Recently, Amazon has made available to brand owners enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry, Amazon Premium A+ Content, (also referred to as A++ Content).
For eligible sellers, Premium A+ Content is offered by Amazon at zero cost during an extended promotional period for all ASINs registered to their brand.
What is Amazon Premium A+ Content?
Amazon Premium A+ Content expands upon Basic A+ content, allowing sellers to utilize enhanced imagery and video in order to place their products’ most important features and benefits centerstage.
Amazon A+ Content vs. Amazon Premium A+ Content
Basic A+ content is an invaluable tool that top sellers use to provide additional details on product features and complement the bullet points and images on the main product detail page. Basic A+ content appears in the Product Description section of the detail page, and includes:
- Access to a diverse set of modules/layouts for content creation
- Custom paragraph headers and images
- Unique image and text layouts
- Product comparison charts – these allow for a minimum of two products and two attributes to compare items in a product line or across the seller’s brand
- Rich text editor, including bulleted/number feature lists
Premium A+ Content ‘levels-ups’ Basic A+ Content by…
- increasing the total number of modules sellers can use from five to seven,
- expanding the usable real estate of the page, using the entire width of the screen,
- enabling brands to embed videos either as a full screen video in the product description or as one that appears alongside text,
- the ability to use multiple video modules,
- having interactive comparison charts that allow shoppers to compare similar products head to head,
- allowing sellers to create modules that respond when hovering over features,
- providing clickable Q & A sections,
- availability of image carousel modules, and
- product pages are mobile-friendly and voice-friendly.
(left) Basic A+ Content: text heavy, images are ‘boxy’ and are limited in terms of interaction with the shopper.
(right) Premium A+ Content: images extend the entire width of the screen, less text, images displayed are more visually striking, images are interactive – additional product information is ‘clickable’ permitting detailed comparisons to be made by shoppers.
(left) Basic A+ Content: product details are presented without the ability to be clicked on to reveal specific features.
(right) Premium A+ Content: modules respond when hovering over features, clickable Q & A sections.
How Do I Get Amazon Premium A+ Content?
Once sellers have a firm understanding of the benefits of Amazon Premium A+ content, the next step is to ensure eligibility.
Eligibility Requirements for Amazon Premium A+ Content
The following eligibility requirements are per country that a seller does business in and publishes A+ Content in. The seller may meet requirements in one country, but not another.
Sellers are eligible for Premium A+ Content if:
- The seller has already published A+ Brand Story to all ASINs within the catalog that they own. This can be confirmed by accessing the A+ Content Manager to determine if they have created and published a project. The seller will also see A+ Brand Story on the ASINs under the “From the Brand” fields on the detail page.
- The seller has had a minimum of 15 project submissions of A+ content that have been approved within the past 12 months for each Amazon storefront. This can be confirmed by accessing the A+ Content Manager and checking the status of their submitted projects and the last modified date.
Bonus Tip: A+ Brand Story content educates shoppers about the origin/history of the brand, its core values and product lines through the use of one module with up to nineteen preformatted cards within a carousel experience. It can be used in addition to A+ Content (Basic or Premium). A+ Brand Story features include a carousel display with full screen background on desktop and mobile devices, image and text cards, links to the seller’s Amazon store and other products.
What Sellers Can Do to Meet the Eligibility Requirements for Premium A+ Content
To meet eligibility requirements, sellers should:
- apply A+ brand story to all of their ASINs within the A+ content manager
- use the A+ Content Manager to begin creating A+ content
- select Brand Story
- add Modules
- apply ASINs
- review and submit to Amazon.
Pro Tip: Sellers can improve their content approval rates by carefully following Amazon’s A+ Content guidelines. This will help increase A+ content submission approval rates and the time it takes to get content approved and published.
How Amazon Confirms Eligibility for Premium A+ Content
At the start of every month, Amazon will re-evaluate the eligibility of brand owners for Premium A+ Content. If a seller meets the eligibility requirements, Amazon will enable this feature within the A+ content manager. The seller will see a banner in the A+ content manager notifying them that they now have access, along with a link to create Premium A+ content.
What Happens at the End of the Promotional Period?
At the end of the promotional period, Amazon may disable a seller’s ability to add Premium A+ modules to new ASINs. However, any Premium A+ Content published to ASINs during the promotional period will remain on the detail page free of charge. If Amazon announces a fee for Premium A+ Content, sellers will not be charged for the existing content they have created.
If a seller wants to switch out that content, they may do so at any time by publishing A+ content using the basic A+ standard modules.
Premium A+ Content Caveats
Premium A+ Content offers new opportunities for eligible sellers to increase their conversion rates while providing exciting new options for enhancing the buying experience of potential customers.
Eligible sellers should keep in mind that if they have a product that requires very detailed technical information, that the best option for such a product may be Basic A+ Content.
Also, because there is a distinct lack of text modules used with Premium A+ Content, SEO can be impacted, and like Basic A+ Content, the pages will not be indexed to appear in the search results on Amazon (but are on Google).
Ultimately, both Premium A+ and Basic A+ exist to aid sellers and their brands in creating an exceptional shopping experience.
Eligible sellers should use Premium A+ Content to increase discoverability and shopper buying confidence. Amazon Premium A+ content helps drive rapid purchase decisions while reducing the likelihood of having products returned.
Using A+ Content is just one part of building a strong, seamless Amazon Advertising strategy. Our team of Amazon Advertising experts can help you to clearly determine any areas for improvements and show you how to maximize every dollar in your Ad Spend budget.
Schedule a call today with us today to discuss your Amazon advertising needs.
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