Why Your Amazon Products Aren't Selling

Facing sluggish Amazon sales? Improve by targeting specific keywords, diversifying ads, managing FBA inventory, optimizing CTR, and leveraging customer reviews with Junglytics for data-driven decisions.

Tom Rohlf

September 27, 2023

When someone decides to become an Amazon seller, they usually start their journey with a lot of optimism. Maybe they are excited about bringing their big idea to the market. Or maybe they believe they’ve stumbled upon a product with steady returns. Whatever the case may be, they usually expect dollar signs in their future. That’s why we get into this line of work, after all.

But what happens when Amazon products simply aren’t selling? Should you throw in the towel? Not quite. There are plenty of things you can do to improve your sales. Here are tips and tricks to figure out why your products are not selling well and how to fix it.

Leverage More Relevant Long-Term Keywords

One of the potential reasons your Amazon business is lagging behind is that you’re targeting top-of-the-funnel keywords. Short or general search terms indicate that shoppers are early in their customer journey. These are window shoppers who aren’t ready to buy just yet.

The best thing you can do as an Amazon seller is to go down funnel by researching and including long-tail keywords in your title and listing. When customers search highly specific keywords, they typically know what they want and are trying to find a product that matches their expectations.

For example, a shopper searching for “bookends” or “bookends for shelves” is perusing their options. They don’t really know what they are looking for yet. As they see different products, they will likely narrow their search to “white marble bookends” or “handmade wooden bookends.” They know what they want and are getting close to making a decision.

If you notice a high volume of highly specific search phrases and no product filling the niche, you’ve likely found a really good selling opportunity. Include these keywords in your titles and listings to more closely align your offerings to what customers are looking for.

Aggressively Advertise Your Products

Once you’ve identified the popular search terms for your products, you’ll want to put some significant ad dollars behind those keywords.

Advertising on Amazon has a halo effect. More advertising means more visibility, which means more page visits, which means higher rankings and ultimately more sales. This ad-based strategy even improves organic visibility, which is a big win for sellers.

Pro tip: Stick to specific keywords since these are more effectively targeted to relevant customers. Advertising to a general audience is too costly for the returns you’re likely to see. Use targeted advertising to maximize your returns.

Diversify Your Amazon Advertising Types

Speaking of advertising on Amazon, some sellers are frustrated by their product not selling despite their ad investments. If this is the case, it’s prudent to investigate the product images, titles, listing details, and keywords being used. But assuming that you’ve already tweaked images and updated text copy to better capture customer attention—it might be time to expand your advertising types.

Amazon offers three types of advertising: Sponsored products, sponsored displays, and sponsored brands.

If your products are not selling, you should diversify to cover all three forms of advertising. Then again, you’ll want to know whether your ad dollars are giving you valuable returns. This is where Junglytics can make all the difference.

Junglytics customizable business intelligence dashboards for Amazon sellers let you segment your ad spend by these three ad types. Quickly and easily see total advertising cost of sale (TACoS) and return on ad spend (ROAS). Drill down into specific products, variations, regions, and more.

Explore your important ad metrics all in one place with Junglytics.

So, start by casting a wider net by leveraging all three Amazon ad types, then narrow your focus by using Junglytics to make data-driven decisions.

Right-Size Your Amazon FBA Inventory

Are your products not selling as Amazon FBA? There’s a bit of a balancing act when it comes to Fulfillment By Amazon. If you have too much inventory that’s not selling, you’re likely spending too much on warehousing your products. And that can cause many Amazon FBA sellers to be overly cautious. After all, lots of sellers don’t want to struggle with getting rid of overstocked items stored at Amazon.

But there’s a drawback to being too cautious. Amazon FBA helps sellers distribute their goods through the markets you’re selling in. But if you have too little inventory in too few places, Amazon can’t distribute your products quickly and lots of customers will have suboptimal shipping promises.

This makes sense when you think about it. Amazon can’t guarantee two-day or three-day shipping for Prime members if they simply don’t have your product on hand in a warehouse close to that specific customer. And since many shoppers prefer fast shipping or sorting products by Prime availability, this could explain why your products aren’t selling.

Yes, Amazon FBA inventory is a bit of a double-edged sword. Too much inventory is costly, but too little results in lower sales numbers. Consider using inventory management software to help you make smarter decisions.

Boost Your Amazon Ad Click-Through Rate

The average ad click-through rate (CTR) on Amazon is 0.3% and 0.4%—meaning that for every 1,000 people who view your ads, about three or four people click it.

If your CTR is far above this, that’s great! If your CTR falls short, then it’s time to investigate a few key factors:

Are you targeting the right keywords? Low click-through might indicate that your products aren’t resonating with the folks seeing your ads. Try using more specific keywords to attract the right customers.
Are you using the right images and titles? Sometimes your ads need a facelift. Try baselining your ads as they exist, then change the images and tweak the titles. Track CTRs over time to see if these changes make a positive difference.
Are your offerings relevant to buyers? If these tactics fail to arouse your flatlining click-through rate, it might indicate that your product simply doesn’t resonate with buyers. There’s no shame in pulling investments from underperforming to put towards goods with better earning potentials.

Admittedly, it can be tough to find the advertising metrics you need from Seller Central. Instead, it’s better to use Junglytics to dive into your TACoS, ROAS, ad spend, and the like. Because Junglytics is unparalleled in customizable business analytics from Amazon sellers, it’s easy to get down to the level of granularity you need. This includes breaking down various products, product variants, and regions as they relate to your advertising investments.

A Junglytics card showing TACoS organized by product line.

Garner More Customer Reviews

Customer reviews play a major role in converting shoppers into buyers. Products with no reviews or very few reviews see very low sales numbers—but low sales numbers garner very few reviews. Frustrating, no?

To increase the number of (hopefully positive) reviews for your product, Amazon sellers should take advantage of Amazon Vine. This invitation-only program selects honest reviewers to share their impressions about products like yours. Part of the motivation for reviewers is that they get free products for their first review.

Note that only brands on Amazon can leverage this program.

Be Social About Your Amazon Products

Customer reviews are a cornerstone of Amazon. And it’s easy to understand why: Customers love hearing honest feedback from real buyers. Written reviews are wonderful, but even better are images and videos from shoppers. These multimedia reviews demonstrate that your product is clearly real and useful.

Encourage people to share images of themselves using and loving your products. The more images and videos you have on your listing, the more likely people are to share their own.

Showcase Your Other Products

If you have a brand or trademark, you can take advantage of Amazon’s Enhanced Brand Content. This helps your brand and products stand out. Otherwise, all you have in your listing is plain text.

There are times when the product listing a customer lands on, simply doesn’t hit the mark. But while they are scrolling through your listing, they find something like this:

Enhanced Brand Content from Amazon draws customers’ attention to generate more sales.

By showcasing your other products, customers might zone in on something they want to buy or learn more about.

Talk to Your Customer

When it comes to selling on Amazon, you really only have one chance to talk to your customers—and that’s through your listing page. Stuffing keywords into your listing is important for attracting customers. But once you have them on your listing, you need to convert them by addressing the value of your offerings.

What problem does your product solve? Are your hiking socks more durable than your competitor’s offering? Are your blankets softer to the touch than anything else on the market? Are your food storage containers stackable to save cabinet space? Demonstrate these attributes to your customers through your text, images, and videos.

For example, I sell fun alternatives to children’s clothing through my brand Cuddle Club. Parents often buy onesies for their babies because they are easy to take on and off for diaper changes. This is all the more helpful when parents are taking their little ones in and out of car seats. So, knowing this, I always include a car seat image for my buyers.

Brainstorm ways to address common concerns for your audience.

Use Junglytics to Track Your Progress and Increase Your Conversion Rate

As you can see, there are lots of areas to explore when trying to improve your lagging Amazon sales. All of this can be a little overwhelming, especially when you aren’t entirely sure what’s working and what isn’t.

Amazon sellers can vastly improve their strategic decision-making by taking advantage of business intelligence tools like Junglytics.

Junglytics lets you segment by product page, which is a big win for sellers. If you’re only seeing your data as an aggregate—as you would in Seller Central—you miss all sorts of important insights. Getting down to a product level gives you everything you need to make smart, informed decisions.

A Junglytics card showing conversion rate by product line.

With Junglytics you can view more than 40 metrics in our customizable, easy-to-use dashboards. With a few clicks, you can view:

Sales trends
Profit
Total Advertising Cost of Sales (TACoS)
Traffic
Conversion rates
Amazon fees
ROI
Margin
Advertising performance metrics by ad type (products, display, brand)
Organic vs. PPC
Inventory
And so, so much more

If you’re ready to garner the insights you need to improve your selling power, you’ve got to explore Junglytics for Amazon sellers.

For more thought leadership relevant to Amazon sellers, read our content and follow me on LinkedIn.

‍Interested in seeing what Junglytics can do for you? Explore our live demo today!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tom Rohlf

Tom has been selling on Amazon since 2014 - He exited his first business (Playerten.com) in 2019 and is the CEO and Co-founder of Cuddle Club an Amazon native children's clothing brand.

Enjoyed this read?

Stay up to date with the Amazon seller news, strategies, and insights sent straight to your inbox!

Thank you! Your submission has been received!

Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.

Related Articles

How to Prepare for Amazon Prime Day 2024

How to Use Junglytics for Amazon Seller Analytics

Junglytics Assistant: Pro Tips for Amazon Business Analytics

Junglytics Reports for Amazon Agencies and Businesses

hello@junglytics.com