If you want to be a successful Amazon seller there are a lot of metrics you need to master, but one of the most important is Amazon click-through rate.
Click-through rate is a good measure of how attractive your Amazon listings are and is one of the most actionable metrics providing a great deal of insight into potential areas for improvement.
But what exactly is click-through rate? And, more importantly, how can you consistently improve it to grow your traffic and increase your sales? All that and more coming up in this article.
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What is Click-Through Rate?
Click-through rate (CTR) is a metric that measures how often users click on a particular link or advert.
In the context of selling on Amazon, CTR is a measure of how often shoppers who see your product listing on a search results page click through to your product detail page.
How do you calculate Click-Through Rate?
In order to calculate CTR on Amazon, divide the number of clicks by the number of impressions (how many times a product appears in search) and multiply by 100.
For example, if an Amazon listing gains 1,000 impressions and attracts 15 clicks it would have a click-through rate of 1.5% – (15 / 1,000) * 100 = 1.5.
Unfortunately, Amazon doesn’t reveal data on how many organic impressions any particular listing receives and as such the only way to measure click-through rate is by running Amazon pay-per-click (PPC) ads.
By running Amazon advertising campaigns you access a host of extra data including impressions, clicks and as such click-through rates.
You can access these metrics either inside Campaign Manager in Seller Central, or in search term reports which can be downloaded from the advertising section of your account.
Why is Amazon Click-Through Rate important?
A high CTR indicates that shoppers find your listings attractive and are interested in learning more about your products.
However, a low CTR could be an indication that your listings are not as appealing as they could be and need some optimization.
Not only is CTR a good indicator of the overall health of your listing, but it’s also one of the factors that Amazon uses to determine which products to feature in search results (referred to as ranking) and on product detail pages.
So, if you want your products to be seen by more shoppers, improving CTR should be a top priority.
What is a good Click-Through Rate on Amazon?
Studies show the average CTR for Amazon sellers is 0.41%.
Whilst this can be used as a general benchmark, there is a lot more context needed to understand what is a good CTR for your specific products and categories.
See, what may be a good average CTR for one category or product type, may be a low CTR for another and benchmarking yourself against the whole Amazon seller pool isn’t always helpful.
Instead, you can understand what a good click-through rate is for your products in your category, by accessing the free Benchmarker report provided by Perpetua.
A must-have free Amazon PPC analysis tool that benchmarks your performance against your direct competitors. Having analyzed over $5 billion in ad spend, this report helps you quickly identify opportunities for growth & optimization.
Simply enter your details, connect your Amazon advertising account and the Benchmarker report will, as the name suggests, benchmark you against your direct competition.
You may find that what is generally deemed a high CTR is actually low for your category, and vice versa.
Regardless of where a listing’s CTR currently stands, Amazon sellers should avoid the mindset of having arrived at ‘good’ and settling.
Like most other metrics, click-through rate is one that can and should be continually tested for ongoing improvement.
What factors impact Amazon Click-Through Rate?
When looking to improve click-through rate on Amazon, the first key is understanding what factors impact this important metric.
The biggest factors that impact click-through rate on Amazon are:
- Organic ranking
- Amazon ads placements
- Relevancy
- Main or title image
- Pricing
- Reviews
- Promotions
- Shipping
- Title
- Amazon badges
How can I improve my Amazon Click-Through Rate?
So, you now know the key factors that impact Amazon click-through rate.
But how do you improve them?
Let’s take a more detailed look at each factor so that you can optimize for CTR and ensure more shoppers land on your listings.
1. Improve organic ranking
The higher a listing appears in search, the more likely it is to get clicked.
A study by FirstPageSage showed the #1 ranking result on Google averages a whopping 39.6%, with #2 at 18.4% and #3 at 10.1%. Over two-thirds of all clicks are mopped up by the top three organic results!
Whilst Amazon and Google have their differences, the general principle applies – better ranking; higher CTR.
Improving organic ranking on Amazon boils down to one thing: making more sales.
Amazon has a clear interest in ensuring the products likely to make the most amount of sales appear as high up as possible in ranking results.
So, to improve ranking look to generate a higher volume of sales by:
- Testing lower prices
- Running promotions such as lightning deals and coupons
- Creating Amazon ad campaigns targeting highly relevant keywords
- Communicating with your existing audience about any promotions you run
As already mentioned, there is no way to measure CTR in relation to organic ranking.
But given the data we can gather with PPC it is clear that higher ranking will lead to improved CTR.
2. Optimize PPC bids for top-of-search ad position
Always remember – a product loaded is an impression served.
So even if your Amazon ads position is at the very bottom of the results page and the customer never scrolls that far, it still counts as an impression.
So, a quick win for higher CTR is to bid higher for better Amazon PPC ad placement, or for even more control make use of the ‘Adjust bids by placement‘ functionality (formerly bid+) in your ad campaign which allows you to set bid weightings for higher ad placement.
3. Ensure relevancy
Amazon is a platform with incredibly high purchase intent.
Shoppers who come to the platform generally know what they are looking for.
As such it’s crucial to prioritize the most relevant keywords first in your listing and also in your Amazon PPC campaigns.
A strong CTR sends clear relevancy signals to the Amazon algorithm and will help improve organic ranking creating a flywheel effect for a higher click-through rate.
To find the most relevant keywords to target with your listing, follow the steps in our Helium 10 Cerebro guide to find the exact keywords your top 10 competitors are making the most sales from.
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4. Use an attention-grabbing main image
The first thing shoppers see when they land on a results page is the first image of each product.
So it’s important to make a good impression with a high-quality, professional image that accurately represents your product and helps you stand out against your competition.
To maximize the impact of your main image:
- Minimize white space. Get that product all the way to the edge of the image to make it appear as big as possible on the results page.
- Use contrasting colors. Nothing grabs attention like contrast. Either use this research to influence color choices during product development, or use other aspects like packaging in your primary image to create as much contrast as possible.
- Get creative. Amazon’s style guidelines stipulate that only the product should be featured in the main photo, but they don’t stipulate how to display your product. Got multiple pieces in your product? Get them out in the picture!
Here’s an example of how sellers of dog supplements are doing just that:
When creating a brief for image designers using something like Fiverr I always screenshot the current search page as a reference point to make sure your image stands out.
Once you have your image, use a free tool like Canva to superimpose that image onto your screenshot and ask a friend which listing they’d most likely click on.
If they don’t choose yours, keep testing!
Once you set the main image live, you can also continue to split-test it by occasionally swapping it out for a new image with small tweaks to see what performs best.
5. Split-test your pricing
Whilst we certainly don’t recommend trying to be the cheapest option on the market, there’s no escaping it; price is a big click-through rate factor.
In order to optimize your Amazon listings for a higher click-through rate, testing different prices against each other is highly recommended.
You can use the Manage Your Experiments feature inside Seller Central to create A/B tests (often called split tests) by testing two different prices against each other.
If one outperforms the other following the test, then stick with the higher-performing option.
It’s important to only split test one aspect at a time to know exactly what change is driving any results you see.
6. Generate more reviews
Reviews still play a big role in consumer confidence and therefore click-through rate on Amazon.
A product with 10,000 positive reviews will generally have a far higher click-through rate than a product with a handful of one-star reviews.
Both how many reviews and the quality of the reviews are important, so driving more and better reviews is essential.
So if your product has few or no reviews, consider using a tool like FeedbackWhiz to automate the process of customer follow-up and attract more positive reviews.
7. Leverage promotions
Remember; elements that are visible on a search results page are those that will impact your click-through rate.
One of the elements that stand out as most visible to customers when searching on Amazon is a Coupon (called Vouchers in some marketplaces).
With this form of promotion, sellers can set a percentage or dollar amount off which is then represented by a brightly colored flash sticker under the title.
The contrasting color of the coupon alone is enough to draw a customer’s attention and, given these are still somewhat under-utilized by sellers as a whole, present a great opportunity for improved CTR.
8. Offer Prime shipping
Amazon boasts a Prime membership of over 150 million worldwide and perhaps the biggest selling point of the annual subscription is fast shipping.
More and more, customers are coming to the platform and paying close attention to which product can get to them the fastest.
As an Amazon seller who now understands how the process works, whenever shopping on Amazon I now always look at whether the seller is Prime enabled and exactly when my product will arrive.
These key bits of information are both displayed clearly in search results before a customer clicks on your listing.
So, if you want to maximize your CTR, be sure to take advantage of the Amazon FBA program.
9. Craft an engaging title
Whilst it might not drive the same kind of results as a main image or pricing, your listing’s title still has its part to play in the overall CTR picture.
Having the right keywords in your title is essential, but you should also ensure you’re using clear phrases that read well and highlight the benefits of your product in order to attract a customer’s click.
10. Seek Amazon badges
Promotional badges such as the Amazon Best Seller badge often have a positive impact on click-through rates.
Other badges include Amazon’s Choice and more recently a ‘Small Business’ badge awarded to Amazon sellers meeting certain small business criteria.
These badges appear prominently and give further incentive to customers to click through and view your listing.
In Conclusion: Click-Through Rate & Beyond
By testing and improving these ten elements visible to customers in searches you can drive more traffic to your listings to get more eyeballs on your products.
However, attracting a click is just the first step of a sale on Amazon.
Once you’ve gained a new visitor to your listing, it’s essential that you then do everything you can to make sure that the browser becomes a buyer.
The good news? We’ve written a complete guide to improving your conversion rate on Amazon.
Combining an increased click-through rate with an increased conversion rate has the potential to send your sales skyrocketing, making the effort involved more than worthwhile.
What are you waiting for? Get that click-through rate moving on up!
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