Learn how to master A+ content

In the broader context of e-commerce, ‘A+ content’ is a term that describes any product content that has been ‘enhanced’ or ‘enriched.

However, ‘A+ Content’ originated as an Amazon tool. It offers pre-registered brand owners and sellers the support they need to enhance their product information pages; adding rich media elements such as high-quality images, videos, sizing guides, user manuals, and detailed product descriptions. 

There’s also an opportunity for sellers to add information about their specific brand story.  

The main aim behind this important process of enriching content is to provide a more engaging shopping experience to Amazon shoppers;  ultimately helping them to make more informed buying decisions.

There are currently three main formats of A+ Content available to e-commmerce sellers and businesses:

• Basic A+ Content: Includes modules combining text and images to highlight product benefits, use cases, and features.
• Premium A+ Content: Offers more advanced features like the ability to add larger images, add interactive hotspots to images, and Q&A modules.
• Brand Story: This allows businesses to share their organization’s values, origin story, and mission across all of their product listings.

At the time of writing, all three formats are free, though Amazon indicates that they may charge for the Premium A+ Content module at some point in the future.

In order to use the tool, sellers must have a Professional selling account and be enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry to access these features.
Let’s take a closer look at Amazon A+ Content, and then explore how the A+ content approach can be fully supported by a Product Information Management (PIM) platform.

How to access A+ Content on Amazon

As we’ve already touched on above, some eligibility criteria need to be met by sellers and businesses before they can gain access to Amazon’s A+ Content tool.

• The A+ Content Manager tool is only available to brand owners and sellers who have previously registered their brand with Amazon’s Brand Registry.
• It is also accessible to emerging selling partners who have been approved for certain managed selling programs, such as Amazon’s Launchpad program. 

Access to the Premium A+ Content module is reserved for those who have published a Brand Story module on all of their brand-owned products and have published five A+ Content projects in the last 12 months.

Why does A+ Content matter so much for Amazon sellers?

There are five key reasons why A+ Content matters:

1. A+ Content boosts conversion rates

A+ Content is not just about how your product listings look; it can directly impact your sales. In fact, Amazon reports that adding Basic A+ Content can increase sales by up to 8%, while Premium A+ Content has the potential to deliver a 20% uplift to sales.

These results are driven from the fact that enriched content can help increase levels of confidence in consumers by offering more clarity, consistency, and trust through your product listing content.

2. A+ Content improves product understanding

Enhanced content elements like sizing guides and 360º product videos help consumers to understand the features and applications of a product far better than just basic product information would.

For example, a product video can demonstrate an item’s size, it’s features, and how it can be used in a way that copy alone just can’t.

Better product understanding can also reduce levels of post-purchase dissatisfaction and customer returns.

3. A+ Content enhances product discoverability

A+ Content isn’t directly indexed by Amazon’s A10 search engine algorithm, but improvements in product webpage engagement levels — because you’ve enriched your product content — can positively impact how Amazon ranks your products, making them easier for shoppers to discover.

What’s more, for non-Amazon sales channels, employing the same content principles as A+ Content — especially when it comes to structured data and media-rich pages — can greatly improve your organic search rankings on Google.

4. A+ Content strengthens brand identity

As part of Amazon’s offering, A+ Content gives brands a way to present their brand consistently across all of their product pages. Utilizing its Brand Story module empowers businesses to showcase their brand’s mission, origin story, and values in a clear, connected way.

This consistency ultimately helps to strengthen shoppers’ trust in your brand, which increases the likelihood of them buying from you.

Now let’s take a quick look at how implementing the A+ content approach in more general terms can be made much easier with a Product Information Management (PIM) solution.

How can a PIM platform help you create and deliver A+ content?

While the practice of implementing A+ content across marketplaces like Amazon can reap many benefits, populating product content at scale for hundreds — or even thousands — of SKUs presents a huge operational challenge for businesses who want to grow.

That’s where a PIM solution can step in — to reduce the burden of all that manual work.

A modern PIM system will empower your ecommerce teams to:

• Centralize all product content
• Manage any content enrichment-focused workflows
• Localize content for different regions and channels
• Ensure that there’s brand consistency across all digital touchpoints
• Automate the uploading of enriched content to platforms like Amazon, Walmart, and any D2C websites you own.

How to get started with the A+ content approach

Whether you’re completely new to A+ content or looking to improve your existing approach, there are some practical steps you need to take to hit the ground running — and help from a PIM platform features right from the start.

• Understand how your product listings are performing by harnessing the data-driven insights found in your PIM system. It’s already analyzed all the data and highlighted its findings in the dashboard, so all you need to do is ‘focus in’ on the product listings that make ideal candidates for content enhancements.

• Your PIM platform can collect together all of the media files you need in order to enrich each product listing. This could be high-quality image assets, interactive content, or demo videos.  

• Invest time in crafting compelling copy and adding important further details to your listings — again, this can be done directly in your PIM system. Center on benefit-led messaging and storytelling that allows consumers to picture how your product will work for them and/or solve a problem.

• You can also use your PIM platform to set up certain rules to ensure that content is kept consistent and appropriately tailored for all end channels.

• Once you’ve finished the process of optimizing and enriching your product content, you can use your PIM system to distribute everything to marketplaces like Amazon. 
  
• Finally, it’s important to keep tracking and measuring the performance of your newly-enriched listings, watching for uplifts in aspects like conversion rates and return rates. 

In the meantime, you can begin these steps again and identify a new batch of product listings ready for the A+ content approach.

A+ content: a critical strategic opportunity

The digital marketplace is already overcrowded, so e-commerce businesses need to employ every strategy possible to cut through the noise and become the final choice for browsing shoppers.

The A+ content approach of enriching content isn’t just a way to make listings look better — it’s a solid way to boost sales revenue, reduce customer return rates, and build a strong brand.

With the right technology in place, like Inriver PIM, your teams can organize, manage, scale, and optimize product content quickly and efficiently.