Project Description
Description
ModSock's initial Amazon launch two years ago was not fully thought-out, and factors including business growth, employee turnover, and changing Amazon standards left them with an Amazon product catalog that had inconsistencies and poorly-optimized listings. As a result, ModSock gave me the responsibility of optimizing their existing Amazon product listings, and creating a guide for any new Amazon product listings. This project involved researching best practices and learning about Amazon Seller Central/Amazon Marketplace standards, applying strategy to position their brand in the market, creating a manual to train staff, and measuring changes with key performance indicators.
Project Objectives
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Research best practices for listing ModSocks product on Amazon marketplace, incorporating input from staff knowledgable with our customer base and product optimization for web. Generate standard to which all listings should be optimized, also known as a “Style Sheet.”
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Brief staff on Style Sheet, suggesting opportunities for improvement using an example from existing catalog. Organize efforts and collaborate with existing staff to obtain photos, written content, and product quantities necessary for the new listings.
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Determine best method to publish products (i.e. individually, bulk upload, etc.). Generate a manual for in-house use on uploading future Amazon listings. List the new products on Amazon. Collaborate with staff to proof live product listings for accuracy.
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Beta-test manual with in-house staff to work out any details, such that a relatively new employee could follow the instructions.
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Determine set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for ModSocks products on Amazon. KPIs include keyword search results, sales rank, etc. Take a snapshot of KPIs for all ModSocks products, new and old.
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Collaborate with manager/other staff to implement best practices on remainder of our Amazon listings.
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Assess KPIs after a short period to measure improvements. Update Syle sheet as necessary and suggest improvements to existing product listings.
Project Process
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The first step in executing this project involved familiarizing myself with Amazon Seller Central and the Amazon Marketplace. This involved both independent research and informational meetings with my supervisor about the information they had been operating with in regards to Amazon. Most of this research was done within Seller University (see image above and to the right)
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After synthesizing my notes with ModSock's information, I compared this data with ModSock's previous product formatting regarding the Product Title, Product Information, Product Description, and Keywords. I also compared this data to top competitors in their socks' marketplace category (Novelty Socks), to gauge what I could to in order to improve product performance and create competitive advantages.
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Afterwards, I created a style sheet that acted as an in-house guide for listing products on the Amazon Marketplace. (See Appendix A)
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Once a style sheet was created, I was tasked with training ModSock's existing staff how to implement the new changes using Amazon Seller Central. I chose to train the staff with a creative, and funny presentation that matched their quirky aesthetic and work environment (See Appendix B). The presentation was well received, and we ended up collaborating after the presentation to further refine the changes.
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Once trained, the staff was equipped to create content for ModSock's products and implemented the proposed updates. While the staff was busy doing this, I worked with my supervisor to determine Key Performance Indicators that would measure the success of the changes. We recognized that there was going to be various external factors that were going to influence product sales. For example, the season and the inherent growth of their business would be huge factors impacting their sales. So, we decided to focus on sales rank and page position, as this gave us a relative measure comparing ModSock to other competitors. So, we took measures of the products before implementing the changes, and waited two weeks to measure the impact of those changes. A few of the metrics can be seen in Appendix C.
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To close the project, we analyzed ModSock's total sales. The holistic goal of the project was to increase Amazon sales, and we saw significant growth in this area. We also debriefed the project itself and analyzed what needed to be done past this quarter to maintain their success/growth.
Project Outcomes
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ModSock has requested that we keep their exact sales figures private, but one major change that came out of the project was that their Amazon sales doubled and tripled in comparison to last year! Though we can't attribute the changes I worked on implementing this quarter to be the sole contributor of this growth, we can safely say that the changes had a large influence on this growth.
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ModSock's products have also seen increased performance in areas other than sales. Since the changes were implemented, the page position of ModSock's products experienced a significant change. Some products jumped from the middle of the first page, to the top of the first page. Some products even jumped more than one page in their listings!
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These changes also made the product listings more appealing to look at, and made important information a lot more accessible to customers. Check out one of their Amazon products by clicking on the ModSock Product button.
