ve recently viewed. All of this information guides customers to buy more.

This personalization pays off. According to Evergage research, 78% of marketing professionals believe that personalization has a strong or extremely strong impact on advancing the customer relationship. Moreover, 92% say that customers or prospects expect a personalized experience. Whether it’s through email, website, or in person, successful marketers use data to provide better customer experiences and increase loyalty.

What you can do

Personalize your customer’s shopping experience based on their past behavior, location, and interest list of the customer’s recently searched items at the bottom of your product pages. This makes it easy for them to find the items and add them to their cart.

On your homepage, list products customers might be interested in based on what they’ve purchased or browsed in the past. If you let customers set up accounts on your store, consider setting up a past orders menu option. This feature makes it quick and easy for customers to find what they need and buy it again.

4. Build a community of trust through reviews and Q&As

When it comes to purchase decision-making, people often look to one another for guidance. Online reviews and question-and-answer sections can help increase trust and purchases. Research shows the most important aspect of a customer’s purchasing decision is high ratings and reviews. Consumers even prefer positive product feedback over discounts, coupons, or loyalty program offers.

Amazon taps into this trait of human nature by offering user reviews and a question-and-answer section. Through these features, the online marketplace builds a community where consumers can educate each other and move along the customer journey.

Amazon proactively asks recent customers to rate and review their experience. This feedback appears on the product page with a “verified purchase” flag, which adds to the trustworthiness of the review.

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Amazon also offers a customer question-and-answer section at the bottom of its product pages to give shoppers the option to ask specific questions before they buy something. Past customers provide answers:

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Both of these options make it possible for shoppers to rely on other customers for information and not solely on Amazon. Shoppers can read about honest experiences from other customers and base their purchasing decisions on feedback from those with similar needs.

What you can do

Send follow-up emails to customers to request a review of your product. You can also post requests for reviews in each customer’s personal dashboard, so when they log in, they’re reminded to submit a review directly on your site. Like Amazon, you should flag reviews to make it clear they’re submitted by people who actually bought the products they’re reviewing.

5. Build a loyalty program to incentivize customers

Loyalty programs increase engagement and profitability for companies. 79% of consumers stated that loyalty programs make them more likely to continue doing business with brands.

Amazon launched their loyalty program, Amazon Prime, in 2005 as a membership service that offered two-day free shipping and other benefits, like no minimum purchases or consolidating orders. In 2015, the service gained even more attention when Amazon Prime Day was launched. For one day only, Amazon Prime members have access to deep discounts and exclusive offers.

Prime has evolved since then to also include exclusive offers at Whole Foods grocery stores, access to their streaming platform and music service, and much more. As of 2021, Prime Day continues to be extremely popular with its members, bringing in $11.19 billion in global sales.

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Prime isn’t a loyalty program where customers automatically qualify — they have to pay an annual fee to join. But for many consumers, this fee is worthwhile as long as the program offers decent benefits. According to ClarusCommerce, over 70% of customers are even willing to pay a premium to join a loyalty program.

Shoppers are willing to pay for a Prime membership to gain access to all the benefits—special discounts, free shipping, entertainment, and more. The program taps into customers’ classic desires of saving money, fast deliveries, and easy returns.

What you can do

Create a program that offers incentives that get customers to come back to the store regularly and take advantage of special offers. For example, include access to free shipping, limited-time discounts, and other membership perks.

You can also personalize your membership benefits by offering timely gifts. Studies show that, in addition to saving money, 79% of customers want loyalty programs that care about them. Offer customers special rewards and bonuses during important occasions — like a membership anniversary or birthday — to show customers your brand values them.

6. Think of new ways to evolve

Amazon continues to grow as a result of its dedication to trying new things. If you maintain a mindset focused on evolution, you can foster more opportunities for growth. Amazon continues to grow as a result of its dedication to research and development, from scientific discoveries to improving its inventory planning system to developing the Amazon Fire Stick. The marketplace’s commitment to innovation keeps their business running smoothly and continuously growing.

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In the U.S., Amazon has made returns as simple as bringing your items (sometimes even unboxed) to locations like UPS, Whole Foods, or Kohls. They’ve partnered with these companies and introduced a QR code each place can scan to process your returns.

Source: Kohls/Amazon via Apartment therapy

Amazon’s focus on producing new ways to make the customer experience simple, seamless and entertaining keeps their shoppers engaged. Whether it’s by introducing new TV and movie programming as part of Prime membership or access to new audio content, Amazon is always looking for new opportunities to capture its audience.

What you can do

To innovate, look at what your competitors offer and find gaps you can fill. Listen to what customers are saying on social media, and ask your customer support representatives to log insights they get when customers call in.

Use any avenue where customers share information as an opportunity to learn from them and improve your business and product offerings.

Leveraging examples of what makes Amazon so successful

Since launching in 1994, Amazon has experimented and learned lessons to become the ecommerce giant it is today. Follow in the marketplace’s footsteps by tackling your growth strategically. Start with small changes, test and adjust. Pay attention to your customers and the changing landscape of ecommerce. Be persistent and dedicated with your innovation. If you have patience with the process, over time, you’ll see results.