Building and Managing the Perfect Amazon Catalog

Properly building and managing an Amazon catalog isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it process. There are many nuances to catalog management that require constant attention – from the initial setup of product listings to the occasional, unfortunate ASIN suspension. In today’s retail landscape, having an established marketplace health strategy is a necessity for brands looking to succeed on e-commerce. 

Product Setup

This is a brand’s chance to extend their message to the Amazon marketplace. If it’s not done correctly, it can negatively impact customer experience, cause unnecessary returns, or result in bad reviews. High-quality photos, thoroughly explained product details, feature notes, and answers to commonly asked questions are all things that contribute to a properly set up listing. Ensuring a product is well represented is essential to its success. A listing should provide all the information shoppers need and reflect the customer experience delivered on the brand’s DTC site. 

There are lots of ways a product’s setup can go wrong. Maybe there’s a lack of information, or maybe the product photos aren’t right, or maybe the level of customer service just isn’t there. Those kinds of finer details can easily cause a brand to lose out on sales and leave a bad impression with shoppers. Jeni Malone, Netrush Marketplace Health Director

For more on product setup, read Content is the Conversation: How to Build a Great Amazon Listing.

Catalog Organization

An organized and clearly communicated catalog that can be easily navigated delivers a better experience for online shoppers. Catalogs should be organized in a way that’s clear and searchable — something that requires a lot of ongoing maintenance and listing optimization.Disruption within the organization of a catalog is bound to happen. Take Nutcase, a leading bicycle helmet brand, for example. Prior to working with Netrush, Nutcase had situations where customer frustration resulted from fragmented product listings. Nutcase had poor search visibility and low sales performance with product launches. Netrush’s Marketplace Health team helped the brand combine product listings with clear size and style options, inject newly launched product designs into parent listings, and collect product reviews to boost sales ranking. Instead of having to sift through many different listings to find a helmet in the right style, color, and size, customers could easily select what they wanted from one parent listing.Beyond customer experience, combining multiple product variations under one parent has a plethora of benefits. Because all sales and reviews went from being shared between 150 listings to 5 consolidated ones, Nutcase’s search ranking skyrocketed. As a result, their sales did too. 

Catalog Maintenance

Maintaining a catalog is the continuous process of identifying and fixing issues such as content mishaps and is essential for brands on Amazon. Duplicate listings and mismatched or outdated content are all issues that need to be routinely addressed.Issue resolution is one of the more complex areas of Amazon catalog management. It’s important for brands to have a strategy in place that works toward error prevention within the catalog. 

Issue Resolution

There's one issue that worries brands the most – blocked ASINs, also referred to as suspended listings. Suspended listings are no longer visible to shoppers and stop product sales in their tracks.ASINs can be suspended for a handful of reasons — such as being flagged as hazmat, violations against Amazon policies, or stranded inventory (meaning something happened to the ASIN that made the inventory unavailable). Whatever the case may be, having an issue resolution strategy is critical to getting listings live again in an efficient and smooth manner.Within the past year, Netrush has resolved over 40,000 catalog cases for partner brands. Here’s one example of a case, handled by a Netrush account health specialist, that happens to many brands:Challenge: An ambiguous inventory error caused an ASIN to become inactive. An inventory error can mean that inventory is either under review in a fulfillment center or a glitch occurred through Amazon and just needs to be refreshed. Amazon generally recommends contacting their support team directly in these cases.Solution:

I opened a case with Amazon, requesting them to refresh the listing. They responded back within 3 hours! They said that they’ve refreshed the listing and explained that it was active again – maybe one of my fastest case resolutions yet. In some cases, it can take up to two weeks for a case to be officially resolved. It’s really just the back and forth transferring of information that lengthens the process – once in the right hands, things run pretty smoothly. Account Health Specialist, Gracie Hamlin.

Key Takeaways

• Product setup lays the foundation for a brand's catalog and it needs to be done the right way. Successful brands on Amazon build their catalogs with customer experience in mind – positively impacting their presence in the marketplace.

• An organized catalog results in a boosted search rank and simple navigation, ultimately delivering a better online shopping experience for the customer. Maintaining that organization requires ongoing dedication — a team, carefully watching the catalog every day. Mishaps are going to happen, but when they do, it’s important to address them in a timely fashion.

• Suspended product listings no longer bring in sales. It’s crucial for brands to have an issue resolution strategy on deck for when these roadblocks occur. The faster a brand can get a listing live again, the better.

Learn more about Marketplace Health and how Netrush provides a solid strategy for our partner brands.