During the 1st quarter of 2021, Amazon’s sales grew faster internationally than they did in North America, with International revenue up 60% year over year, while North America revenue climbed 40%.
In other words, there is a huge opportunity for European sellers on Amazon to step into this market and gain a competitive advantage.
Last week, we put on a webinar with Salsify to help European sellers understand how to best optimize their product pages on Amazon – Amazon PDPs (product description pages) impact where the Amazon A9 algorithm places products when consumers search for them, so this is a critical piece for sellers to understand.
The webinar was presented by Pacvue’s Sales Director Daniel Harris, and Salsify’s Justin King, VP of Industry Marketing. The two of them had some really great data-driven insights as to what makes a “Perfect PDP,” and today we’ll be sharing some of that insight with you.
Notably, the U.S. has a higher average cost-per-click on Amazon advertising than Europe does. This indicates that the U.S. market is more mature, but for sellers in Europe, this means that there is tremendous opportunity for first-movers to drive product adoption.
After New Years 2021, the U.S. experienced a larger CPC rebound than in Europe, indicating that there is more competition for Amazon advertising in the U.S. market. For European brands, then, perfecting Amazon A9 SEO means a bigger potential competitive advantage as fewer brands have their product pages optimized.
So, how does one optimize their product description page? There are several trends that brands can jump on to improve how Amazon skews search results towards their product: the first is to use product descriptions that are concise and precise. Next, titles have to include essential SEO words for the Amazon algorithm (different from Google SEO!)
The above should be considered table stakes. To differentiate, brands should look to include enhanced content (what Amazon calls “A+” content) below the fold on their product description pages.
What is enhanced content? It’s the broader story of the product and the brand. How is the product different? What is the brand story? Is the brand ethical and sustainable? What lifestyle is the brand tying their product into?
These pieces add differentiating value from other, similar products. They can be in the form of images, videos, charts – any medium that allows a brand to build out the ethos of the product.
The last part of the webinar went through different product categories for the UK, Germany, and France, and noted some places where products in those categories often failed to have optimized PDPs. One example is that only 24% of the top 100 consumer electronics products in France have video content. If you make cameras and sell them on Amazon France, putting a video on your page would be a huge competitive advantage!
The key takeaway from this last segment is that it’s important to do the market research on your specific category before posting your product. In many popular European categories, there is room to optimize your PDP far more than the category average. This will put your product in front of more people, as the Amazon search algorithm will like your product better, and means that consumers are more likely to connect to your product when they see it.
Bottom line: there is a great opportunity to be an Amazon seller in Europe. Just make sure you optimize your product page!
If you want to learn more, and get specific insights about the UK, Germany and France’s top categories, check out the webinar here: https://youtu.be/hv4KIKP6p8U
