Why You Should Focus on Optimizing Your Amazon Listing for Mobile
There are 12 million products on Amazon. In the US, 95 million people have Amazon Prime memberships.
How do you ensure you’re targeting your customer? How do get YOUR product in front of their eyes?
Well, you’ve got to start with mobile.
Sure, when you write your listing, optimize it, put it up – everything’s on desktop, right?
But if you think about how your CUSTOMER consumes media, how they browse, where they open and pass on links to their friends…
It’s mostly on their smartphones.
Keeping the customer top of mind is the most important way you can optimize your amazon product listing. And this means you need to focus on that the gadget that most keep within arm’s reach at all times.
So in this article, we’re going to talk about why you should focus on Amazon mobile optimization first.
What we’re covering…
Smartphone Use Is on the Rise
The way we’re consuming digital media is changing.
In 2023, even more people are using smartphones to watch video content, connect with communities and, of course, browse new products online.
Smartphones are the preferred way to get things done.
What does this mean for an Amazon seller?
You absolutely have to adapt. This means optimizing for mobile.
When you focus on the device where your customer is most likely to spend their time, you have an advantage over your competitors.
Use it.
Just look at the millions of smartphone subscriptions there are, and the predictions until 2027.
People are Shopping More on Their Smartphones
Shopping via smartphone is becoming increasingly popular. It even has its own term – mobile commerce (or m-commerce).
In their article about the most important e-commerce mobile stats, Outerbox Design stated that 79% of smartphone users have made a purchase online using their mobile devices in the last 6 months. That’s A LOT!
According to internal data, 69% of visits to Amazon’s branded stores came from a mobile device in 2021. This is a considerably high number, and another reason you should consider building a custom storefront for your brand. You can read about the benefits of having your own store on Amazon in our Ultimate Guide.
Big brands are taking this trend and running with it. They’re developing applications to create a seamless shopping experience, literally in the palm of their customers’ hands.
Thinking about optimizing product listings for mobile first will help you get ahead of the game. It’s the same reason that Amazon started allowing sellers to create mobile-optimized stores for their shoppers by including a mobile-first store builder option.
This change now allows you to create a mobile-optimized Store experience for shoppers as you build or update your Store.
This includes thinking about the differences in how products appear on mobile and the information that a customer gets from a listing at first glance.
Products Appear Differently on Amazon Mobile Search
Amazon mobile optimization means understanding the search results page (SERP). On mobile (and on the app) it’s a whole new ball game.
Instead of 4 products appearing on a line as on desktop, the customer sees just one.
This is great news if you manage to appear at the top of search results.
But if you’re lower down, good luck!
Picture this…
Your product ranks 13th for the customer’s search query.
The 13th position on desktop isn’t so bad. It means the customer scrolls to the 4th line (there is usually an entire row of sponsored products featured first).
But on mobile, the customer has to scroll through 13 lines of single products. Not to mention some sponsored products too.
Amazon’s recent addition also includes collections of recommendations, highly-rated products that take up even more retail space, forcing the customer to scroll further to get to your product:
You have to make sure your picture and your title are good enough to get them to stop scrolling. For more ideas on how to stand out on the search results page and a big SEO overview, check out our walkthrough.
Your Product Title Matters Much More
What’s the one thing standing between a click and a scroll past your product?
And on mobile you’ve got about 80 characters to get your point across.
Your product title is the first bit of text a customer sees – make it count!
A customer is subconsciously looking for clues that signal your product can solve their problem. These clues are the primary and secondary keywords that relate to your product.
Try to include the most important information first to flag your customer’s attention. Make sure to use them naturally though to avoid keyword stuffing and throwing off the customer.
Whether they’re using their smartphones to do initial research of products and then moving onto desktop to make the purchase doesn’t matter.
What matters is that they choose your product because it solves their problem. You can read more about customer intent and why it matters in this post.
Use the title to communicate this!
Optimize your Amazon listings with our free checklist
Optimize Your Images for Mobile – It’s the Hero of the Product Page
On mobile, your product listing looks very different.
Gone are the days when your customer sees all the product information in front of them.
The restrictive screen size of a mobile device creates a vertical obstacle to learning more. This small but important difference should be the driving reason you want to focus on mobile optimization on Amazon.
The gatekeeper of your content is the image.
Of course, you’ve got the product title at the very top to make the sale, but as the image is so much bigger, the visual hierarchy directs all your customer’s attention there.
If you can optimize your product listing images to tell your brand’s story and solve your customer’s problem, the better your chances are of making the sale.
It’s not just copy that should be mobile optimized!
Just look at this product page for pistachios – see how much you have to scroll to even get to the A+ content or description? Few customers have the patience. They are more likely to look through the images to decide whether or not they want to buy the product.
If You Don’t Optimize for Mobile, Your Competitor Will
Unless you’re selling a very niche product with few contenders, you’re going to be in constant competition.
If you want to get leverage over your competitors, you need to think about Amazon mobile optimization for your listing.
Because of the small screen size, and the limitation of one product per line, you have a smaller chance for the customer to reach your product (if it appears lower down on the search results page).
Add this challenge to the fact that competing products implement strategic ads on their competitors’ pages to woo your customers away, you need to make sure you’re answering your customer’s exact problem.
Key Takeaways
Developments in technologies are moving faster than we can keep up with.
By being aware of trends and using that knowledge to your advantage you can grow your business.
Don’t forget that:
- More people own smartphones and an increasing number are using them to browse and shop online
- The smaller vertical screens create a new challenge that absolutely must be taken into account when optimizing a listing
- Less is more when working with mobile. Think of making text easy to read and digest, and attractive images to wow your customer
Look at where your customers are spending their time and act accordingly.
