Remazing News Package – LinkedIn Edition

Welcome to our monthly recap of the most important @Amazon and e-commerce news, including AI in online retail. Our evaluation of each update is marked in italics.

Updates: Amazon Marketplace

There is exciting news for brand stores: new KPIs are available for brands to analyse the performance of their store such as dwell time, bounce rate and new visitors to the store! These can be found under “See insights” and are also available separately for each page of the store.

As of January 31, the guidelines for product images have changed. The product detail pages will have to include an image of the product on a white background, a second picture of the product in a related environment, and a third photo with information on fit and size. If Amazon has rejected the submitted images, suitable photos are automatically displayed by Amazon or various sales partners.

?? This automated process of deleting and replacing images could be quite inconvenient. However, we can still track the image accuracy via Remdash and keep an eye on what images are live.

And: On the US marketplace, Amazon is testing the expansion of the field for generic keywords in the backend from 250 to 500 bytes. Previously there was one line in the backend; now up to 2,500 bytes can be entered in a maximum of 5 backend fields. This may be part of the strategy to create shorter titles, as more than 50 % of search queries are made via cell phones and Amazon is working on creating a better user experience. It remains to be seen whether this feature will also be tested in Europe.

?? Important to keep in mind: What matters more than the amount of keywords is the product fit! Keywords that are misleading bring nothing but disadvantages, and Amazon might remove them.

News: Amazon

Amazon's Q4: Gigantic profits

Amazon remains at the forefront of e-commerce, as the latest quarterly figures prove. The online giant recorded an impressive increase in sales and even exceeded its own forecasts.

• Turnover rose by 14% to 170 billion dollars. According to forecasts, the target was around 160 to 167 billion dollars.
• From 2.7 billion dollars in the Christmas quarter of 2022 to 13.2 billion dollars in the Christmas quarter of 2023 — a five-fold increase.
• The cloud services business and the Black Friday promotional period, during which more than one billion products were sold, were particularly successful.

?? Contrary to the changing advertising world, Amazon continues its impressive net sales growth in Advertising with an increase of 26% YoY, driven in part by 15 new advertising capabilities launched in Q4 2023. These figures also underline the importance of deal events.

More news on Amazon:

• Amazon introduces advertising models for Prime Video
• Alexa with AI: Amazon plans subscription model

News: E-Commerce

Platform retailers must submit self-certification

Online traders who sell on a marketplace, such as eBay or Amazon are required to self-certify .?

• Self-certification obliges traders to only offer products or services that comply with the applicable provisions of EU law.?
• Consequences for retailers: If the self-certification is not submitted on time, there is a risk of fines and restrictions on sales on platforms.
• However, it is the responsibility of the platform to request this self-certification.

More news on E-Commerce:

• How brands can gain the trust of customers
• Temu opens up to American & European sellers ?

News: AI in Online Retail

How AI could impact search engines

Gartner predictions show that search engine usage could decline by 25% by 2026 as AI chatbots and other virtual agents gain traction.

• Generative AI could become the replacement search engine, substituting user queries previously performed in traditional search engines.
• The usefulness and quality of content could still be decisive for success in organic search results.
• Content resulting from AI-generated output must demonstrate specialist knowledge, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.

?? As we see it, the drop in search volume won't affect marketplace content as much. We'll see the biggest drop in search volume for queries with an informational intent. That's because the information can be found in the training data, or the AI bots will crawl the information on the website, so there's no need to search for it.

More news on AI:

• Amazon AI "Rufus" revolutionizes customer support
• AI influences purchasing behavior
• Microsoft: New AI tool generates instant advertising banners