Exciting Updates to Amazon’s Home/Garden/Pets/Kitchen Category Style Guide

Oh, so quietly, without any fanfare, on December 17 Amazon released major changes to the Home/Garden/Pets/Kitchen Style Guide, and I am thrilled beyond belief! Why? Because – for the last 4 months – I have been working with Peter (a Seller Central rep) to end the massive confusion over title character counts. I’ve also been lobbying for the legal use of HTML in the product description section of the product detail page.

I’m ecstatic to announce that the first rollout of these changes is now available! You can download the brand-new Style Guide for Home/Garden/Pets/Kitchen here.

Among the highlights are:

• Expanded character length for titles
• Clarification on what is and is not allowed
• Warnings to scammers about trying to use loopholes
• Hints about Amazon search rankings
• Expanded character length for bullets
• Permission to cross-sell within Amazon
• Permission to legally use one HTML tag in the product description
• Details about Amazon-conducted research that reveals what shoppers find most important.

Let’s Look at Each Section Closely

Titles

The original Style Guide for this category gave a maximum title character count of 100. This has been doubled to 200 characters. With this comes the advice from Amazon to “provide a short and informative title that helps customers quickly identify the product.”

The “Do Not” list has been updated to include the following:

Do Not…

• Do not use all capitals: THEY MAKE CONTENT HARD TO READ.
• Do not include too much information. Titles should contain the minimum information needed to identify the item. More information makes it hard for customers to scan and identify items and may harm your search results.
• Do not include price or availability.
• Do not include product features, product descriptions or possible uses (these are allowed only in bullet points).
• Do not use subjective adjectives such as “awesome” or “great.”
• Do not add different available variations (for example: available in multiple colors).

In a separate section, Amazon warns: Do not attempt to get around these rules by changing your product’s brand name to ” ‘#1 Best Seller’ or another term that is prohibited.”

Key Product Features (Bullet Points)

Some important things to note here include:

• Include a list of products that are compatible with the item you are selling (if applicable). Previously, upsells and cross-sells were not allowed in any section of the product listing. Looks like Amazon has decided to allow the use of one of their favorite marketing methods within the product detail page copy now.

• Promotional messages, subjective or time-sensitive comments, pricing, promotional or shipping details should NOT be included as bullets. These have always been dedicated to features and benefits; I guess Amazon is now going to start enforcing this.

• HTML is NOT allowed in the bullets along with registration marks, trademarks, copyright symbols, exclamation points, question marks, and dollar signs. I get the exclamation points (they don’t want spammy listings) and the dollar signs (since you aren’t supposed to talk about price), but question marks? Weird.

Product Descriptions

The most exciting change in the description section is the LEGAL use of one type of HTML tag: the paragraph tag ( <p> ) and corresponding end-paragraph tag ( </p> ). We won’t go into all the details of why Amazon previously said no HTML was allowed at all yet had a system that allowed those tags to be used. <Rolling eyes.> They have been cracking down on this and many of our brand-new clients (who have never sold on Amazon before) are unable to enter HTML. But I digress….

While bolding, bullets, and other tags are still unacceptable, you can now feel free to insert paragraphs (legally) into your product descriptions! One small step — hopefully others will follow.

The character limit is still the same: 2,000 characters.

Amazon is cracking down on “marketing speak” (as they call it) in the product description, too, noting “Avoid marketing speak and instead use an informative and authoritative tone.” They also state NOT to:

• Write about anything but the product for sale.
• Use promotional messages such as “sale” or subjective comments such as “great value” or “hot this year.”
• Use special characters such as registration marks, trademarks, copyright symbols. Apparently, it’s fine to use exclamation points and question marks here. 😉

Amazon also now recommends including the manufacturer / brand name, model number, and key applications and industries where the product is commonly used.

Customer Preferences

It’s interesting to also note that Amazon includes a snippet about the research they’ve done. You usually don’t see them reveal this. They say:

“A 2009 Amazon usability study found that — when researching products online — customers place most value on product details — particularly specifications, features, and descriptions. Next were reviews, followed by price, and then images.”

Search Terms (Keywords)

In the old Style Guide, there wasn’t very much information pertaining to search terms. This was about it:

All that is still true, but Amazon has added some new direction as well.

Is the new Kitchen/Garden/Pets Style Guide perfect? Far from it! But it is seriously better than it was previously. Is there still conflicting information on Amazon? You bet! However, Amazon is aware and is working on correcting this one step at a time.

You’ll find other updated Style Guides being released over the next several months and then Amazon’s attention will turn to cleaning up the confusion in flat files, Seller Central web pages, within the Add A Product section and other areas.

I’m proud to have played a small part in bringing about these changes and will continue to campaign to get more seller-friendly actions taken in the future.

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