Last updated on April 22nd, 2024 at 12:27 pm
If there’s one thing Amazon sellers don’t pay enough attention to, it’s optimizing CTR. Nothing has as much potential to affect EVERY single part of your Amazon marketing strategy!
CTR Stands for Click Through Rate, the % of people who view your product on search results pages that end up clicking onto your Amazon product detail page.
It’s the one biggest bottleneck in the whole “Amazon marketing funnel.”
By increasing CTR by even just a 2% your ads become more effective, more people view your listing from search pages, and everything you are doing for marketing becomes more efficient and effective.
It’s also relatively easy to optimize for, as there are only 2 places that have the biggest effect on CTR.
In this article, we’ll dive deep into how to boost CTR on Amazon quickly & effectively to boost traffic to your product pages.
Amazon CTR vs. Amazon Conversion Rate
CTR & Conversion rate (CVR for short) are both necessary, one is not more important than the other.
A good CTR will increase the amount of traffic to your listing, & a good CVR will increase the % of that traffic that converts to a sale. Both elements are necessary for the sale!
Think of CTR as the optimization of getting attention… that hook point that stops the scrolling shopper & lights their brain up with “that’s what I’m looking for!”
CVR is more about the rational & emotional brain. Shoppers need to believe they are getting the best product that most perfectly meets their needs & is the best exchange of value for money on Amazon. People have lots of options so Professional Amazon Product Photography, Amazon A+ Content, & lifestyle videos are all key components to a high CVR listing.
Key Factors of Amazon CTR Optimization
While there are many ways to optimize CTR on Amazon listings, there are just a few that get 80%+ of the results so focus on these.
- Main image optimization (the only image shoppers see before clicking)
- Title (the only text visible on search results)
Reviews and price are also huge factors but since we don’t have as much control over that, we won’t focus on those in this article. Main image & title are simple to optimize and can get massive results in a short time span.
Amazon Main Image Optimization
The single biggest factor for CTR on Amazon is the main image. How can you make your image stand out compared to competitors?
Optimize for Your Thumbnail Ratio
Most categories on Amazon will have a square 1:1 ratio for their images, but some have a vertical 58:45 ratio. See image below to see how to know which applies to your product.
Amazon rewards you by having your images take up more space on screens when you optimize for the correct sizing.
In the worst case scenario, the images are horizontal & image size is severely limited by that. See example below.
Amazon Main Image Dimensions
In order to enable the zoom functionality your image needs to be at least 1000x1000px, but bigger is not necessarily better.
By making images too high resolution, the zoom function will zoom WAY in, making the image inside the zoom bubble impossible to view.
The best sizing for main images with a square 1:1 ratio is 2000 x 2000px, large enough that there are no issues with resolution but small enough that the zoom function will work correctly.
The best size for images with a vertical 58:45 ratio is 2552 x 1980px.
Amazon Main Image Guidelines
- Have a pure white background. Amazon has algorithms that check if your main image has a pure white background or not. To avoid issues it’s best to have the background removed by a graphic designer & replaces with a 100% pure white, even if it’s already shot against a white backdrop.
- Take up the most amount of space possible. There should be minimal white space around the outside of your product so that it shows up as large as possible on search results pages. You only have a small thumbnail image there so sizing it too small will make your product difficult to see.
- Avoid taking photos from direct angles, using a 15 degree ish angle shows the 3 dimensions much better while direct angles provide only 2 dimensions.
- Add a graphic reflection effect to make it stand out.
- Have professional lighting even subtle improvements to lighting will make your product pop compared to competitors. In the image below, you can see how minor the difference in lighting is, but the one on the right stands out more and appears higher quality.
Amazon Title Optimization for High CTR
Since the title is the only text shoppers see before deciding what to click, structuring it to maximize CTR can be make or break.
It’s also the most important text field for keyword optimization so it’s a fine balance between keyword optimization & key info optimization.
Amazon Titles for High CTR
- Start your title with your main keyword phrase in exact match. This phrase should be the highest search volume phrase that describes your product in enough detail you would not need to add any extra words and also optimizes for keyword ranking.
- The second part should be the most important describing info. Things like 3 pack, for iPhone X, BPA Free, etc. Ask yourself “what info would I need to see in order to KNOW this product is exactly what I’m looking for?”
For a more in depth look at structuring Amazon titles for maximum keyword ranking and click through rate, check out Triple Optimized Amazon Listings.
What exactly should be here?
It varies by product, but in general that’s specific product traits like size, BPA Free, for iPhone X, Pack of 20, etc.
Whatever is the most important information a scanning shopper would need to see in order to KNOW your product is exactly what they’re looking for is what should be here. The second snippet of your is the number one most important piece of real estate so should be reserved only for the most important info!.
Most Important Text Areas for CTR Optimization in Order of Importance
Split Testing Amazon Click Through Rate
While split testing the title is a bad idea due to potential keyword indexing issues, split testing your main image on Amazon is one of the best ways to quickly boost CTR.
Use software such as Splitly to run tests on the main image over at least a 2 week period. Unlike split testing software on your own website, any Amazon split tests must be done by actually changing the image every 24 hours as we don’t have the ability to show alternating visitors different images.
So if we do a 2 week test, each variant will have ran on every day of the week. If you don’t have a clear winner by then, run it for up to a month.
Other things you may want to test could be the order of your bullet points, but that’s unlikely to have much effect, and unfortunately you have no way of knowing what would actually be causing the change in data from the split test.
How to Create Many Image Variations to Split Test
There’s a simple trick you can use to create many variants of your main image for split testing without shooting a whole ton of photos and spending hours trying to perfectly arrange your product.
Shoot each piece & accessory of your product against a white background individually from at least 3 different angles. Have them retouched, color corrected, and backgrounds removed so you’re left with PNG files with a transparent background.
You can now open up Adobe Photoshop or a similar program to drag & drop the PNG files of your components into the most attractive configurations possible and quickly create many variants.
If your product has multiple of a certain item, duplicate it so each one looks identical & perfectly uniform.
Be sure to have the color corrections & retouching done before this process to save you from having to do it on every image afterwards, it will be much easier.
In Summary
So as you can see, optimizing for Amazon CTR is worth doing and actually not that difficult or time consuming, especially considering how much it will affect every single aspect of your Amazon marketing strategy & bring down your Amazon advertising costs.
- Optimize your main image first
- Create split test variations of your main image
- Run split tests using a software like Splitly
- Optimize your title for Key Info Optimization
If you’re looking for an Amazon Product Photography service that can handle this for you, reach out to us here at Kenji ROI. Our team has built more than 1200 Amazon listings in all categories and provides the highest quality Amazon specific photo sets in the industry.
