Attract More Buyers with Amazon's Enhanced Brand Content

Amazon is the fifth biggest retailer in the UK, accounting for £4 of every £100 spent. The other top spots are all taken by the 'Big Four' supermarkets, making Amazon's success particularly impressive. Amazon is one of the most popular sites for virtually every retail sector.

When you think e-commerce or online shopping, the behemoth that is Amazon is most people's go-to website. For this very reason, you need to know about Amazon's enhanced brand content.

Selling on Amazon is paramount for pretty much any brand -- but how can one brand improve visibility and obtain traffic from competitors within the same vertical?

To explore how you can stand out on Amazon, learn what Amazon enhanced branded content is and take a look at examples for further inspiration.

What exactly is Amazon enhanced branded content?

Amazon's enhanced branded content (EBC) takes your standard listings and spices them up markedly. You may be familiar with Amazon A+ Content, which is a cost-based model where HTML content can boost and personalize your listings. EBC is a touch different, in that it requires no coding skills in order to change your listings.

EBC is free-of-charge for third party sellers on the marketplace. Its core offering is that it allows you to fully customize product descriptions on branded ASINs. By tweaking the product copy and differentiating your products with more eye-catching descriptions, you're more likely to increase your Amazon presence.

EBC is undoubtedly a useful tactic for increasing sales or conversion rates -- for instance, Whoosh saw a 170% increase in sales as a result of implementing EBC.

It's not just description lines, description lines, description lines.

The EBC tool goes one step further by enabling you to implement granular optimization to your listings.

For instance, sellers can choose from multiple product layouts, choose to update product imagery to the more beneficial higher-resolution creative, and showcase a brand story, which leads to a better customer experience.

Amazon is drawing from Google's emphasis on the user experience when linking back to advertisers' performance effects. The EBC tool could also allow for a reduction of product returns, since the buyer has more information to make an informed purchasing decision.

Amazon Enhanced Brand Content Examples

Now that we've explained the 'why' behind EBC, let's explore some examples of the Enhanced Brand Content tool in all its glory.

The biggest thing you'll notice is the presentation of these products and how your product listing essentially acts as a landing page. Each product is bursting with content, ensuring the buyer has as much knowledge of the product as possible whilst also finding the page easy to navigate.

1. Natures Aid

The first example of best practice Amazon Enhanced Brand Content usage is Natures Aid. The chosen layout covers three of the most important points when using this tool -- addressing and communicating brand identity, pre-empting any concerns over the product, and breaking down and translating your main selling points. Each snippet of content relates to the picture aligned.

Image courtesy of Natures Aid.

2. OGX

This example from OGX aims to deliver an impactful and aesthetically-pleasing experience with its use of Amazon EBC. Ultimately, your EBC should act as a landing page as well as your shop window. For instance, OGX takes the user on a journey by providing features, benefits, and ingredients -- everything a shopper needs to know before purchasing a bottle.

Image courtesy of OGX.

3. Hoover

Hoover is an established brand in the cleaning equipment market. However, that doesn't mean the brand is neglectful in its digital marketing strategy -- in fact, its marketing team fully understands the importance of using Amazon's EBC tool. In much the same vein as the previous two examples, Hoover follows a simple recipe for success.

The brand has adopted a clean and clinical approach to its visuals, and showcases each product's USPs in a sequential fashion, with each product USP accompanied with an action shot.

Image courtesy of Hoover.

Amazon Enhanced Brand Content Image Sizes

Depending on the template you choose, you'll see various image size requirements. For instance, eight images (template one) allows for 300x650 pixels each. Alternatively, you might choose template three, and include two images at 970x600 pixels each.

Amazon Enhanced Brand Content Guidelines

Amazon's Enhanced Brand Content tool is free to use, and sellers can have 20 pending product submissions at one time. You must allow Amazon up to seven days per submission to review the content before approval. Additionally, it's encouraged that sellers are early adopters with the product, since a fee-based system is expected to be implemented.

In order to set up your products on the EBC tool, you must first register your brand on the Amazon Brand Registry since the tool is only being available to Brand Registered sellers (excluding categories such as books and video).

Here are a few other guidelines of which to be aware:

• Sellers can't list guarantees
• Sellers can't use images that mimic Amazon's logo or any other trademark infringement
• Sellers can't link away from Amazon
• Sellers shouldn't use low-resolution creative
• Sellers need to avoid grammatical or spelling-related errors

There are high expectations in terms of content that Amazon expects, and you can see the quality Amazon want users to experience while ordering on their site.

Quality-of-experience really is king these days, and it seems Amazon is intent on changing the user experience for the better.