How to troubleshoot slow sales on Amazon

Welcome to the BRING your product idea to Life podcast. This is the podcast for you if you're getting started selling products or if you'd like to create your own product to sell.

I'm Vicki Weinberg, a product creation coach and Amazon expert. Every week I share friendly practical advice as well as inspirational stories from small businesses. Let's get started.

Hello and welcome to another episode of bring your product idea to life. Today I want to talk about what to do if your sales are slower than expected.

And I'm going to start this episode by reassuring you that this happens to lots and lots of sellers at all kinds of stages. So I do work with brands who, you know, just launched on Amazon and they're saying, oh, Viki, I haven't had any sales yet. I'm quite worried.

Maybe they've been there for a couple of months and sales haven't really picked up. I also work with brands who've been on Amazon for years and years. They have lots.

They've had so many sales, they've got thousands, hundreds or thousands of five star reviews, but their sales all are suddenly a little bit slower.

So just to let you know, you are definitely not alone, if you're listening to this episode because this is you, you're thinking, gosh, my sales just aren't what they want to be. Do know this happens to lots of sellers. Happens for a variety of reasons.

You're definitely not alone in this, and together we can work out what's going on and we can fix this. I also want to acknowledge how frustrating this is.

I know that you've put a lot of work into getting set up on Amazon, and if you're not seeing the that your product deserves, that's really hard.

But as I say, we are going to get to the bottom of this together in this episode and know as well that having slow sales don't always mean that your product isn't good. It doesn't mean your listing isn't good. They're just a sign to take a closer look at what's going on.

I should also say that there might be some factors influencing your slower sales that are nothing to do with you at all. And actually you can't perhaps even control. So, for example, I have one client whose sales always drop off in the summer.

Every single year from about May, they start to go downhill and then from September they pick up again. And even though her product isn't particularly seasonal, it just happens.

And you know, we've looked at doing various things over the years and we've kind of just come to the conclusion that that's how it is, that's the buying pattern, and we're just accepting that. So there might be something like that affecting why you're having slower sales than usual at the moment.

Summer is often a quieter time for lots of products on Amazon, unless they're summer related, holiday related products for lots of sellers. Things do go a bit quieter over the summer when people are away. So if that's you, please don't panic.

Also, it might be something you know one of your competitors is doing.

So for example, if one of your competitors is having a really good sale on Amazon, so they've added a really good discount for a while, it could be that that's encouraging their products getting better sales and that's having an impact on you. If that's the case, of course you could also drop your price. You know, I'm not a fan of this.

I don't believe that we should get into price wars on amaz Amazon. But if you've got the margin and you think, actually maybe I could do a sale now, then yes you could.

Or you could also ride it out and know that things will hopefully then get back to normal.

However, if none of this sounds familiar and you're just thinking, actually, there's no obvious reason why my sales aren't where they should be, let's go through the things to look into so we can troubleshoot this together. So the first thing I would say to do if your sales on Amazon are low is to look at your data.

So if you go into your business reports, there are some key stats that you can have a look at. The first is your sessions data. A low number of sessions basically means low visibility.

It means a low number of people are actually seeing your products. And if visibility is an issue, then often that's to do with the keywords in your listing.

It might be that your listing isn't as well optimized for SEO as it could be, and that's why you're not getting found. It also could be that your product is very new on Amazon and you haven't done anything to drive traffic. So first, let's take the first one.

Even if your product has been on Amazon for ages, so you might think, oh, actually I've been, my product's been on Amazon for three years and I did all my keyword research and I wrote a really great listing. I'm not doubting that at all. But sometimes our products don't change.

But the wording in which customers use to search does so the things that customers are typing into the search bar to look for a product like yours is slightly different to what it was a year ago, three years ago, whatever.

Which is why it's worth always having a refresher of your listings, maybe every six months or so, doing a bit of keyword research and just checking that the relevant keywords and search terms are still included.

And obviously if you're running ads to your listings, then you might want to think about changing the keywords that you're using for targeting as well.

If your listing is brand new and you're not getting visibility and you're, you know, you've done all your keyword research, your listing's really well optimized, you know, you've got great images, great text, everything else, it might be that you need to do something to drive traffic to your listings because Amazon isn't going to show your listing from day one.

Because as I've spoken about many times before, you're competing with other more established listings that have got sales history, that have got reviews.

And in order for your listing to get seen, you're going to have to do something to drive traffic that doesn't necessarily mean paid traffic, but you are going to have to do something to get some eyes on your listing to help you move up the rankings and there to help you get shown to more people organically. So that's the first one. The second key thing to look at is your click through rate.

If your click through rate is low, that tells you that your main image and your title are not grabbing people's attention.

And that's, that's the nicest way I can say that there is something missing either from the image or from the text in the title that's not compelling people to click through and find out more about your product. So if this is you, what you can do is have a go at using a different main image.

As you know, this image has to be your product on a white background, but perhaps you can show a different angle. Perhaps you're showing a picture of your product in the packaging and you could show a picture of it not in the packaging or vice versa.

Have a go at trying a different image and seeing if that helps.

Also look at your product title is the most important information about your product up front in the title because as you would have seen, your title gets cut off in search results.

So it's really important that the most you know the key pieces of information, the things you really need your customer to know about your product, the things that will really compel them to buy, need to be upfront in the title so they're not cut off in search. And then the final piece of information to look at is your conversion rate.

If your conversion, if people are looking at your product, so your sessions and your click through rate is fairly high, you're happy with that and you're getting a lot of people looking at your product, but you're not buying. There's an issue here, and this can mean one or two things, or one of three things actually.

First thing it could mean is that your listing isn't convincing them to buy. And it could be that something is missing. So it might be that you don't have really compelling images. It could be that there's something missing.

Maybe there's a key question customers have about your product that you're just not answering. It also could be that the price isn't what people would expect. And I don't necessarily mean it's too expensive.

It also could be that you've priced it too low because that's another reason for not so. Believe it or not, people will also not buy something if it's priced so low. They think, well, that can't be real.

Well, that can't really do that for that price. So pricing is really key. So definitely your text and your, your text, your images and your prices are key things to look at. Also, reviews.

If you don't have any reviews on your listing, it's a lot harder to sell. Getting reviews is really hard. I've got a whole episode on this. But if you can get some, it really will help with your conversion.

So that's really important too.

If you've got some reviews, something you can go and do is have a look through them and see if there are any points that people are making in the reviews that might help you identify why your listing isn't converting. So are customers confused about something? Are they leaving you reviews saying that, oh, actually I didn't realize that the product was this small.

I thought it was bigger or, or I didn't realize I could use it for this. Is there something that your customers are telling you that you're missing that will help other customers be compelled to buy?

Okay, so once we've had a look at your reports, if we're still not sure what's going on, I think the next thing to look at is your product listing. So these are things that you may have addressed already.

If you've, if you've identified an issue in the data, but if you haven't if your data looks good, it's still worth going through all of these and just having a quick look. So check your title. Does it lead with your key feature or benefit? Is that really important information about your product up front?

Have a look at your images. Are they showing your product in the best possible light? Do you have a mix of product images, lifestyle images and infographics?

If any of these are missing, I definitely think they're worth adding in. When you look at your bullet points, are you focusing on the benefits of your product?

Are you really compelling someone to buy or are you listing out features?

It's quite a subtle difference, but it's really important that rather than just tell someone that your product is machine washable, it's much more compelling to explain that actually your product is going to save them time because they're not going to have to wash it by hand. For example, a customer really needs to see what the benefit will be in their life in order to convince them to buy. We've just touched on reviews.

If you don't have many reviews, you might want to consider getting some more because they honestly do help with conversions. And of course, all of the advice I'm giving here is going to depend on what stage you're at.

Because if you've been selling on Amazon for a long time, chances are you already have a pretty high number of reviews. So this advice is might be fairly generic, but just take what applies to you.

And again, coming back to pricing, does your price reflect the value of your product? If you have a really if your product is, let's start with overpriced.

If your product is overpriced or even if it's not overpriced, let's just say your product is the most expensive in your category. If you're looking at similar products, your prod your product is priced at the higher end, that is absolutely fine.

If you believe that is the value of your product and you can justify why your product is priced as it is, that's brilliant. And when I say if you can justify it, I don't mean that you have to be convincing people to buy.

What I mean is if you are looking at the other products on Amazon and you can say, well actually my product is 5 pounds more because of X, Y or Z, then you know that's great. But if your listing doesn't demonstrate that, why would a customer pay 5 pound more for your product when they can get something cheaper?

They have to really be able to see what they're getting for that extra money. Or their, or they're not going to buy.

And then going the other way, if your product is the lowest price, you have to think about what that gives as well. I think making sure your product is, is priced compared to your competition.

You look at the other products on Amazon and you probably you price your product where it makes sense. So you don't just try and be the most expensive or you don't try and be the cheapest.

You actually price your product based on value and how it compares to other products in your category. That's going to be so important and that's going to really help you with your sales. And then the next thing to consider is the traffic.

As I said, Amazon won't do it for you. Amazon isn't just going to show your product listing to people from the goodness of their heart. They're just not.

If you want your product to do well on Amazon and you want it to be found, you are going to have to do something to drive traffic yourself. So whether that's running ads, and if you are running ads, are you looking at your ads, Are you checking they're converting?

Are you constantly optimizing them? Because if you're not, that could definitely be losing you a lot of sales. And if you are not using ads, what are you doing?

Are you sending external traffic? Are you using your email list? Are you using your social media? What are you doing to get people over to your listing? You don't have to run ads.

You've probably heard me say this before. I think Amazon ads are great because Amazon is a shopping platform. People are there to shop.

And if they're looking for a product like yours and it pops up in an ad, you know, there's a high chance of comparison of it converting into a sale. However, you don't need to do ads if they don't work for you. And I'm now going to talk about some things that I don't want you to do.

If you're not selling as many as possible, I don't want you to immediately drop your price because it rarely solves the real problem. It might be that you want to test doing a sale price. So I don't mean dropping your price.

I mean doing a sale over a weekend or for a couple of days and seeing if that has an impact. But that doesn't necessarily tell you that your product is too expensive.

What that more likely points to is the fact that customers don't see the value in your product and that there's something in your listing that you need to address. Don't change everything at once because it makes it really impossible to track what helped.

So for example, if your click through rate isn't as high as you'd like, don't change the title and the main image right away. Change one, see what impact it has and then change the other.

Because unless you're doing just one thing at a time, it's really, really hard for you to know what's working and also what wasn't working. So if you change your main image and then suddenly you're getting a lot more, your click through rate goes up. That's brilliant.

And then if you're not getting the sales and you know, okay, we fixed the, we've clicked, fixed the click, click through rate. There's something else going on here, so definitely don't rush to do everything. Also, don't assume that the issue is with your product.

Have a look at your listing, have a look at the traffic, go over everything that I spoke about here. Because very, very rarely is it easy issue your product unless you've got a lot of negative reviews.

And actually that's something I didn't mention when we spoke about reviews. It might be not to be that you don't have reviews. It might be that your reviews are lower than expected.

If your reviews are lower than expected though, again, I don't want you to take it that you haven't got a good product. I am sure you do. It might just be there's something in the listing that kind of jars a bit with customers expectations.

I'm sure I've told this story before, but I worked for a client who sold a book and it was a pocketbook, which is literally a book. If you're watching me on YouTubers like this sort of size literally fit in your top pocket.

And he was getting a lot of bad reviews and people saying, oh, this book was smaller than expected.

So we were able to fix this by adding a product image that showed someone carrying the book in their like suit pocket, which really, really illustrated the size. And then all those bad reviews, I said it went away. They didn't go away unfortunately.

But we stopped getting more bad reviews and the number of positive reviews went up. So you can't always remove the bad reviews that you've got on your. And if you have reviews, you know, less than five star, that's really unfortunate.

But often it isn't the product. It could be some, it could be something in, entirely in your control or sometimes something out of your control that's causing them.

Another example is you might be getting bad reviews because your product's getting damaged during shipping. Well, that's something that you can look into.

So if your reviews aren't where they should be, read every single one and try and figure out the reason. Because often it's something that can be fixed and then that can help you with your sales going forward. So to summarize, start small.

Go through everything that I've outlined in this episode and see if you can figure out where exactly, you know where exactly the issue is coming. Is it visibility? Is it click through? Is it conversions? Once you know at which point customers are getting stuck. So are they not seeing your listing?

Are they seeing your listing but not choosing to click on it? Or are they looking at but not buying? That gives you some clues about what you can fix. And my best advice is to start small with this.

I know it's frustrating, I know you want your sales to go up immediately, but if you tweak one thing, wait to see the impact. If you know, if you don't see an improvement, tweak another thing and just keep reviewing. I promise you you will get there and sales will pick up.

And finally, my final thought on all of this is if you're feeling way too close to all of this, why don't you ask someone else to have a look at your listing? Someone completely objective.

Get them to have a look as a customer and tell you would they buy your product, what they like, what they don't like about your listing, Is there anything missing? Because their insights could be really valuable. And finally, remember that support is available. You absolutely don't need to do all of this alone.

If this seems completely overwhelming or you're not sure where to start, you can always book a power hour with me. You can get my eyes on your listing. I can give you a clear action plan for things to change. It's a great place to start.

And if you're looking for longer term support, my membership, Amazon Made Easy gives you space to ask questions. It gives you space to get feedback on things. If sales are low, unexpected, it's something we can definitely troubleshoot together.

So a one off power hour. If you just want an hour of my time to work out what to do, or if you want ongoing support, Amazon Made Easy is definitely the place to be.

And at under a pound a day, it's only £29amonth. It's amazing value as well. So I'm going to link to all of this in the show notes.

Thank you so much for getting to the end of this episode and I will speak to you again very soon.

Thank you so much for listening right to the end of this episode.

Do remember that you can get the full back catalogue and lots of free resources on my website vickyweinberg.com Please do remember to rate and review this episode if you've enjoyed it, and also share it with a friend who you think might find it useful. Thank you again and see you next week.