Demystifying Amazon Product Listing Variations

Watch our webinar recap where we discuss all about Amazon Product Variations. Who is it for? How to create & leverage Amazon Product Variations? The do’s & don’ts. We’ll discuss how you can optimize a current product variation & give you the most effective content strategy for your product listing variations on Amazon.

An Expert’s Take on Amazon Listing Variations

Pooja Kothari: There are a lot of brands that have been experimenting and leveraging the
feature by Amazon. However, there’s, you know, as I said, there is always
confusion as to how the listings variations work on Amazon and how you could
make the best out of it. And that’s exactly what we are doing, but let’s talk about
the basics first. I’ll be taking you through how to create and leverage Amazon
product variations, the dos and don’ts, and we’ll also discuss how you can
optimize a current product variation and give you the most effective content
strategy for your product listings variation on Amazon. Now we know that not all
customers will have the same preferences when shopping on Amazon. Some
prefer, you know, a different color or some prefer a different size. And that’s why
it’s very important to look at Amazon product listing variations and adding
variations to your listings will definitely improve your customer experience. And
it’ll also improve your visibility and give you higher profits.

How Amazon defines variations is as a parent and child relationship, as different
product options listed within the same listing. Now the products are related to
one another, but they have different attributes, such as color, size, flavor, and
other characteristics allowing customers to compare and purchase from multiple
options available, on a single product detail page. And therefore, instead of
having separate product listings that come in different colors, you can group
them together on the same detail page. And the multiple ASINs variations are
displayed as, you know, color choices or size choices, and things like that. Now
the main question is, is listings variation really useful for you? And before you
decide whether you want to pursue product variations, it’s really important to
understand if they are the right fit for your product and whether your listings
can be varied. So before you get started, you may want to consider the following
points.

The first one is that your products are very similar to each other. The second,
there are one or more variations for your product. Third, the separate products
could share the same titles and descriptions. And lastly, the products can share
one parent product, meaning they are different types, but the same thing. If yes,
then this makes complete sense for you. I’ll quickly take you through the
components of listings variations which are the parent child, as well as the
variation theme, where the parent ASIN is basically a non-viable entity. It’s the
utility that holds the place for the child products. The child products of the ASINs
are basically the variations of the parent product that you can buy. And the
variation theme is the type of relationship between the parent product and the
child. And it defines to what extent these products are different from each other.
So your variation theme also varies depending on the choice and category to list
your products.

So for the child listing is, you know, in the baby category, it can vary in portion of
flavor or color, etcetera. If it is in, you know, the beauty category, it could be that
the child products can differ from each other by color or size. You can also see
two variation themes in specific product categories. For instance, if you want to
list you know, for instance, dresses in various sizes and colors, you can use the
size name or color name variation theme, which will enable your customers to
choose their preferred sizes and colors without having to look for single listings.
Now the question comes, why should you use listings variations on Amazon,
right? What are the benefits? Now creating new variations or adding a variation
listing to your existing Amazon product listing can be a super crucial part of your
overall Amazon SEO strategy, because the variations come with particular
benefits that we can see here, which is more visibility, higher reviews, better
rankings and boosted sales. Let’s look at each of these one by one.

The first one is increasing visibility for each child listing. So let’s say that you
have a low performing product or simply a brand new product with less or no
reviews and ratings. What you can do is match this low performing product with
a high performing one, you automatically save it from being invisible in the
search results. And the variation will help it become more discoverable to
potential customers on Amazon. For example, let’s suppose you want to sell nail
polish, instead of building a new Amazon product listing without reviews, you
can simply add your new product as a variation to an already existing listing.

How interesting is that? The next one is combining reviews for each child listing.
So when you add a new variation listing to an already existing Amazon listing
with reviews, it is enormously helpful with your ranking and visibility on the
marketplace. The reviews of variation listing will build up and increase and all list
under the same parent listing.

So no matter the kind of variation your customer ends up buying. We’ll discuss
this in a little bit more detail when we come to the do’s and don’t because this is
something very crucial but let’s talk about it then. The next is combining sales
history to increase organic social ranking. Your bestseller rank and your organic
social ranking will increase thanks to your variation listing overall sales history,
since each sale made on your parent child listing, no matter the variation goes to
your sales history and solidifies it. So that is very important. The next one is
increasing sales. Increased sales on Amazon is definitely a gift that keeps on
giving, right? When you boost visibility with variations and improve conversions,
it helps your listings succeed with the Amazon search algorithm, encourages
more reviews and ultimately enhances your marketplace presence across the
board. Now displaying different options on your Amazon product listing
simplifies the shopping process for your customer, right?

And they no longer have to go through the board of looking separately for the
right size, the flavor or color they want, as all these options are already available
in front of them. Now variations also enable customers to discover new products
that they have never seen, that they never knew existed. For instance, let’s say
your brand is selling a water bottle, right. Now, the blue water bottle is ranking
well on Amazon search results, driving a compelling amount of traffic and
converting a significant number of purchases, while it’s not the case for the
green one. Now chances are that those buyers are not even aware of the
availability of the green water bottle right. Now, when you leverage these
variations, Amazon instantly positions the green bottle as an additional choice
for the customer, already keen to buy the blue water bottle. Which aids you to
generate more sales and boost demand. Here’s another example, look at
Maybelline Fit Me Foundation, which is one of the top sellers in the foundation
cream category.

They have more than 35 shades and multiple options for quantities. Now, if you
see this one, this is not only a different quantity, but also different packaging.
And this is definitely a great example of, you know, a good variation listing that
would give you enough profits. The next section is about how to create listings
variations. Now, when you know about the benefits, you would definitely want
to go to how you can create listings variations. Before that, let’s just look at the
different categories in which you can include variations. The following is the list,
the pet supplies, toys, and games, and outdoors, groceries, health, and beauty,
clothing, and accessories and shoes. These are the top categories in which you
can use variations now how to create variations that are two different ways of
doing it. One is manually, and the other one is through the inventory file. I’ll
quickly take you through both the processes, and then we’ll go to the most
important part, which is how to optimize the content of your listings variation.
So the first one is creating a brand new listing variation manually.

When you go to your seller central dashboard and hover over your inventory
tab, you can go to the add a product and clicking on, I am adding a product, not
sold on Amazons, will allow you to go to the next section where you can either
browse through the categories to find your product or scroll down to search
function. Once you found it you need to select the matching category. Once you
select the matching category on the next page, you will be able to add the
multiple variations. If you are adding multiple variations, just leave the product
ID Blank, and you will just fill out the name of the product, the brand, and the
manufacturer section. On the same page, if you see there’s another tab on the
right are two vital info, which is variation. So after you fill the information
section, you need to click on the variation tab and select your variation theme.

Always remember that the theme will be the type of your product. So for
example, if you choose one size name or color name, your product will only vary
in size or color right. Now, enter in all the colors you will be selling and click on,
add variations.

Then enter the product ID here and product ID type condition, price, and
quantity that you see here on the table. And after you enter all the required
information, you just need to click on save and finish. And in 15 minutes your
parent-child listing will be visible in your managed inventory section. And that’s
all it takes to create a brand new variation listing from scratch. Now, the next
one is how do you do it via inventory file? And this was one of the questions
from the audience as well. So here it is. So when you need to create it from an
inventory file, to start you go on the seller central dashboard and hover over
again, inventory and add products via upload. Where you will see this particular
file. So suppose you want to create variations for a juicer and you have three
colors and two sizes as seen here. So it’ll be one parent and 25 child ASINs. So
first things this is how it’ll look in the inventory file template. Okay. Now there
are four attributes used to create the parent-child variations.

So once you’re done with the first three, you need to check the valid value sheet
for the possible variations of your product. Specify if it’s parent or child enters
the parent, the child belongs to, and then the relationship type, which is always
variation other than that for the parent. Once you’re done with this the first,
then you need to check the valid value sheet for the possible variations of your
product. You need to know that while filling out the template sheet you make,
you should make sure that each child item is unique. So for instance, you can see
here, the product ID, the color, the size, and any other variation attribute is
different. If you need to make edits to your variations, you can simply go back to
the previous file and you can run a delete feed, followed by an update feed to
save the changes. This is how this is how it looks, and that’s how you do it. Now.
All you need to do is upload your inventory file using the ad product that we saw
previously. And that is it. And lastly, within creating your listings variation, there
is another thing that how you add a variation to an existing Amazon listing.

So if that is one of your cases, in that case, you just need to follow the same
process that we did previously, adding manual listings. And just go to the
managed inventory tab and select the product that you want to create a
variation for, copy its listings, and follow the same process through the variation
tab, and you will be able to do it All right. Now, do’s and don’ts, it’s time for. So
the first one is it is super advisable that you avoid using too many variation
themes on your Amazon product listing not to overwhelm your potential
customers with disorganized themes and provide them with a positive customer
experience. Right? The second one is when you create a parent-child
relationship between two unrelated products and use it to generate a profit on
Amazon, you end up inflating the search rank through variation manipulation. So
for instance, when you launch a new product on Amazon, you pair it with a
former parent listing that performed well, but it is no longer active to take
advantage of its reviews.

These reviews would then manipulate your Amazon product listing and make
your new product look as if, you know, as if it is well reviewed and eventually
help it rank higher on search results. The last one is increasing your product
performance by combining reviews. This is another tactic that Amazon sellers
apply to the marketplace and it’s merging highly reviewed variations with poorly
rated ones to enhance their product performance. This is exactly what I was
talking about previously, Amazon used to tolerate this kind of action previously,
but still after many customer complaints who were not happy with their
purchases, the online retail giant finally decided to make the reviews display for
each variation instead of combining the reviews together. So it has actionable
causes. So these are the three things that you should completely pay attention
to. You should not never do these things while you’re creating your listings
variations. Now what we should do and what we should absolutely do to
increase profits using listings variations.

The first one is boosting underperforming variations. Now the way Amazon
products are shown in search depends on the performance of your variations. So
for most part, Amazon shows the top performing variations in the search results
you know, taking the reference of the photo that we see here. The red bottle is
shown in the search results for stainless steel water bottle. If you see it on
Amazon. Now, when you click on its listings, you can see there are more than 15
colors available for purchase, but the red one is shown as default because they
are the most popular. Now, if you have a variation that doesn’t perform well, it
can still be displayed in the search results. This happens when a customer
searches for a specific keyword that is related to that variation. For example, if
the blue bottle for this listing is not the best seller, they can still show results for
blue stainless steel water bottle versus just stainless steel water bottle.

Additionally, if you have a surplus of blue water bottles in your warehouses, you
can have these discounted on your listings. If the shoppers are looking for the
red bottle on your listings, but they see the blue ones cheaper, they may be
more inclined to choose the variation you’re looking to sell through. Right? The
next one is content placement on parent and child product pages. This is very
important, and I’ve seen most of the brands forget to leverage this. Now,
regarding listings in the descriptions can look different for each variation.

Content is critical when you’re planning out your variations in seller central, and
there are a couple of ways you can display your content for a listing with
variations. So on the parent and child level, now this is very important for the
customer experience because any characteristic or element that is different in
one variation than other needs to be called out in the descriptions. You can see
the example here, when the content displayed on the trial level, the listings can
show a different description for each variation.

Referencing the coconut oil image that you see here. You can see the content
changes for the two variations. If you see for the first one, which is around 54 Fl,
easy to use packaging. The last bullet point that you see, it says easy to use
packaging and for the next image, the image right below it, you see the last
bullet point says feasible, organic superfood that’s mess free. So that’s a great
use of you know, the bullet points and differentiating using different keywords.

There are some situations in which you won’t want the description to change
because the variations have everything in common, except for the theme. You
know, for example, let’s see slippers. So all the slippers are the same aside from
the color. In that case, you can place the content under the parent listing. So all
the descriptions remain the same for each variation, right? And then you have
enhanced branded content for variations, this one is a bit tricky. If you want
enhanced branded content that is specific to each of your variations, then there
are two strategies you can use.

If you are variating for themes, like, you know, color or size, you can have
enhanced brand content for your listing. For example, if you have a different
color, if you have different colors of mixes you’re selling, the image that you see
here, having one EBC would work because you can, you can easily display all the
colors in one spread, right? But if you need each variation to have individual EBC
or enhanced branded content, the sure fire way to do it is make individual
listings.

And sometimes EBC can be uploaded to the child products, but it’s not
guaranteed under which category and how it’ll work for you. Now, if there are
more differences between your variations for example, you know, both color and
size, then it may not be effective to use one EBC shared under your listing,
depending on the product.

For example, the image that you see here, so if you
had jerseys that featured different teams, it is not ideal to have the same EBC
that shows a customer’s favorite team along with their rival. So the combined
enhanced branded content might lead to a higher bounce rate on the listing.

And separating the variations into their listing in this case helps to make sure the
experience of the shopper is best possible. Right? Moving onto the quick tips of
this quick session. So following on the quick tips, you should make sure the most
popular variation of your product, your focal point, that your customer would
most likely search for and purchase. You should make sure to list your products
in a category that authorizes Amazon variation listings. Add as many images as
you can to classify.

You must monitor and manage your inventory after you list it
at regular time intervals. In case you notice that you are not doing well in sales,
you can switch your listings from variation to the traditional listings. And in the
end, make sure that you follow the steps that I just shared with you. You follow
all the tips of content optimization that I shared with you to create your error
free product variations, and you will eventually notice the results and see how
beneficial these could be for your SEO optimization strategy.