Amazon Unboxing Episode 2: Cornhole Bags

Our dynamic duo is back at it again tearing down listings and seeing who can get a passing score for a fully optimized listing from these two Jungle Scout Judges.

Are you subscribed to Amazon Unboxing? Stay updated whenever a new episode and content is released by signing up for free here >>>

Subscribe to Amazon Unboxing Episode Updates

This particular Unboxing episode was filmed back in August and at that time this product was making $18,000 and it only had 32 reviews. Now, it is making less than five sales per month showing how much things can change over time as well as the fact that many items are seasonal. This is a great lesson for sellers to check the sales trends of a particular product or niche over time. If you want to look at sales for a product over time, you can view sales trends with our chrome extension.

Looking for the historical monthly sales? Open up Amazon and do a keyword search for the product that you are researching. Then click on the Jungle Scout Extension. Once the extension loads, click on the monthly sales for the product that you are looking at which is highlighted in blue. You can look at the monthly sales over the past five months. You can also view daily sales for the past 90 days by clicking on daily sales that are highlighted in blue. This chart can give you a better idea of how a product performs over a longer period of time.

If you’re scratching your head as to how this product made so many sales over the summer with so little reviews you’re not the only one!

Let’s take a deeper look at the listing itself and see how many opportunities may have been missed by this seller because their listing was not fully optimized!

Improvement #1: Optimize Your Title

Joel and Adam point out how important it is to add your most profitable keywords to the beginning of your title. This particular listing doesn’t even have the highest search volume phrase of “cornhole bean bags” in the title. Joel points out that Amazon considers the first few keywords in your title to be the keywords that you are saying are most relevant to your product. If you want to rank for main keywords for your product, place them at the beginning of your product title.

Example:

Original Title: AceLife ACA Regulation Weather Resistant Cornhole Bags Set of 8 Plastic Pellets-Filled with Tote Bag
Recommended Title: Cornhole Bean Bags – ACA Regulation Weather Resistant Cornhole Bean Bags Set of 8 with Tote Bag by AceLife

This particular listing is not ranking for very many keywords and we were able to see what it is ranking for by using the reverse ASIN tool on Jungle Scout. This same tool can be used to take a look at competitor listings to see the keywords that they are utilizing so that you can implement them into your title, bullets, and product description.

Want to learn more about keyword scout? Click Here.

Improvement #2: Compare Your Price to Competitors

Joel and Adam also pointed out that you want to stay in the price range with your competitors. It seems that this product is almost double the price of similar listings.

Customers who can get a similar product for half the cost are usually going to choose the less expensive item. If your item is priced much higher than other products, the reason and value must be clearly portrayed to the customer in order to make sales. If a customer sees value or higher quality in your product, it is possible that you can still sell at a higher price. This corn hole bean bag listing doesn’t point out anything extra special about their bean bags which is why they should be similarly priced.

If you are trying to figure out a pricing strategy, Joel and Adam recommend using Splitly to A/B Test your price so that you price your products to sell while still making a profit.

Improvement #3: Add a Product Description or EBC

The Cornhole Bean Bags had no product description at all! The product description is a great place to add more information about your product to further compel customers to purchase. It is especially helpful to those buyers who like to research all aspects of a product.

If you are brand registered, you can upload Enhanced Brand Content instead of a product description which will showcase your product even better. Sellers who utilize enhanced brand content have seen their sales increase quite dramatically so if you have Brand Registry remember to take advantage of the Enhanced Brand Content Option!

Improvement #4: Add an Email Follow Up System

Email follow up systems are a great way to add further value to your customers. A system that Adam recommends is a three-step follow-up system.

Email #1 should be similar to the email in this video and we recommend sending this when your product ships. You want to thank the customer for the purchase and add something of value that is free to your customers. In this example, they included a free downloadable score card. You can include links to how to videos, blog posts, recipes, or any other content that is relevant to your product. The main idea is to say thank you and give your customer something of value to help them use the product just purchased.

Email #2 is where you can ask for a review of your product. You want to follow up and ask how they like the product and ask them to write a review. Be careful that you do not say a “good review” because that would be going against Amazon terms of service. This is a great follow up email because you can also prevent bad reviews by following up with customers. If something is wrong with the product, the customer can respond to you via email instead of leaving a bad review. If you follow up with stellar customer service, it is not very likely that they will leave a bad review. For example, if an item arrives to the customer broken, you can volunteer to ship out a replacement immediately to them so that they don’t write a bad review. Usually, customers appreciate this and will give a glowing review of your company and product.

Email #3 we recommend sending this third and final follow up about 5-10 days after product delivery as a final push to ask for a review. In this email, you want to follow up on the usage of the product and again ask for a review.

Email follow-ups can provide you with valuable customer feedback, helps grow your reviews, and help you prevent bad reviews. If Ace Life had implemented this system, they possibly could have avoided all of the negative reviews that have accumulated since this was filmed in August.

Provide customers with good customer service and you are sure to be rewarded with good reviews and loyal customers.

Need an email follow-up system? Check out Jungle Scout by clicking here.

Improvement #5: Improve Product Quality

When you order samples of your product, use the product yourself to find ways that it can be improved. We recommend really putting it to the test to see what kinds of quality issues customers might experience with the product and fix them. Joel and Adam had a great time really putting these cornhole bags to the test to see if they might rip break open when thrown against the wall. They figured out that these corn hold bags should be double stitched on all sides so that the bags don’t break open. Put your products to the test to make sure that they are the best quality for your customers!

Improvement #6: Add an Insert with Instructions

Adam and Joel also mentioned that there were no instructions or inserts included with this purchase. Inserts provide lots of opportunity to sellers. The first insert that you can include is a set of instructions to make sure that your customers know how to use the product. Instructions can help prevent returns as many customers return products they do not know how to use

Sellers can also provide inserts with coupon codes for customers to purchase similar or complementary products from their Amazon store. This gives your customers the incentive to purchase any accessories or additional needed items from your store.

Some brands include stickers of their logo or brand for free in their products which helps to build brand awareness when customers post these stickers.

There are lots of opportunities with adding inserts to your Amazon products. Just make sure to be abiding by Amazon’s Terms of Service to make sure that you are not breaking any rules that can get your account shut down.

You can hire a graphic designer to create product inserts at an affordable price on the Jungle Scout Market. Browse graphic designer freelancers here.

What did this listing do well?

Product Photography

We have said many times that product photography is super important in optimizing your listing and this just might be proof of how important it is. The photos on this listing include infographics, lifestyle images, images showing size, and actual product images. Adam and Joel both agreed that the photos on this listing are good, which probably contributed to many of their sales in August.

If you are not a professional photographer, we recommend hiring someone who can make take pictures that show the quality, uses, and benefits of your product. The types of photos your listing should include are lifestyle, infographics, and clear product shots.

Need a Product Photographer? Click here to see a list of freelance photographers on the Jungle Scout Market.

Conclusion:

Do you think your listings would pass the unboxing test? Click here to download our free scorecard to see if your listings past the test.

Just think of how many more sales these products could make with a fully optimized listing! Don’t leave any money on the table! Put your products and listings to the test to maximize sales and profit.

If you can’t get enough of Amazon Unboxing make sure to subscribe to new episodes every Wednesday. Sign up to get notifications when new episodes are released here.