Product Listing Optimization (PLO): Key Strategies for Success
- Optimizing product listings is crucial for increasing visibility and sales on digital marketplaces.
- Improve your product listings by researching products, creating compelling titles, using high-quality images, tailoring listings to marketplace requirements, and writing persuasive descriptions.
- PIM and DAM software help to manage product content and maintain consistency across marketplaces.
In this Article
Online marketplaces are a must-use if you want to expand your e-commerce business. This need will become more urgent in the future.
The number of shoppers globally buying things in digital marketplaces in 2024 stands at 2.71 billion. This is more than four hundred million above the number reported in 2020. If anything, the data indicates that demand for e-commerce services is rising fast. The rise in demand for online shopping should not surprise anyone. E-commerce has brought unprecedented convenience, which only gets better.
On the other hand, merchants are getting better at helping customers make the best purchase decisions. One of the features of marketplaces that attract buyers is product listings. A product listing is a page in an online marketplace that provides detailed information on the item on sale. It is the online equivalent of a product’s display in a physical store. This feature is crucial for merchants; it makes their products visible and provides critical information to help buyers purchase.
However, given their rising popularity, you will be one of many selling on these platforms. This means that having generic product listings will not give your products the attention needed to rise above the competition.
The solution? You must conduct intensive product listing optimization (PLO). This strategy helps your products to rank higher so that you can sell more. This post shows you how to optimize your product listings on marketplaces.
Why Marketplace Listings Need a Unique Approach
Product presentation has core principles that merchants must observe regardless of platform. This includes high-quality images, detailed descriptions, and transparent pricing. The principles are also core to marketplace listings.
Nevertheless, product listings on digital marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, AliExpress, Pinduoduo, etc., require special attention. Succeeding on these platforms is not only about having a high-quality product but also understanding how to work within their unique structures and competitive environments.
Let us explore why marketplace listings demand a tailored strategy:
1. Marketplace algorithms
Online marketplaces use specialized search algorithms and internal ranking systems to determine which products appear at the top of search results. These algorithms prioritize optimized listings; these are listings that strategically incorporate target keywords, have a strong sales history, and have positive customer feedback.
For instance, Amazon’s A9 algorithm ranks listed products based on sales performance, relevance, and customer satisfaction. This means you need to optimize your listing for these factors to rank high on Amazon.
Similarly, eBay’s Cassini algorithm focuses on the product title’s relevance and the listing’s completeness. So, to rank high on eBay, your products’ titles must be relevant, and the listing must tick all boxes in the platform’s completeness criteria.
In other words, failing to understand and work within these algorithmic frameworks can leave even excellent products languishing in obscurity.
2. Customer expectations
Shoppers on major marketplaces like Amazon have become accustomed to a certain level of detailed product information, fast and reliable shipping options, and an overall seamless buying experience. The best sellers on the platform have set shoppers’ expectations.
If your product listings lack crucial details, do not offer prime shipping, or create friction in the buying process, customers will likely overlook them. Instead, they will continue to browse until they find better-optimized listings. Marketplace shoppers demand a premium experience that eases the customer journey.
3. The allure of the Buy Box
The Buy Box is a feature that anyone who has bought or window-shopped items on Amazon knows very well. When viewed on a widescreen, such as a desktop monitor, laptop, or tablet, it is the section on the far right-hand side of the product detail page. The feature appears below the product details on a mobile phone screen.
The upper section of the Buy Box guides the buyer through the purchasing process. It displays the “Add to Cart” and “Buy Now” buttons. The lower section lists other sellers on the platform with different prices.
The Buy Box is a crucial part of Amazon that allows customers to quickly add the item to their cart with a single click. Customers are more likely to add your product to their cart if your details appear in the “Other Sellers” section of the Buy Box. The higher visibility that comes with this feature is what makes it alluring.
With this feature playing a crucial role in your products’ odds of attracting buyers, implementing a generic product listing on Amazon (and other marketplaces that implement the feature, such as eBay, Rakuten, and Back Market) means customers may overlook your products.
When optimizing product listings across multiple marketplaces, remember that each platform has unique Buy Box criteria, often involving price, seller performance, shipping speed, and stock availability. Understand each platform's specific criteria, price competitively, maintain high seller performance, manage inventory effectively, and consider shipping speed. Winning the Buy Box is about providing customers with the best overall value and shopping experience. Implement this strategy carefully to meet and exceed customer and marketplace expectations.
5 Critical Product Listing Optimization (PLO) Tips
Product listings on marketplaces need a unique approach because one platform differs from the next. For example, Amazon and eBay may have a Buy Box to boost sellers, but each platform implements the feature differently. Therefore, mastering the specific marketplace is crucial to maximizing visibility and sales.
However, that is only the beginning of what you must do to make the best of your product listings. Again, the emphasis here is that each marketplace is unique in many ways, which suggests that no single approach will work universally. Nevertheless, the following tips should be helpful as you work on improving product listings.
1. Conducting thorough product research
This might sound inappropriate, but product research is critical to optimized product listing. It is improper because you conceived and created the product, so why else should you research it?
Product research in this regard is not about seeking insights to inform design, development, or marketing. Instead, it is about understanding your target audience – those who will read your product listings on Amazon, Etsy, or eBay. Specifically, this product research helps you make the right choice as to how to design and present the listing.
How product research facilitates PLO
The question arises: for what benefit are the insights from the product research? To answer this question, we should first see what insights the activity is expected to unearth.
Suppose you sell power tools and want to create the best product listing on a particular marketplace, like Amazon. The first step should be to define your target audience. This definition should be detailed and comprehensive; do not just say, for example, that the target audience is construction companies and tradespeople. Dig into their specific needs, brand loyalties, buying criteria, and job requirements. Are they loyal to top pro-level brands? Are they more value-driven for projects on a budget? Are they master artisans looking for the highest performance? These deeper psychographic details shape how you position and describe your products.
Another aspect of this research process is identifying key competitors. Again, don’t just look at the big players. Also, analyze the smaller third-party sellers with surprisingly high rankings for related products. Ask questions like: What are they doing well with titles, bullet points, images, pricing, etc.? For example, if you notice a listing with many reviews praising “compact size for tight spaces,” you may want to highlight compact dimensions in your descriptions.
As you can see, studying how others have listed related products allows you to understand what you should do to become more relevant. Integrate the pertinent details of your listings, and your listings will earn a spot in the Buy Box. The goal is to design the research so that it helps you to understand what drives purchase decisions for your specific audience.
2. Creating compelling product titles
Product titles are like digital storefront signs – they must be clear, concise, and informative. They are the first thing shoppers see when searching for that specific product. If the title provides relevant information, the shopper will click on the listing to explore further. Otherwise, they will continue browsing the marketplace.
The following tactics can make your product titles more visible:
- Incorporate relevant keywords: Marketplace search algorithms heavily rely on keywords. They pick the keywords based on user activity and other factors. Therefore, use the product research phase to identify the most common search terms within the platform and then strategically integrate them into product titles. For instance, instead of a generic title like “Heavy Duty Drill,” consider “18V Cordless Hammer Drill – High Torque for Demanding Jobs.” This title incorporates keywords like “hammer drill,” “18V cordless,” and “high torque,” making it more discoverable by buyers searching for those terms.
- Highlight unique selling points (USPs): What makes your product outstanding? Identify and weave your USPs into the titles. Again, this step benefits immensely from the insights gleaned from product research. This assumes that part of the research was dedicated to exploring similar products from competitors to identify features that differentiate your products. Showcase these differentiators to pique shoppers’ interest. For example, if you sell a power tool with an innovative dust collection system, the title could be “Dust-Collection Power Saw – Enhanced Visibility and Cleaner Work Environment.”
- Following marketplace guidelines: Each marketplace has specific formatting requirements for titles, such as character limits and the use of special characters. Familiarize yourself with these guidelines to avoid suppressing your listings due to formatting issues.
3. Use high-quality images.
products in marketplaces. This is true but does not paint a complete picture.
A study published in the Australasian Marketing Journal states that superior visual aesthetics significantly influence buyers’ purchase behaviors and decision-making. For example, high-quality pictures lead shoppers to perceive the product as high quality and durable.
In other words, product titles may be the first thing shoppers see, but they are not the only determinant of what the shopper will do next. Something else, such as superior visual aesthetics, must convince the buyers to stick around.
One thing is sure: everyone in the marketplace works tirelessly to create visuals that capture attention. It may not be easy, but you can stand out with these two approaches.
First, use professional product images. Professional photographers produce images that are clear, well-lit, and free of distractions. They may charge a premium, but this will avoid grainy, poorly lit, or cluttered photos.
Secondly, let shoppers view your products from different angles. Include close-ups to highlight specific features or materials, and if applicable, add lifestyle images to demonstrate how the product looks in use.
High-quality images play a role in SEO
However, image quality is not only about how shoppers perceive product images. We said earlier that each marketplace has a search engine algorithm that serves products when shoppers search for specific items. These search engines favor product listings whose merchants adhere to particular requirements.
Regarding product images, quality entails adhering to requirements like size and resolution. Also, search engines perceive images with alt-text and metatags as correctly formatted, so they are of higher quality.
As you can see, image quality goes beyond what shoppers’ eyes see, but this creates challenges. For example, how can you ensure that each of your one hundred product listings has properly formatted images? What if you have listed your products across several marketplaces? You cannot do all this and maintain quality and consistency.
Digital asset management (DAM) solutions come in handy in such situations. DAM software centralizes the storage and management of product images. This means you do all the manipulation and enrichment within the platform and then syndicate to connected marketplaces.
For example, Catsy’s DAM solution has a robust API that connects the repository with Amazon. This means you can resize images within the DAM, add alt-text, all in bulk, and then synchronize the changes to the product detail pages in Amazon.
Catsy’s DAM has pre-built connections to other retailers like Walmart, Costco, Target, and Home Depot. Typically, you’d have to upload images to these platforms individually, which can be time-consuming. Catsy’s DAM allows you to prepare the images once and then syndicate them to each marketplace simultaneously. The jackpot is that the DAM platform has marketplace-specific templates enabling you to tailor the images. This means you do not have to worry about whether the photos will satisfy each marketplace’s requirements because the re-sizing templates already take care of this.
4. Category-specific optimization
Most marketplaces strive to provide a unique experience. They seek to make shopping as easy as possible to keep customers returning. For this reason, you’ll find different platforms implementing specific requirements, which become differentiators.
An excellent example of such requirements is specific attributes for different product categories. This means merchants must understand the nuances to maximize their listings’ visibility and effectiveness.
Why is this essential? Suppose a marketplace has specific rules and best practices for each product category. In that case, you must understand category-specific requirements. This is because each category may have unique mandatory fields, formatting guidelines, or even restrictions on what can be included in the listing. Therefore, you should familiarize yourself with the specific rules for your chosen categories.
Having understood these nuances, tailor the listings accordingly. This includes using category-specific keywords in descriptions and titles and selecting the most relevant attributes.
PIM and DAM facilitate category-specific optimization
However, there is a challenge. What if you showcase products on Amazon, eBay, and several other marketplaces? How can you ensure you fulfill each platform’s requirements without spending too much time? Product information management (PIM) software is the tool you need when faced with this challenge.
In this scenario, how does PIM software become a valuable time-saver and accuracy booster?
First, PIM solutions, like DAM solutions, centralize product details, eliminating the need to maintain separate data sets for each marketplace with potentially different category requirements. In other words, it creates a single source of truth for all product information.
Secondly, most robust PIM solutions, like Catsy, allow users to define and maintain a standardized set of product attributes. These attributes can then be easily mapped to the specific requirements of each marketplace category, ensuring consistency and compliance across all platforms.
Third, Catsy’s PIM, like many similarly robust systems, offers automation capabilities. You can set up workflows that automatically transform product data to meet the specific needs of different marketplace categories. This includes adding mandatory attributes and formatting data according to category specifications.
Optimizing your listings based on their specific category ensures they comply with marketplaces’ rules. This raises the odds of capturing the “Other sellers” spot in the Buy Box.
5. Writing detailed and persuasive product descriptions
Granted, shoppers open product listings to learn more about a specific product. This information helps direct their next decision.
However, while simply listing your products’ features may provide the needed information, it may not convince the shopper to click the “Buy Now” button. The descriptions are your opportunity to convince shoppers that your product is the solution to their problems.
How do you avoid bland product descriptions to enhance your product listings?
The trick is to provide comprehensive product information.
How to persuade shoppers using product descriptions
Suppose you are an industrial brand selling cordless drills. You could list the tool’s features as follows:
Cordless Drill – 18V
- 18V battery
- Variable speed trigger
- Keyless chuck
This listing communicates the feature, alright. However, it does not even try to persuade the reader that this product is worth buying.
The reader may want to check the product out and even buy it if the description is transformed as follows:
Introducing the Ultimate Cordless Drill – 18V
Our cordless drill is designed to provide maximum power and versatility for all your drilling needs. With an 18V battery, this drill delivers reliable and long-lasting performance, so you can easily tackle even the most demanding jobs.
The variable speed trigger allows you to adjust the speed to match the task at hand, while the keyless chuck makes it easy to switch between bits. The ergonomic design and lightweight construction reduce fatigue and improve control so you can work longer and more comfortably.
But that’s not all. This drill also features a built-in LED light to illuminate your work area, a belt clip for easy access, and a convenient storage case to keep everything organized.
Regardless of your designation (professional or a DIY Dad), this drill is the perfect tool for any job. So, why settle for less? Upgrade to the ultimate cordless drill today and experience its power, versatility, and convenience.
As you can see, the comprehensive product description provides much more detail and emphasizes the product’s benefits. It also uses persuasive language to connect emotionally with shoppers and convince them to purchase.
If such a level of detail is a factor in ranking products, there is no doubt that your listing will appear high in search results within the marketplace.
Conclusion
Product listing optimization is essential for increasing your products’ visibility on digital marketplaces. This is achieved through various methods, which could be as easy as researching the product in the context of the specific digital marketplace to complex tactics like tailoring listings to category-specific requirements.
However, the most crucial element of this optimization process is the understanding that every marketplace has its own set of rules, formatting requirements, and best practices. Therefore, the perfect product listing optimization strategy is built on understanding these nuances. Also, this strategy must leverage tools like PIM and DAM software. These tools help to create a robust foundation for product information, making it easy to maintain consistency across marketplaces and optimizing listings for each platform’s unique requirements.
Book a demo of Catsy DAM & PIM today!
High-quality product visuals are crucial for successful marketplace listings. Research shows that listings with multiple high-res images and videos have higher conversion rates. Visuals engage shoppers, showcase products from all angles, demonstrate features/benefits, and provide critical “see before you buy” confidence. Therefore, investing in professional photography and video production is well worth it. Merchants should aim for multiple images per product at minimum, supplemented by demo videos, 3D spins, modeling shots, and other interactive media when relevant.
Several factors go into Amazon’s Buy Box algorithm. Some proven strategies include leveraging Fulfillment by Amazon for fast Prime shipping, maintaining near-perfect customer service metrics like <1% order defect rate, pricing products competitively within the “buy box” range, always having ample inventory, and increasing sales velocity through checkout conversions and advertising. A robust FBA operation with top-tier seller metrics gives you the best shot.
Each product category on marketplaces has its own set of detailed listing requirements around titles, descriptions, image specs, product identifiers, and other data that must be included. For example, apparel listings may need to list fabric materials, while tools require performance specifications. Failing to meet a category’s specific checklist can suppress your listing or demote its search ranking. Tailoring listings to category standards signals relevance to the marketplace algorithms.
A PIM system offers several benefits for managing marketplace listings:
- Centralized data: All your product information in one place, ensuring consistency across channels.
- Data transformation: PIM solutions can automatically format and adapt your product data to suit different marketplaces.
- Improved efficiency: Save time and prevent errors during manual updates.
- Accuracy and consistency: Reduce the likelihood of incorrect or outdated information appearing on your listings.
Marketplace listings are not a “set it and forget it” thing. Top sellers continuously review and update product pages based on performance data, new platform requirements, and any product changes.
