If you’ve spent a decent amount of time on the shopper side of Amazon.com, you may have noticed other sellers with more optimized, tricked out product listings than you. 

Maybe you’ve seen sellers with a neat, crossed out price on their listing paired with a discount sign.

Maybe you’ve noticed a video in the A to a Q in the Q&A section. 

Or maybe you recognized their copy was on another level.

Today, I’m going to take you step-by-step through three features you can use to optimize your Amazon product listing. 

1. Get the cool scratched out price.

Typically products on Amazon are sold at a base price that doesn’t vary all too often. 

An exception to that is when the seller offers a sale. 

It could also be the case, however, that a product looks to be on sale to shoppers when it’s actually selling at the seller’s goal price. That seller just so happens to be grinning behind their store, watching the urgency of an alleged “sale” drive conversions like mad.

In that case, the product's “non-sale” price is left on the listing…but it’s crossed out and tossed to the right corner. Meanwhile, a stunning new, “discounted” price takes front and center, while a -x% to the left tells shoppers exactly how much they’re “saving” when they buy.

And while saving 20% on the latest TikTok fad might not seem like the craziest thing ever, keep in mind that to shoppers that -x% is cause for celebration and will likely help them decide to purchase a product in a split second so they can snag that hot deal. 

Note that when you see products listed with their normal price along with a green box that reads Save $x with coupon, that is something else. In that case, those products are running promotional coupons. We take you through the benefits of coupons, and show you how to set them up, in this article. 

To get this cool, scratched out, discounted price that helps shoppers to make quick purchase decisions, we’re going to leverage list price. 

List price, or MSRP (manufacturer’s suggested retail price), is a product’s official for sale price. 

When you login to your Amazon Seller Central account to list a product for sale, you will see three types of prices:

Your Price is your product’s most standard, fundamental price, just in Amazon terminology. Notice the asterisk next to it? That means it’s a required field and sales/discounts aren’t required.

Sale Price is a price you can add to temporarily override your standard price.

You can even use the Sale Start Date and Sale End Date fields to create a short sale period. For example, you might choose to run a Labor Day sale from Friday to Monday, just as you might find in a brick and mortar store. 

When you see a sale price override on the shopper side of things, the product will be labeled with a red Limited time deal sticker in search results. 

List Price is as we defined above, MSRP. 

Now it’s best practice to match your List Price to your Your Price. If your Your Price were to ever be listed higher than your List Price, Amazon might think you are overcharging customers, which they’re not fond of, to say the least. 

With that in mind, next to List Price is the button Set List Price equal to Your Price. 

If we hover over the question mark next to it, we get some helpful info: “You can set the List Price the same as your Your Price…In the future your listing could show a discount on this value if it passes required criteria.”

If you set your listing up correctly to pass that criteria, here’s what would go down:

You would set your Your Price to a sell price greater than your goal sell price, let’s say $40. You would set your List Price to something less than your Your Price, let’s say $30.

Amazon thinks you’re overcharging customers. It calculates that the list price is 25% lower than your Your Price.

When your product appears in shopper search results, your Your Price is tiny and crossed out, meanwhile -25% and $30 are front and center in front of shoppers. 

This effect, then, boosts your conversions. It looks like (and is) a good deal for customers, it looks like a sale (even though it’s not), and it looks to be time sensitive (but it’s not), which drives shoppers to hit Buy Now more quickly. 

Now, I know we’re all thinking, I’ll just make my Your Price ridiculously high, set my List Price at my goal sell price, and get the cool discount-looking pricing. That definitely sounds too good to be true, and it definitely is. 

Amazon says that it will only auto-match your Your Price to your List Price if that product has been recently purchased at or above your same List Price, on or off Amazon. 

First of all, that means shoppers have to buy your product at that ridiculously high price.

Second, recently is 90 days for all non-seasonal products (TVs, notebooks, bedding, etc.), and 180 days for all seasonal products (Halloween costumes, Christmas trees, ski jackets, etc.). 

However, you can actually ensure your product’s adherence to these conditions by selling your product on your own, off-Amazon website for a higher price than you do on Amazon. Check out our guide to choosing the right platform to build your off-Amazon store.  

Additionally, keep in mind that  you can’t just raise your current sell price a few bucks and walk away. Unless you’ll be raising your Your Price to an actual previous price that you’ve sold that product at before on Amazon, you will need to slowly increase your product’s price (this is actually our pricing strategy that we teach in our Amazon FBA Mastery membership). Start with $1, wait for consistent sales, and then try another. 

2. Answer customer questions as your brand, even with videos.

The Q&A section of your listing is a valuable resource for shoppers to get information about your product. It’s also a fantastic way to boost engagement on your listing and to instill trust in your brand. 

Now, customer questions on Amazon can be answered by the seller or other customers who believe themselves to be “experts”. 

Quick tip—Don’t let conversations about your product on your Amazon listing be moderated by these tricksters.

If you want to create trust, you should answer questions about your product…as your brand (note you may be answering your customers’ questions, but if you’re not answering explicitly as your brand, you will look like another eager shopper). Amazon will mark those questions as YOUR BRAND NAME SELLER . This not only adds a personal touch to an otherwise faceless brand, but demonstrates active engagement with your audience 💪

That said, in order to answer your own product questions as your brand (not your personal name), your business’s Amazon account must have spent $50+ on Amazon within the past 12 months. 

Text answers, up until recently the only option, are a classic. However, on a question-by-question basis, a video answer may be the stronger alternative. 

Videos can drive even more engagement with your listing. Customers might notice them—where they wouldn't have noticed the Q&A section much or at all before—as they scroll to the reviews section. 

And your videos can also serve as a shopper bandaid to offset the damage of some more unfair reviews. 

The process is pretty straightforward: a customer asks a question, and you upload a video in response.

If you don’t have fancy video equipment, don’t fret. As with product photos, all you technically need is a smart phone. In fact, high quality recording is not expected here (careful, it is for product photos).

As for uploading that video, the simplest method is to go through email. 

Whenever a customer asks a question, you receive an email notification that prompts you to respond with a link. You follow that link, sign into your Seller Central account, and answer the question (with the uploaded file).

To ensure you can take advantage of this option, 

Hover over the gear icon in the top right of Seller Central.

Click Notification Preferences.

In the Account Notifications section, ensure that Business Updates are enabled for your email address (double check that, too).

In the Messaging section, ensure that Buyer Messages are enabled for your email address (again, check that).

You can go through Seller Central the longer way to answer questions, as well, which we teach in our Amazon FBA Mastery membership. It’s everything you need to know (and then some) about starting, running, and growing a successful Amazon business.

3. Build breath-taking bullet points.

Photos are the most important part of your Amazon product listing. Your title comes second with bullet points to follow. 

But if you’re thinking, third most important, who cares, think again. Your product listing’s bullet points are where you can truly emphasize all the fantastic ways your product will improve your customers’ lives. 

When you write your product’s bullet points, lead with one of your product’s benefits. Write it in all caps. Then, follow that benefit with a hyphen and use the remaining copy for that line to describe your product’s features (technical aspects) that make that benefit possible. 

For example, let's say you sell Kitchen Knives, and yours has a specially-designed ergonomic handle that prevents slippage and enables precision, while reducing wrist fatigue (🤔). The special ergonomic handle is the technical aspect of the knife that actually makes it unique. However, reduced slippage, greater precision, and lessened wrist fatigue are all benefits of that special handle. 

We might write our bullet point copy, “CUT SAFER - slip-resistant, precise ergonomic handle allows you to slice cleanly and comfortably.”

Keep in mind that customers buy emotionally. They’re less interested in the nitty gritty behind your product and more curious about how your product improves their livelihood. For instance, nobody buys a TV because it has an 8k resolution. They buy the TV with the best picture. It just so happens that 8k resolution makes that possible.  

Going back to our knife example, nobody actually cares about an ergonomic handle (they might not know what that means, although “ergonomic” can be a buzzword just like “8K”). Shoppers do care, however, that their knife prevents slipping and thus dangerous finger cuts. 

By the way, grab your copy of our free product listing creation and optimization worksheet at JOD.com/listing. 

But even beyond benefits before features, there’s one more level of depth in the shopper buying experience that we must consider: user desired state. Put another way, What do a product’s benefits do for the user? 

Shoppers don’t actually even care about the benefits, they just want what the benefit does for them and allows them to achieve. This might be minimizing pain, achieving a specific goal, etc. 

Consider this pre-workout powder:

Its bullet points do an excellent job of framing the benefits of this particular powder blend:

“Great taste”, “Enhanced strength endurance”, “Mental focus”. But we could reframe them all to focus on the end result, or the desired end state for the customer. Because while benefits are great, nothing connects emotionally more to shoppers than understanding their end goal. 

With the above bullet points, we might edit them like so:

- Great taste → ENJOY BEFORE EVERY SESSION (references a fix to a frequent user problem)
- Enhanced strength endurance → EXPERIENCE YOUR UNTAPPED ENDURANCE (desired state)
- Mental focus → FEEL FULLY FOCUSED (desired state)

Notice how all of our edits connect with how the product will be used. Now each bullet starts with a verb, an action, that customers can (and likely will) experience with that product. 

Going back to our knife, one bullet point might look like this:

MAKE CONFIDENT, PAINLESS CUTS - especially-crafted ergonomic handle helps reduce slippage, lessens wrist fatigue, and enables superior knife precision. 

This practice can extend outside of Amazon, as well. For example, I could say the following about our Amazon FBA Mastery membership:

• Advanced Amazon FBA training
• Cutting edge tactics updated weekly
• One-on-one professional coaching

But it might be stronger if I said:

• Realize your true Amazon FBA potential
• Confuse your competitors with cutting edge tactics
• Avoid the painful mistakes with your very own sales-verified FBA expert

All are true and accurate of our membership, but the latter are more emotionally engaging. 

And if you’d like to be on the receiving end of all those benefits, or if you are dead set about changing your life, visit JOD.com/apply. There you can speak with a member of our team who will help you decide if we are the right fit to help you realize your Amazon FBA dreams. 

What surprised you the most about our listing optimization hacks? Let me know in the comments.