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Is Amazon Cutting Your Product Titles to Just 75 Characters? · eCommerce Podcast

0:04
Well, hello and welcome to the eCommerce Podcast. Yes, welcome back. My name is
0:08
Matt Edmundson. It's great to be with you on this sunny day from Liverpool,
0:13
England, talking about all things ecommerce with my transatlantic guest. Oh,
0:18
yes. But before we get into that, let me give a warm welcome to you if this is
0:23
your first time to the show. It's always great having new listeners join. We
0:28
talk about all things ecommerce. I myself have been in ecommerce since 2002. I
0:32
still run multiple ecommerce businesses. And I love the podcast because I get to
0:37
grill the experts with all the questions burning in my head about how to make my
0:42
business better. You guys get to listen in and hopefully get some of your
0:47
questions answered as well. If you would like to know more about the show, about
0:52
today's guest, about all the show notes, the links, all of that sort of stuff,
0:57
you will find it on the website ecommercepodcast.net. That's www. Feels
1:01
old-fashioned now, Carolyn, doesn't it? Say www. www.ecommercepodcast.net.
1:06
You'll find everything there. Go check out the website. Be great to see you on
1:11
there. And of course, reach out to me on social media @MattEdmondson or
1:16
LinkedIn, Matt Edmundson, whatever their linkage is, you'll find me. It'd be
1:21
great to connect with you, uh, but that's enough from me. Let's bring on today's
1:25
guest. Carolyn, how are we doing?
1:31
I'm fantastic. How are you, Matt?
1:34
Well, I was just chatting, weren't we, before we hit the record button. I've
1:38
just come off a weekend of camping, um, and so I'm both really relaxed and
1:42
really tired. Which is sort of the odd mix you get when you come off a camping
1:46
trip, I feel, because sleep is slightly elusive, but you still feel kind of
1:50
refreshed anyway.
1:55
Yes. Well, I'm in Texas, so nobody camps here in July. So if there's any camping
1:59
to be done, it's in air-conditioned lodges with, you know, comfy beds. So that's
2:04
my way of camping is you go out, you hike all day, you swim, you do everything.
2:09
And then you actually sleep in a bed.
2:14
So yeah, yeah, maybe should start thinking about things like that. But no, no, I
2:18
think this is just the way it is. For those that don't know you, Carolyn, just
2:22
give us a quick sort of elevator pitch, quick 30 seconds, who Carolyn is and why
2:25
you're here.
2:31
Sure. Thanks, Matt. So I am here, first of all, because Matt is lovely and we
2:35
had a great conversation and we are both ecommerce. We don't even want to say
2:40
we're 25-year veterans because that would date us.
2:47
I call myself an ecommerce dinosaur. I know it's not very flattering, but that's
2:49
my phrase.
2:52
I'm right with you. I'm a fellow stegosaurus. So I started—
2:58
Love it.
3:00
Started at Dell in 1999. So I was living in Boston. They recruited me. People
3:04
were buying their first computer. iPhones didn't exist. A lot of people
3:09
listening probably can't even remember a day when iPhones didn't exist, but they
3:13
didn't. And so I ran a massive division at Dell, and then I ran Dell.com on the
3:18
consumer side for a while, and then I did product roles. So I've just been in
3:22
ecommerce for a long time, left Fortune 100, went to a small mom and baby
3:27
company, loved it, 4x'd it in a year, said I want to do this for a bunch more,
3:31
and then made the crazy choice to go and start my own agency to help emerging
3:35
brands and challenger brands grow profitably since they don't have the Fortune
3:40
100 resources that I had. So that's what I've been doing since, uh, I started
3:44
ROI Swift about 11 years ago.
3:50
Wow. Well, it's great to have you on the show. I was, I was excited when I, you
3:54
know, you get these little bios from people saying when they sort of apply to
3:58
come on the show, and it's just like, was at Dell. I was like, that's really
4:02
cool, because I think over the years I must have spent a small fortune, uh, with
4:06
Dell over the years. Whatever, I was a PC guy until I became a Mac guy. It was
4:10
always Dell. It was kind of kind of the way it worked. How was it at Dell? Was
4:15
it fun? Was it eye-opening? Was it laborious? I'm curious.
4:20
It was all of those. It was, you know, we loved— I came in and we were number 6
4:25
in market share behind a brand called Gateway, who is now out of business. So,
4:30
that rise from, you know, to number 1. And we used to say we were the nicest
4:35
house in the worst neighborhood because Nobody liked PC manufacturers, but at
4:40
the time we made, you know, high quality PCs, great support. You know, this was
4:44
before the world changed. And so, you know, you were really proud to work there.
4:49
And everybody I worked with, I mean, I worked with some Harvard MBAs and
4:54
Vanderbilt and some of the smartest people I've ever met. And 25 years later, we
4:59
all still talk. Like, you know, I had coffee with someone last week who, ran a
5:04
division of Staples, and I had coffee with someone else who, you know, was with
5:08
Tenuity. So just an amazing group of— yeah, we were all Type A, and that's why
5:13
Dell hired us. But, you know, we sort of— we ground— we kept grinding it out.
5:18
And then when they changed it to restricted stock, everyone was like, why are we
5:23
working 80 hours a week and killing ourselves? And there's not that much upside
5:28
anymore. So yeah. So I was there for that whole culture change where Work-life
5:33
balance was a taboo subject when I was there, and now it's all about that, you
5:37
know.
5:42
Yeah, yeah, that's funny, isn't it, how times have changed in that, in that
5:47
regard. So you're working now with emerging brands, um, your ROI Swift is your
5:51
company. You're bringing, you know, all of this experience. I'm curious, I love
5:55
to ask this question, my guest, um, if you could wave a magic wand and solve the
5:59
biggest, biggest single problems you come across with your clients, right? What
6:03
is that mistake that you would solve? What is the mistake we're all making and
6:07
why are we making it?
6:13
Well, I can't speak for you, but I can speak to most brands that come to us is,
6:17
and you probably see this too, Matt, in your work, people don't know what they
6:22
don't know. And yes, a lot of times what I see is people throw more ad dollars
6:27
instead of going back and fixing fundamental problems, whether it's a product
6:31
issue, a webpage issue, a listing issue. They try to throw more good money
6:36
after, you know, a bad either product or a bad product page or a bad experience.
6:40
And so that's the biggest mistake that I see is that so many people out there
6:45
just want to tell you to spend more money and you don't need to spend more money
6:50
necessarily. Yes, eventually you do. But, you know, if your website isn't
6:54
converting at 2 to 3% and your AOV is less than $100, like, go back and fix your
6:59
product pages. If your Amazon's not converting at 15 or 20% or higher, go back
7:03
and fix your product pages. You know, whereas everybody just thinks throwing
7:08
more money after it will get them more sales, but that'll just basically run
7:13
them out of business eventually.
7:19
It's a really interesting point, isn't it? And I, And, and I'd love to say that
7:23
it's changed in the years, you know, we've evolved into dinosaurs in ecommerce,
7:27
but it hasn't at all. It's always been the big thing, hasn't it? What's the
7:31
problem? Sales are down, or something's going on, therefore it's marketing,
7:35
therefore we need to throw more money at it. Um, right. And I remember years ago
7:39
having a conversation with a chap. He called me and said, listen, I've got, um,
7:43
I think it was like he, he wanted to spend like 30, 40 grand a month, which at
7:47
the time was a lot. I mean, it's a lot of money now, but at the time it was a
7:51
lot of money. He wanted to spend 30, 40 grand a month on ads. He said, I've gone
7:55
and found a budget where we can spend £30,000-40,000 a month, but I need us to
7:59
get up to where our competitors are, right? They're spending this amount of
8:03
money on ads, so therefore we must spend this amount of money on ads. And I'm
8:07
more like, well, hang on a minute, let's— before we go down that road, let's
8:11
just put the brakes on a little bit and look at your website. Um, and we quickly
8:15
realized with his conversion rate that if he spent £30,000-40,000 a month on ads
8:19
he was going to lose like a colossal amount of money because he was fixing the
8:23
wrong problem. And I thought this was quite an interesting— it was a very hard
8:27
conversation to say to him, you don't need to spend the money on ads, you need
8:31
to spend the money here.
8:36
Yes.
8:36
How do you find that conversation? Because I imagine if this is a big problem,
8:39
how do you convince people that actually it's not more money on ads? Because it
8:43
is— I think it is the default place we go to.
8:48
And it's interesting because I think what we have found is that, you know, one
8:52
of the things that differentiates us is that we think like owners. You know,
8:57
we're not just looking at, hey, we'll spend your money and do your listings.
9:02
We're looking at every single piece of this. So we're looking at, hey, can you
9:06
save money by changing your packaging? So one brand, we saved them 25% from
9:11
going to a bag of floss picks to a box. They saved a dollar on every unit that
9:16
went out the door. And when you're selling 200,000 units a month of floss picks,
9:20
that's a lot of money that just drops to your bottom line. So we will look at
9:25
the entire profitability, but in terms of that conversation, normally we had a
9:30
saying at Dell, you know, if you can't measure it, you can't manage it. So we
9:34
measure everything and we feel that data wins arguments. And so we'll show, um,
9:39
the brand— and most people don't even look at this— at a SKU level
9:44
profitability, how much you're spending per product and how profitable is it.
9:48
And we'll look and we'll say, okay, if this one has high traffic, low
9:53
conversion, let's go fix your product page. If this has low traffic, high
9:58
conversion, let's go spend money there because this is a great product, it just
10:02
doesn't have the visibility. So Usually when you put data in front of people and
10:07
you explain it, they, you know, it's very easy to see, yes, why would I go spend
10:12
more money on that? You know, that makes no sense.
10:17
Yeah, that's a really interesting point. So how do you figure it out, right? I
10:20
mean, what's your process? So I'm listening to the show. I've got my, you know,
10:24
my company is doing well. What are some of the key points that I need to think
10:27
about straight away that you would you would just go and check as default on
10:30
every single company? I mean, you've, you've talked about packaging, you've
10:34
talked about conversion rates and stuff, but where would, where would you go?
10:37
Where would you start?
10:42
So usually when we do an audit for a brand for Amazon, we'll pull 3 or 4
10:47
different, you know, high-level reports and then we'll look at their best
10:51
sellers, right? You know, the 80/20 rule, right? 80% of your sales are coming
10:56
from 20% of your products. So we'll look at those, we'll focus on those, we'll
11:01
do, we'll grade those product pages, you know, A through F. Like in school.
11:06
Yeah, we won't tell them if it's, if it's an F, we'll just say, you know, needs
11:10
improvement. And, and so then we'll do that. And then we'll look at their
11:15
advertising and we'll look and typically we see and this hurts my heart, Matt,
11:20
like, we'll see people wasting 18 to 20%. Of their spend. And like, to your
11:25
point, if they're spending £30,000 a month and 20% of that is wasted, I mean,
11:29
that's $6,000 you're just lighting on fire. So yeah, I really hate to see, you
11:34
know, anybody, whether it's Amazon, Google, Meta, TikTok, just, you know, take
11:39
advantage of people because they don't know enough about how to run their ads
11:44
that they light their money on fire. And a lot of times we'll see this with
11:48
software, right? We'll see, oh well, we've got this AI software, and we're using
11:53
this company, and it's all automated. And, and here's a great example. One of
11:58
the brands we worked with was women's fertility. And so the AI software never
12:03
caught that dog, cat, horse, pet is not applicable to this product, right? This
12:07
was for a human woman. And so it just kept— it would keep spending. So this is
12:12
why we say, okay, we use AI to analyze things, automate things, but we use a
12:17
human to actually look at the data. Yeah, you know, I feel like 80% of the way
12:22
there, but still wasting 20%. It just— I just hate seeing, you know, agencies
12:26
mail it in and not think like it's their own dollars that they're spending. You
12:31
know, this is like, it's not a job to our team. It's like, these are our
12:36
companies. Like, we're proud of what we've done with brands like Chubbies, which
12:41
is like their men's shorts and swimsuits. And we're proud of that growth, almost
12:45
as if it's, you know, we're part of the team. And so we tend to treat everybody
12:50
like it's our business because we don't want to waste someone else's dollars.
12:55
And we certainly don't want to give them to Amazon, Meta, and Google if we don't
12:59
have to.
13:05
Well, I agree. I mean, frankly, they've all got enough of my money.
13:09
Exactly. They don't need any more.
13:12
No, no. I mean, how many space rockets can you build, right? So I think it's
13:16
It's an interesting one, isn't it? Because I mean, there's two sides to what
13:21
you're saying here, Karen, and there's two things I, I sort of want to go down.
13:26
Um, the first, I want to come back to how you grade a website, A through F,
13:31
right? Like, or a product page. Like, what is it that gives you an A versus what
13:36
gives you an F? I'm kind of curious about that process. But the second thing
13:41
that I want to get into, um, you talked about working with Chubbies. Okay, so
13:46
one of your brands, and you use this phrase like you, you're part of the team,
13:51
right? You— this is one of our brands, we treat it like one of our brands. And
13:55
this, I think, is one of those things that, having worked in the industry for a
14:00
little while, you find really great agencies not by the glass-walled offices and
14:05
the art on their walls and whether they look like Google and all that sort of
14:10
stuff, You find agencies that are great by how much they care about what you're
14:15
doing, right? By how much they feel like a partner rather than a service
14:20
provider. And the agencies we have stayed with longevity have always been those
14:25
that feel like they're on the journey with us. And so there's a great guy, um,
14:30
uh, Craig, shout out to Craig, who runs some of our paid media stuff, for
14:34
example. Well, when we've— in the past we've acquired brands and they've had no
14:39
money, uh, the brand has had no money to grow, and it's like, well, don't pay
14:44
me, I'm going to grow this and you can— we'll get it working, and once it's
14:49
working, then you can, you know, I'll charge you maybe a little bit extra.
14:54
Craig, this is awesome, man. And he's been with us a while, right? How important
14:59
is it to you as an agency owner to feel like you know, you're part of the team,
15:04
you're part of the family, whatever phraseology fits for you.
15:10
Yeah, that is— I mean, it's, it's sort of built into our core values. It's
15:15
funny, you said you actually almost used verbatim one of our core values, which
15:19
is care about what you do. So we have 4 core values, and this is how we hire,
15:24
fire, bring on brands to work with, you know, no jerks rule. But our 4 core
15:29
values are Care about what you do, make it better, always be learning, and, um,
15:33
glass half full mindset.
15:39
So I love that.
15:40
Yeah. And so like, find a way, find a way to yes. You know, we— you, you've
15:45
worked with people before who go straight to no, and so that mindset is not
15:50
helpful, especially in something like digital or ecommerce or AI or anything
15:55
that's emerging. You You have to find a way to say yes because it's probably not
16:00
been done before. So, you know, those are the people that we hire for. And then
16:05
when they care about what they do and they're always learning and they're
16:10
looking to make it better, then, you know, they proactively do a lot of those
16:15
things where a lot of agencies are reactive. So we sort of have that proactive
16:20
culture built into our company, like don't wait till it gets there. Like, you
16:25
know, if you see something, we, what I love is that we have no bureaucracy. I
16:30
came from Dell where there was 80 hours of meetings and we maybe have 3 to 4
16:35
hours of meetings. That's it a week. And everybody is free to make a suggestion
16:40
to make it better. We have changed software, we've changed service providers,
16:45
we've, you know, brought people on, we've restructured things just all based on
16:50
everybody's feedback. So I think that's the biggest thing is we are all
16:55
invested. Um, and then the other way that we do it is we do take a percentage of
17:00
their growth and then the team shares in that percentage of growth. So if you
17:05
help grow someone's sales, you get a percentage of that.
17:11
It's a really— I, I'm, I'm a big fan of it. I'm not going to lie. I did— I mean,
17:16
people might say it sounds odd, but I think Like you, we, we have, are we an
17:21
agency? Maybe we are in some respects. We do work with other brands, but we tend
17:26
to focus on the brands that we acquire now. Yes. But it's more, and the reason
17:32
we've gone down that road, Carolyn, to sort of speak to this a little bit, is
17:37
because we have found the brands that we work with that feel like partners we do
17:42
really well with them. The people that use us just because we have a service, we
17:47
don't do so well with them, right? And it's, and it's, it's a really interesting
17:52
sort of discovery that we've had. Um, let's go with the people that we feel like
17:57
we can partner with. And for us, that usually means an equity stake in the
18:02
business, right? We have to have some kind of skin in the game. Um, and so as a
18:07
result of that, we we grow these companies from where they were to hopefully
18:12
something, something better, uh, and we do that because we have skin in the
18:18
game. And it's quite an unusual thing, I think, to find agencies that will do
18:23
that because they all want their $5,000 a month retainer. Or one company we
18:28
worked with wanted a $32,000 a month retainer. I'm like, this is, this is
18:33
insane. Right, in, in so many ways, because for them it was all about retainer,
18:38
it was all about predictable income. Um, how have you found that though, that
18:43
whole going down that road of, no, we, we want to have a bit of skin in the game
18:48
here, guys, because we're going to make it— we, we need to be invested?
18:55
I, I think that it's refreshing, you know. I've seen more agencies copy us, you
19:00
know. People used to just do percentage of spend and that's great, but half the
19:04
time your problem isn't your ads. Half the time your problem is your organic,
19:08
and then they're ignoring that, and then they're saying spend more money and pay
19:12
us more money. So, and who ends up losing is the brand, right? So then all these
19:16
great brands go out of business, and then you're left with nothing but Coke and
19:20
Pepsi, you know. So I sort of, I like the, the ability for consumers to have
19:24
choice. And so this is, I mean, it, it goes over very well with people because
19:29
they say, okay, there is a retainer that keeps the lights on, right? We do have
19:33
5 people working on your account: organic specialist, ad specialist, copywriter,
19:37
designer, and account strategist. So, you know, we do have to have some sort of
19:41
retainer because if you go out of stock and you have no sales, I'm sorry, but we
19:45
still have to pay our people. But yeah, our people make sure you don't go out of
19:49
stock. They will give you the inventory recommendations you need to stay in
19:54
stock. Um, and that's one of the things we're really proud of. When people
19:58
partner with our team, if they follow our inventory recommendations, they've
20:02
never run out of stock.
20:07
Yeah. So yeah, that's just—
20:09
I love that way you think, like owners, right?
20:12
It is, it is. I think it's really powerful too, because you're thinking about
20:16
the business from 5 different angles, which is how we found it, which is why we,
20:21
we end up partnering with people. Because if we just focused on one special
20:25
thing, like we will do your website, for example, then because there's all these
20:29
different elements to e-com, it's like, no, actually I need to talk to you about
20:34
your customer service because that's having an impact over here. Uh, and I, and
20:38
I need to stick my nose in a little bit. And I think you've got to have a good
20:43
relationship, uh, with your customer to be able to do that. Um, and I think, you
20:47
know, those listening to the show, uh, who are running ecommerce businesses, I
20:52
think My advice, um, and I definitely don't want to put words in your mouth,
20:56
Karen, but what I'm picking up from you is that seek out these kind of
21:00
relationships with the agencies that you have, um, and don't rest until you find
21:05
them because they're, they're like gold dust in many ways.
21:11
I agree, I agree. Most people that come to us are— it's either results,
21:16
responsiveness, or reactive. Those are, you know, they're not getting the
21:21
results they're not getting timely responses, or they're working with someone
21:25
who's just reactive, who's not, you know, who fixes things when they break, but
21:30
isn't thinking about the good and the health of the company. And we had one,
21:35
this great brand. It was the dad, two sons, and one marketing person. They were
21:40
90% Amazon. We did everything for them. They had 10% of their sales off Amazon
21:45
on website. And they had a 9-figure exit. And we did everything from, you know,
21:49
help them with product strategy. You know, they came to us, they had 2 or 3
21:54
products. When they got acquired, they had 12 products, right? They did product
21:59
line extensions. So we would clone a product for another use because that market
22:04
was massive. Um, so it was like if it was a certain type of, uh, wipe, then we
22:09
would clone it and make it another type of wipe and just open up another huge
22:13
market. So I mean, we sort of are in the business of making other people
22:18
millionaires and billionaires. And so, you know, I should probably do this for
22:23
myself one day.
22:29
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's a funny thing actually, is the amount of agency
22:33
owners that I speak to. I always ask the question, why are you not doing your
22:37
own ecommerce business? And it's like, well, we're too busy with other clients,
22:40
but everybody wants to get into it, right? It's, but I don't have the warehouse,
22:44
I don't have this, I don't have the distribution. It's really quite funny. But I
22:48
do think sometimes it's it's just as good staying in your lane, right? Do what
22:52
you know to do.
22:57
Insider tip here. We are launching our own brand in Q3 in the home and kitchen
23:01
space. So I have finally, I guess—
23:05
You bit the bullet.
23:07
Figuratively got off the pot. Yes.
23:11
Brilliant. And I'm curious, how would you— I'm bringing it back. This is a very
23:16
good segue. How would you grade your own product page?
23:21
Well, it's not launching till Q3. So, but I would grade what is going to be a 10
23:25
out of 10 because we have done enough research. We've done product market fit.
23:28
We've done, we've done TAM analysis. We've done competitor analysis. And so,
23:32
yes.
23:37
Okay. Very good. Well, let's, let's jump into how you, I'm curious how you grade
23:41
pages. Like, I'm curious about your A to F grading system that you never tell
23:44
your clients about?
23:48
Well, it, it depends on a, you know, a webpage. And because we don't do paid
23:52
search and social anymore, we're 100% focused on Amazon. I'll, I'll spend time
23:56
talking about Amazon instead of product pages.
24:01
Mm-hmm.
24:01
But I, I can, you know, you have probably have a whole Shopify page grading
24:06
system and some A/B testing we've done. And, uh, you know, like I've seen 20%
24:11
lifts in conversion from just pages that I've A/B done on Shopify even before I
24:16
started the agency when I was on the brand side. But so first thing, I mean,
24:21
it's everything from— there's things that you need to do for the computers, you
24:26
know, so for Amazon's algorithm, and then there's things that you need to do for
24:31
the people. And so for the computers, you need to have great titles. Now this is
24:35
a big deal. Amazon just shrunk their product titles from like 250 to 70. So in
24:40
terms of characters, so people are right, go back and redo. And if you don't do
24:45
it, Amazon's going to cut your titles for you, and you probably don't want that.
24:50
So that is happening at the end of July. So hot tip to readers, if you're
24:55
selling on Amazon, go back in, redo your titles, um, make them compliant, or
25:00
else Amazon will do it for you. So titles Everything from the order of the title
25:05
to the order of the keywords to the— like, all the right things have to be in
25:10
the title. Bullets. Your bullets, you need to maximize that space. You need—
25:15
that's also, you know, people don't read, but computers do. So the bullets are
25:20
largely, again, for the algorithm. It's trying to figure out what your product
25:25
is, etc. Um, images. Everybody, you know, You should have a minimum of 6 images
25:30
and a video. A lot of times we'll see people have 6 images, but if it's say a
25:35
shirt, it'll be the front of the shirt, the back of the shirt, someone wearing
25:40
the shirt. Like it doesn't tell you why you should buy this shirt. Like there's
25:45
no features, benefits, there's no comparison chart, there's no lifestyle,
25:50
there's no brand building.
25:55
Like it's a t-shirt.
25:57
And then you go down into the A+ content And that's where, you know, we see
26:01
either bad brand stories. If you— so we work with a great brand that's been
26:06
featured in GQ, Men's Journal, lots of sports and outdoor magazines. Put that
26:10
social proofing in there, like as seen in, and you can use all their logos,
26:14
right?
26:19
Yeah.
26:20
Have a Q&A section. Like a lot of times we'll see people have access to premium
26:25
A+ content, but they won't use it. It'll be those like horrible Amazon blocks
26:29
and it looks nothing like your brand and it's horrible. So, and then also have
26:34
the Q&A section because that gets read by Amazon's Rufus AI as well. So those
26:39
are some of the things that you can do. And then there's a lot more that we go
26:43
into, but those are kind of, you know, everybody has a checklist. Like when I
26:48
got my pilot's license, right? You have a checklist. Before you take off. So
26:53
yeah, make sure, oh yeah, did I put the fuel cap back on? You know, those are
26:57
those kinds of things. Same thing with us. We have a checklist on the product
27:02
pages and so ones with high traffic, low conversion, we go through the checklist
27:07
and say, okay, we're going to fix this, this, this, and this first. And we've
27:11
seen when we've changed the main image, we've seen anywhere from like 20 to 30%
27:16
increase in conversion. Because your main image is going to get you more
27:21
traffic. Your content is going to get you more conversion. So, right. If you
27:25
think about it.
27:30
Yeah.
27:31
If you, if you go to Amazon, you search on garlic press and you see all those
27:35
search results, right? So how are they going to click on yours? They only have,
27:39
you know, those 50 characters. They see the price, they see the number of the
27:44
reviews, they see the brand name and they see the image. And so lot of main
27:48
image testing. So this was a big one where we got a 30% increase in conversion
27:52
by changing it from just a pair of shorts to a pair of shorts on a person so
27:56
they could see where the, where the shorts fall. Are they 5-inch shorts? Are
28:01
they 7? Are they 9? Yeah, because people don't read, right? So once we change
28:05
from that, like, oh, oh, I want to click through that one. And then once we
28:09
change the content, we got about a 12% lift in conversion. No more money on ads.
28:14
Didn't spend any money on ads. Um, and that was all part of our monthly
28:18
retainer. We didn't, was nothing else, you know, that was part of the
28:22
optimizations in the monthly fees. So that, that's how we typically grade pages.
28:26
And then we'll do like an AI review analysis where we'll plug all the reviews
28:31
into AI and find out what they like and highlight that and find out what they
28:35
don't like and fix that.
28:40
So, yeah. Yeah. Well, there's a lot there. I love this idea that, um, the main
28:45
image is about traffic, the content is about conversion. I think I, I love the
28:50
simplicity of that in many ways. What have you found then that works well in
28:55
main images? So you, you, you, you've talked about taking a pair of shorts and
29:00
putting it on a person, um, which gives context, I suppose, to the product. Is
29:05
that what I should be thinking about in the main image?
29:12
Well, think about it this way, right? You, you probably do the same thing with
29:17
Google Shopping, right? You— that's all you get is your main image and your
29:22
price. So that's what people are going to click through. So you can do some,
29:27
some testing there as well. I feel like the Google Shopping is as close to
29:32
Amazon as you're going to get, right? That people are in the buying mode and
29:37
they just get one picture and a price and a name, right? So very similar. So I
29:42
would A/B test that. You know, luckily Amazon has that built into the platform,
29:47
so you can do it right there on platform. It gives you the results and you don't
29:52
have to— yeah, you don't have to worry about it. But for apparel, I would
29:57
definitely do main image testing, especially for Google Shopping, and definitely
30:02
for other categories. So we work with another company that makes compression arm
30:07
sleeves, knee sleeves, same thing. Mm-hmm. Everyone else just had a picture,
30:12
especially the sort of cheap overseas knockoffs. I mean, so we actually put it
30:17
with the box and then the product next to it. And so you've built some branding,
30:22
like just by having that box in your main image and seeing your logo, it's like,
30:27
oh, this is a legit brand. And it's a premium brand compared to the cheap
30:32
knockoffs. And, but they're still doing 7 figures a month. So, um, and then on
30:37
food and beverage, flavor is really important. So having those pictures of what
30:42
the flavor is, since you can't taste it. We did this with a strawberry flavored,
30:47
um, breastfeeding drink when I was at the Mom and Baby Company. And on the box
30:52
you put the flavors and, or you put pictures of like a strawberry and a lemon.
30:57
And so they get a sense of, oh, this is what it's going to taste like.
31:03
So that's really a really interesting idea, just putting the, the image of the
31:06
fruit that it tastes like as well as the word.
31:11
Yes.
31:11
Um, yeah, smart. I, I would not have thought of that.
31:15
Uh, so for each vertical, there's different ways you can optimize that, those
31:19
images, or for conversion, because it's a, you know, it's a two-dimensional
31:24
listing. You know, you can't see it, you can't touch it, you can't feel it. So
31:28
we try and make that experience as close as you can to actually being in a store
31:32
and being able to see that.
31:37
And like, and you've got to do that in a matter of seconds, haven't you? Uh, so
31:40
microseconds maybe, which is why the image is so important. Uh, the picture
31:44
paints a thousand words, as they say, especially as you're reducing your
31:47
characters down to 70. Uh, it's going to be even more important. And do you know
31:51
why Amazon are doing that? Have they released a statement as to why they're
31:54
doing it, or they're just having a go?
32:00
Um, there's a couple reasons. One is, you know, now 65 to 70% traffic is mobile,
32:05
and so, um, they're trying to try and get you to shorten it so that people are
32:10
clicking through. And once they're getting to that page, they're, they're
32:16
understanding. Um, they didn't give a lot of reasoning why they're doing it. I
32:21
think, you know, Amazon does everything, quote, for customer trust. If you look
32:26
at their core values, it's all about customer trust. And so there's, I think
32:31
there is a lot of keyword stuffing. And so by doing this, it's going to force it
32:36
to, it's going to force you to be intentional about, okay, what are the most
32:41
important aspects of your product? And getting those in the title. And also just
32:46
because there is a smaller maximum character count on mobile versus desktop.
32:52
Yeah, yeah. It kind of reminds me, I mean, going back a few years ago, when you
32:56
used to keyword stuff blog posts, just try and get ranking. And then Google
33:00
eventually went, yeah, no, that's not going to work, is it, boys and girls? And
33:03
it kind of feels a little bit like Amazon's gone, yeah, we look at these
33:07
listings, and I have no idea what this product is from the title. It's just a
33:11
stream of keywords which you're trying to gamify the system and they're just
33:14
gonna go, let's just shut that off, aren't they? So you can gamify it for so
33:18
long, can't you, I suppose, but, or play the game for so long.
33:22
Did you ever do white text for blog posts?
33:26
Yep, yep, white text.
33:27
In the old, old days where you would do white text and keyword stuff, everything
33:28
in white text?
33:31
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
33:31
How did Google not pick up on that sooner?
33:33
It's funny, the things that you kind of do. And now even on Instagram, people
33:38
keyword stuff. So you take all the keywords, you put it on the reel, you make
33:43
the text really small and you hide it behind an image or a GIF that you add from
33:48
it or a sticker. How do I mean? Instagram obviously could care less, but it just
33:53
fascinates me. You know, all these sort of humans are very good at finding a way
33:58
to break the system to make it easier for themselves. We're really good at
34:03
shortcutting this. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but we're really
34:08
good at finding these things because we don't want to play the game by the
34:13
rules. We just want— we just don't. And I find it fascinating part of human
34:18
psychology, especially when it comes to taxes. We all want to pay. How can I get
34:23
around paying less? It's quite funny. I'm curious with your own product now. I'm
34:28
obviously not asking you what the product is. I wouldn't dare to do such a
34:33
thing. You've decided to sort of take the plunge. Walk me through the process
34:38
that you went through to decide whether one, this was a goer, and two, where,
34:43
you know, where it's straightforward to do so, Karen, the steps that you've
34:48
taken to launch, that you're going to take to launch this well.
34:55
Yes. So first thing to do is get the product right, right? Make sure it's 5 out
34:59
of 5 stars before it ever sees the light of day. So first thing is product
35:04
development. We're in product development right now, working with manufacturer,
35:09
going back and forth. In terms of exactly what we want. And then—
35:13
And sorry, sorry to interrupt. Is that 5 out of 5 stars for you? Because you're,
35:17
you know, you're, you're quite— if you're like me, you'll be quite OCD about the
35:21
quality of it. Or is this 5 out of 5 stars based on consumer testing that you're
35:25
running?
35:30
So first of all, we want it to be 5 out of 5 for us. And then we will put it in
35:35
front of focus groups as well and get people to actually use the product, get
35:40
their feedback before we launch it. Then once we, we feel like we've got a solid
35:46
product, we'll go ahead. And so when you launch a product page on Amazon, you
35:51
never want to turn it on till you've got everything done, you know, that you,
35:56
that you know. You can send an email. So a lot of times when we launched a brand
36:01
at the mom and baby company, we launched a new product, we'd send out a Klaviyo
36:06
email to our database with a promo. It's totally legal to do a promo. So you can
36:11
do that and, and send them a promo code for Amazon, which kind of juices the
36:17
sales. You know, you, you want that first 30 days to look really strong. And
36:22
then you also do Vine, which is Amazon's review program where you can give away
36:27
up to like 32, 2 to 33 units.
36:33
Yeah.
36:33
Um, and then you can, uh, then you can get legitimate reviews from— and this is,
36:39
you know, you just have to pay for the product and then you get charged by the,
36:45
you know, for per ASIN. But, um, it's nominal, it's a couple hundred dollars. So
36:50
then you've got that. And then also on the off-Amazon side, um, we're seeing
36:56
lots of success with TikTok affiliates. Driving Amazon traffic or reels for
37:02
TikTok shop. So I'm not a fan of influencers, but I am a fan of affiliates. I
37:08
believe in paying when they sell. I don't believe in paying for just visibility.
37:14
Yeah. Yeah, I'm with you. Again, it's old school. It's, I'm with you. I'll pay
37:18
for results. If you get me 1,000 sales, I'll make you really wealthy. But if you
37:23
don't, I'm not interested kind of thing. Yeah. And for your own product, are
37:27
you— is that your playbook? It's like, we're going to do Amazon, we're going to
37:31
play the Amazon system, and we're going to go get TikTok influencers to help us.
37:36
Are you thinking about doing, uh, an ecommerce site? Not necessarily Shopify.
37:40
I'm definitely not affiliated with Shopify, uh, but I'm, I'm kind of curious,
37:44
where's your, where's your thinking at there?
37:50
Yes, there'll definitely be a Shopify website for the brand. And of course,
37:54
we'll have, you know, one hero product. It'll be a very small site to start
37:58
with. Um, and then as we add products, we can add those categories.
38:03
Yeah, interesting, interesting. So when you talk about doing your, um, research,
38:08
so you, you understood that there was a product-market fit. Um, how did you do
38:12
that?
38:18
So there's a couple of ways, especially on Amazon. So I was just with Amazon out
38:23
in Anaheim, California, like 2 weeks ago with a bunch of, they call themselves
38:28
Amazonians, and everything from advertising to—
38:33
Of course they do.
38:35
Product listings to, you know, you name it. And so there's a great thing called
38:40
the Product Opportunity Finder. And so you can go in and see what kinds of
38:44
products are people looking for. We also have third-party tools so we can see
38:49
what anybody is selling on any particular listing at any given moment. So if you
38:53
give me a listing, I can tell you in the US, um, uh, what they're doing in
38:58
monthly sales. And so we looked at— there's white space in the market. There's
39:03
some products there, they're not great. It's a big market, people are looking
39:07
for it. Um, we can do— you know, there's lots of good adjacent products to this,
39:12
and also it's a consumable. So, you know, as you know, it's way easier to get
39:16
something that people are going to put on subscription and reuse versus selling
39:21
it, you know, t-shirt or a pair of glasses. I mean, well, I guess glasses you
39:25
could use again, but you know, those kinds of things like someone buys a hose
39:30
reel, they're probably not going to come back and buy another one.
39:34
Yeah.
39:35
Yeah. Yeah.
39:38
Yeah. I mean, I would never sell hose reels for that very reason, but that's
39:42
just me. Someone's got to sell them and I'm sure they're very good at it, but
39:46
it's It's definitely not my, my, my cup of tea, as we like to say. How do you
39:50
see AI interacting with all of this? With, you know, Amazon, with what you're
39:54
doing with your own, you know, brand, what you see it doing with customers?
39:58
Where do you see AI changing the rules?
40:05
Everywhere. I can tell you what I've seen. Anytime there's a massive advance in
40:10
technology, we also see like kind of a little pullback to old school. Like for
40:15
example, when you got flooded with email in the beginning and then people
40:20
actually went back to direct mail and catalogs and they actually worked really
40:25
well, right? There's a reason why you still get catalogs around the holidays
40:30
because they still work. And my background was direct mail and you only had to
40:35
be right 1% of the time to be very profitable. So I feel like it's the same
40:40
thing with AI. People are now calling BS on it. And I love the fact that Reddit
40:45
is one of the few platforms that's very, you know, they'll bash you if you're
40:50
using AI to write and you're not authentic. And, you know, but so, but I will
40:55
tell you, we use a lot of it in analysis, automation, you know, thought leader,
41:00
like thought leadership as we're solving problems and, you know, we're, and
41:05
we've built some custom code to automate things that you can't do in Amazon that
41:09
goes through Claude now. And so, but I do see, you know, it is kind of a nice
41:14
leveling playing field for smaller brands. Like Amazon has AI generation for
41:19
your images. And I saw one video out in Anaheim with Amazon that I did not think
41:24
was AI. Like, you know, you can usually tell. I was like, that was really good.
41:29
So Amazon is evolving that, um, trying to get more people on the platform,
41:34
especially these kind of newer brands that are doing well off Amazon. They want
41:39
them on Amazon. They have a whole team. Like, I can recommend someone, they'll
41:44
help them onboard for a year. They'll, they'll give them all kinds of services.
41:49
So that's what I've seen on the, on that side. I still think the AI ads that
41:54
people have been using for 5 to 6 years is still not great. But yeah, I've seen
41:59
it help a lot with doing 80% of the work for brands in terms of helping them do
42:04
a product page if they're small and, you know, they don't have a lot of
42:09
resources. You don't have to go get a photo shoot or a video shoot anymore.
42:14
Like, that's where I'm seeing it kind of leveling playing.
42:19
Yeah, yeah, they can do some really interesting things like that. Do you do the
42:24
copy and paste. So you take up your researching competitor brands, for example,
42:29
and you give Claude— we would use Claude Code. So we would give them, you know,
42:34
all the competitors' pages and you're like, and all the competitors' reviews and
42:38
go, find me the gold in this. Do you do that?
42:44
Yeah, we have different tools we use. Like there's been review tools since
42:49
before Claude and ChatGPT even existed. Like we've been using review automation
42:53
tools for, uh, not really, not automation, uh, review analysis tools for about 8
42:57
years. So there's a couple of Amazon-specific ones that have been doing that
43:01
before AI even came along. Um, and now Amazon is kind of gating the reviews,
43:05
which is a little bit hard because you used to be able to see all of them and
43:09
then you could just throw that URL in, right? Or you could, um, or you could
43:13
even just do Claude right on your Chrome extension and just say, tell me what
43:17
everybody loves and hates about this. But, and you used to be able to, with one
43:22
of our tools, even just download it to a CSV. And then you could, we have a
43:26
script in Claude that would, you know, do all the analysis and spit it out. And
43:30
it would even tell you like, these are the types of images you should make based
43:34
on what people like about it. Like, for example, one was like a collagen peptide
43:38
and people were mentioning putting in their coffee. And it's like, well, okay,
43:42
you should have a coffee image of or a video of someone pouring it into their
43:46
coffee because so many people loved taking it that way.
43:52
Yeah, interesting. Karen, listen, I've just, I've genuinely just looked at the
43:55
clock and thought, oh my goodness, time is fast creeping upon us. I was enjoying
43:59
the conversation. If people want to reach out to you, if they want to connect
44:02
with you, find out more about Swift ROI, what you guys are up to, what's the
44:06
best way to do that?
44:11
Best way to do that is go to our website, roiswift.com. Roiswift.com. Um, you
44:16
can also find me on LinkedIn. Um, and I'm, I'm gonna throw this out there, Matt,
44:20
to your audience. If anybody's doing $5,000 or more on your single product page
44:25
on Amazon and you want me to do a free analysis of that one page, we will
44:30
happily do that. I would love to see, um, what your listeners are— what your
44:35
listeners are selling out there, and I'm happy to give them a one-page
44:39
complimentary listing audit.
44:45
Fantastic. In my head, Karen, that's just going to be a big piece of paper with
44:48
A, B, C, D, E, or F written on it.
44:52
I'll put it in a big red marker if it's an F.
44:57
I love it. Yeah, we are going old school now. That is brilliant. Uh, that is
45:01
brilliant, Karen. Listen, we love to do this thing called saving the best till
45:05
last. So for those listeners that have hung around, uh, til the end. Um, what's
45:09
your top tip for doing super well on Amazon? Uh, you've got 2 minutes, the
45:13
microphone is yours. Give us your best, best value.
45:20
I think the best value is doing a benchmark analysis of where you are today and
45:25
where you want to be and what it's going to take to get there. So all the way
45:30
down, and it's not sexy, but just looking at a SKU level analysis. And saying
45:35
and seeing, okay, and coming up with a plan of here's where I want to be. And
45:40
then also huge, just do not ignore TikTok Shop and TikTok Affiliates. We have
45:46
seen 9-figure brands grow exclusively from TikTok Shop. So those are my, you
45:51
know, that's kind of the best and it's not super sexy. But the other thing is,
45:56
if you don't know what you don't know, you might not even have your, your
46:01
business listings visible. 96 of the top Fortune 100 brands have an Amazon
46:06
Business account. Over, um, $30 billion is transaction— transacted on Amazon
46:12
Business, and your listings may not be even showing up. So don't ignore Amazon
46:17
Business even if you don't think your product is a B2B product, you would be
46:22
surprised how many people have a business account. So those are kind of my tips.
46:27
We've seen the brands we've grown 2 to 3x, those, they have done all of those
46:32
things. They started with SKU-level profitability. They then went to product
46:38
line extensions, and then they beefed up their Amazon business, and they've
46:43
invested in, you know, TikTok affiliates.
46:49
Well, fantastic. There's a whole podcast right there, uh, waiting to be
46:52
recorded. But, uh, Caroline, thank you so much for joining us on the show.
46:55
Genuinely love the conversation. Uh, appreciate your insight and listening to
46:58
your stories. It's been great.
47:02
Thank you. Do you have one more question for me?
47:06
Yes, I— good, well remembered. This is the question for Matt, and I completely
47:10
forgot about this because I'm, I'm useless. Uh, this is where I ask you for a
47:14
question, uh, and I go and answer that question on social media. So, Carolyn,
47:17
what is your question for me?
47:22
Okay, this is one of my favorite questions to get to know people, is if you
47:27
found $20 on the floor of a grocery store and you had to spend it on yourself—
47:31
at grocery stores here in the US, Whole Foods, or, you know, a Central Market,
47:36
H-E-B, whatever— so, uh, what would you buy with that $20 if you had to spend it
47:41
on yourself from the store? Yes, so whatever grocery store you normally go to
47:46
Post on social media and tell me what would you buy with $20 that you found on
47:50
the store, the floor of the grocery store?
47:56
Love that question. That's a great question. I know the answer, and I will
47:58
reveal it on social media. If you want to know my answer to that question, come
48:01
follow me @MattEdmundson. Love to know, actually, listeners, if you're— what
48:04
your answer to that question would be. I'm really, really intrigued. Uh, Karen,
48:07
listen, thank you.
48:10
Post that on LinkedIn. Post it on LinkedIn.
48:11
I will.
48:12
And I would love to hear all your listeners' responses.
48:14
Yeah, yeah, we should just put them on LinkedIn and tag us. It would be great.
48:19
Uh, I would love to hear how you would spend the $20, um, uh, or £20 or €20,
48:24
wherever you are, uh, in the world. Um, I, I, part of me would be quite
48:29
surprised seeing cash on the floor because I'm— cash, what's this? Do I need to—
48:34
I don't know, can I use it still? Is it still profit? I don't know. Uh, so
48:39
anyway, we'll take all of that aside. Um, but yeah, there you go. Fantastic,
48:44
Karen, and thank you. For joining us. It's been wonderful.
48:50
Thanks for having me, Matt.
48:52
Well, there you go. Another episode of the eCommerce Podcast recorded. All of
48:57
Carolyn's links will be in the show notes, or on, which will be on the website
49:02
ecommercepodcast.net. You can also click any of the links. We'll put all of
49:07
Carolyn's links in the show notes, which are, you know, if you scroll down on
49:12
your podcast app, or if you just click the description on the YouTube channel.
49:17
You'll find it all there. Do connect, do go and say hello. I'm sure she would
49:22
love to hear from you. That's it from me. Thank you so much for joining us. Make
49:27
sure you stay connected and subscribed and all of that good stuff because we've
49:32
got yet more great conversations lined up and I don't want you to miss any of
49:37
them. So that's it from me. God bless you. Have a phenomenal week. Bye for now.