Research shows that you have as little as eight seconds to grab an internet user before they click away from your web page. So you need to get their attention fast.

And when we’re talking about product listings on Amazon, you don’t have a lot of ways to do that. For instance, if you sell a vitamin supplement, on your own pages you might grab attention with the headline “Ten ways Vitamin XYZ can make your life better”. Your reader will probably stick with you at least until number four – you’ve grabbed them.

But Amazon says you have to do this, and do that, and start with the product title, so you have very limited resources.

And you’re not going to get away with words that work well on a blog, like “mind-blowing”, “amazing”, “surprising”, or “unbelievable.” Amazon does not like those at all; unless they’re in a book title, of course, such as A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (go see!).

Okay. The product title. You actually have quite a lot of space but you need not to waste it. So get the important stuff up fast.

The first important thing: what is this product? It’s a …. camera. Lens. Filter. Cat carrier. Doll. Coffee pot. French press. Stick that right up front.

Only then do do you want to give the detail. So for instance, if the product is a lens for a DSLR, the important words are “Nikon” or “Canon”, “zoom” or “wide angle”, and “lens”. Then after that comes the stuff people will want to check off like how many millimeters, which models it will fit, and specific features. If you put the specific features up front, you’ve lost customers who won’t read any further.

But you can also put qualifiers, and those might go up front. “Blanket” is easy to trump by “Comfy blanket”. However, if you’ve ended up with “comfy furry plush velvety snug romantic soft cute blanket” you’ve gone too far. That word “blanket” is what the user is looking for, and you lost them before they got there!

Then you have the product picture, and the first product pic is the one users will see – the boring one with your product against a white background. It’s tightly controlled by Amazon, but it’s incredibly important. So you need to do these things:

•      Make sure it works as a thumbnail,

•      make sure the lighting is good,

•      make sure the focus is sharp,

•      think about getting the right angle,

•      make sure users can see exactly what it is.

Remember, users might not see your entire product page, just the title and the picture. So these need to work on their own, for anyone who’s using mobile, or comes to Amazon from another site (like Vipon).

Once you’ve optimized these two items you can go on to your product description and here,

•      you

•      want

•      to

•      use

•      bullet

•      points!

Which will let users scan rather than read, so they can find out what they want to know faster.

Numbers always appeal, for instance if a sewing machine has 5 embroidery stitches, or you’re selling a set of 6 garden tools or a pressure washer with 3 attachments, put the number in the bullet points.

There’s a reason ads like “kills 99% of all known germs” and “8 out of 10 cats prefer Whiskas” are such classics, so do likewise! (Only, of course, if you have a claim you can substantiate. If the ten cats are all yours and your BFF’s, that might not be enough.)

By the way, a number that’s always guaranteed to get attention is the amount of discount a buyer can get! We’ll just leave that there, for you to think about…