Amazon EBC stands for Enhanced Brand Content: it’s a piece of content that includes bundled information about a brand and one or more of the products it sells. It is also known as Amazon A+ Content, although that used to be a different, specific premium service for Amazon Vendors, that is now combined and available on Amazon Seller Central.
Actually, EBC is a tool Amazon offers brands to customize and improve their customer experience within the marketplace. For quicker reference, we could simply say it is a branded infographic where brands present their products in a contextualized form, and state their identity, story, and core values. Something that audiences highly appreciate nowadays.
At Content2Sell we specialize in creating Amazon listings, and many of our projects include Amazon EBC and A+ content you can see in our portfolio.
These are some of the keys to our clients’ success.
Benefits of using Amazon EBC
As we said earlier, A+ content gives listings a strong competitive advantage. As an average, Conversion Rates increase from 5% to 12% in the best cases.
- Better product descriptions than on standard descriptions. A+ descriptions allow combining images and text (which is forbidden on regular listings).
- Shows the key benefits of your products with more (and better) images and graphic assets than your competitors.
- That, in turn, leads to real expectations on what the product will look and feel like, hence reducing returns and complaints.
- Creative storefronts. EBC comes in 5 different default templates, and yet allows to customize your own and to freely arrange the modules in it (for text, image,…).
- Brands get more creative freedom to present themselves.Increased loyalty and brand awareness.
- Decreased ACoS (Acquisition cost).
- Higher conversion rates and ROI.
What are the requirements?
Having access to Amazon EBC gives sellers a direct competitive advantage versus competitors. Unfortunately, not everyone is eligible. There are three major requirements:
- Having an Amazon Seller account, although that does not immediately grant you the chance to use EBC. Moreover, Amazon saves them for brands with proven legitimacy, for better scrutinization.
- Registering to Amazon’s Brand Registry is a mandatory requirement to be able to benefit from Amazon’s EBC content. And approval may take several months – if not a year.
- Applying brands need a Commercial Registration number or a registered trademark.
The time to get a brand registered or approved by Amazon should be used to sell regularly, be it on Amazon or other platforms and marketplaces. Do not take eligibility for granted. Rather, get quality content that’s good enough for the product to attract, engage, and sell while you get it.
Amazon EBC for higher conversion
What to do
- Clear and concise copy. Amazon descriptions are supposed to remain descriptive, not persuasive. Keep your copy simple and to-the-point, so it explains what your product is and does, its features, and the problems they solve. Avoid big words, original slogans, and heavy text. Let the images to their job!
- Use bullet-points wisely. Bullet points are a helpful part of A+ Content – when used correctly. They allow to explain a product’s USPs in few words, so choose them carefully.
- Use High-quality imagery. Image quality is critical in Amazon. In fact, Amazon’s main product image is not only decisive for consumers to click on a listing, but also has a strong effect on the Amazon CTR, which impacts on the listing’s position over time. With the right dimensions and resolution, consumers get a real idea of the product and know exactly what to expect.
- Features and relatability. Focus on the features which make your product unique. Use close-up images to say what matters to your potential buyers. Use lifestyle photography to show situations when your product is needed and make relatable cases. Each picture should show the specific benefits of every specific feature.
- Do rely on video. Remember video provides full product explanations, but also emphasize the need for it in a relatable way. Video is the preferred type of content, so, why wouldn’t you?
- Keywords and Alt text. As important as the above is optimizing your copy to Amazon’s SEO and adding ALT tags to the images, so they can be indexed and identified by search engines.
- Take your customer by the hand. Think of your content hierarchy and prioritize what information needs to be highlighted. The most important features and benefits should always go first.
What NOT to do
- Don’t be stingy. Your only purpose is to provide all the information consumers need about each specific trait. Including two features in one image is something that rarely works. Use one feature per section and make every function crystal-clear.
- Do not use images you have used before. Firstly, because it’s a breach of Amazon’s Terms and Conditions and users skip it after seeing it again. Secondly, why wouldn’t you add a different image when what people struggle more with is choosing the best images for a listing?
- Avoid promotional claims and guarantees. Amazon EBC is not campaign content, or something used to promote products. Instead, it provides brands with added value solely on their products, not the entire purchase and delivery process.
- Exaggerate. The language, voice and tone that works in Amazon is plain and sober. And that does not mean boring, but you must always remember that Amazon is about what consumers search, not a highway billboard.
- Add links, URLs or contact information. This may sound obvious, but it is worth reminding it’s a one-way ticket to penalties, being unpublished or banned. Amazon is not a gateway to your website or your distributors’.
PRO TIP: A common mistake.
Most Amazon EBCs are designed for desktop: small pictures with text next to it, or incorrect proportions.
That gives a poor experience leading to lower conversions, as most Amazon purchases happen on mobile devices.
Brand consistency
Think of your Amazon EBC as a storefront and align it with your brand’s identity and personality. Do mind your fonts, colors, graphic direction, and voice and tone, so consumers get familiar with your brand, your story, and the products you sell. Amazon may be the top-selling e-commerce platform, but to you, it should remain a sales extension of your brand and not your single sales channel.
A few final words
If product content is critical to catch an audience’s attention, brand content isn’t any less. Amazon knows, and that’s why high-quality pictures and video are among their basic listing requirements. It’s understandable, as the more sales happen, the more the Bezos empire grows.
Not all listings on Amazon have A+ content, nor do all applications to Amazon EBC go through. Many applications get rejected, sometimes for clear breaches of Terms and Conditions, and some other times for reasons you can easily avoid (like including a competitor’s trademark images or content, or not meeting content standards).
Since you got here, we thought you deserve to see some of our complete Amazon EBC to get the full picture of their customization possibilities, and the importance and making a tight and consistent design.
Think your Amazon listing could be doing much better? Just schedule a call with us and get a FREE content audit from our team of product experts and e-commerce specialists.
