Marketplace listing optimization tips

Creating high quality and optimized product listings is a sure way to improve their performance in marketplaces, ensuring better conversion rates and overall sales. Read on for our marketplace listing optimization tips. 

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Ecommerce marketplaces provide sellers with a wonderful platform to market their products, while keeping costs much lower than that of a brick and mortar shop. And with the number of visitors in online stores exceeding by far the number of walk-ins, ecommerce allows sellers to reach a much wider audience.

The issue with ecommerce marketplaces is that the competition is usually quite intensive. With millions of similar products on sale, sellers must find a way to stand out. The best way to do it is through product listings.

Product listings provide shoppers with all the information they need about the product, so they can make an informed purchasing decision.  Creating high quality and optimized product listings is a sure way to improve their performance in marketplaces, ensuring better conversion rates and overall sales here are our marketplace listing optimization tips. 

Why Optimize Product Listings

High quality product listings are essential for ecommerce success. Their role is to convince potential shoppers to purchase the product by providing all the relevant information in an engaging way, showcasing its most prominent attributes and how it can benefit them.

Well made product descriptions help shoppers feel confident they are dealing with a serious seller, provide an upgraded shopping experience, and boosts conversion rates. The better the product listing performers, the more likely it is to appear at or near the top of the search results page, which of course contributes to traffic generation. 

When creating a high quality product listing, sellers should take care to optimize the following elements:

• Product listing title
• Images
• Product attributes
• Bullet points
• Product description
• Customer feedback

Creating Top Quality Product Listings

Keyword Research

It is best to start with keyword research. The goal of keyword research is identifying and prioritizing the words shoppers use the most when searching for similar products. Strategically inserting these keywords into your product listings (in the title, description etc.) will ensure they will come up in relevant searches and thus increase the listing’s visibility in the marketplace. The more relevant the keywords are to the shopper’s search query, the more likely it is for the listing to be ranked at the top of the search result page. 

Keyword research can be done “manually” by investigating competitors’ listings to see what keywords they are using or studying the marketplace search engine’s auto-complete recommendations. There are also a number of online tools, some free and some at a fee, that can help sellers choose which keywords are best for them.  

The keywords sellers use in a listing must, of course, relate to the product on sale, and reflect its most important attributes, such as brand, type, size, color, etc., preferably in order of importance. An example for a good keyword-optimized product title for a Head tennis racket may be “Tennis Racket Head Youtek Graphene Model G2”. The main keyphrase -”Tennis Racket” - is at the beginning of the title, followed by the brand name. 

Read more about keyword research here

Product Images

The product image appears in the search result page (right next to the listing’s title) and is one of the first impressions shoppers get of the listing, so it is important to get it right. In order to really encourage shoppers to click through, it is best to use clear and high resolution images. The images should be taken against a neutral background to focus the attention on the product, and depending on the number of images you can upload, it is recommended to include images of the product from different angles and in different modes of use. 

The better and more attractive the image you use - the better the click-through and conversion rates.

Read more about product images here

Product Title

Like product images, the listing’s title is one of the very first things shoppers see, so you need to make the most of it. 

The title must be engaging and enticing enough for shoppers to be intrigued and want to click through to the listing. It should describe the product on sale clearly, and highlight its benefit. And as always, don’t forget to include relevant keywords in the title. 

Pricing

In the majority of marketplaces sellers face fierce competition from other sellers who sell similar products, so sellers who wish to succeed must do what they can to get ahead. Product pricing is where you do it.

There are two way to do it:

1. You can set the prices for your products a bit lower than the average price the competition charges. This will give you an advantage with shoppers for whom lower price is a key factor in the purchasing decision. 
2. Set product prices a bit higher than the average competitor, but in this method you must offer shoppers added benefits that other competitors don’t, as to justify the slightly higher prices. 
   

Which method you choose is up to you and what you are able to offer to shoppers.

Feedback

Shopper feedback and reviews is a great way to distinguish yourself from the competition. Most marketplace search engines take into account feedback and reviews when ranking listings in the search results page, so a robust review section can help boost the listing up the rankings.

Of course, feedback and reviews also help inspire confidence in your brand. When shoppers see the positive experience other shoppers have had with the store, they are more likely to convert. 

Strengthen the feedback and reviews section by offering shoppers multiple methods of shipping (including express) and return policies, by engaging with shoppers and providing quick and helpful responses to their queries and issues, and by encouraging them to leave a positive review. 

Active response to shoppers is key to providing a great shopping experience.

Conclusion

The best ecommerce sellers are those that can think like their customers. When generating titles and descriptions for product listings, try and put yourself in the place of shoppers and see if you feel the content is engaging enough to make you want to click through and complete the purchase. At the top of our marketplace listing optimization tips - keep testing and trying different variations until you feel and measure that you got it right.