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Trutz Fries

Amazon Bullet Points: Guidelines, Formatting, and Optimization in 2024

02/25/2024 • Reading time: ca. 4 min • by Trutz Fries
  1. Introduction
  2. Why is the use of Amazon Bullet Points important?
  3. What are the Amazon guidelines to follow when creating bullet points?
  4. How should Amazon bullet points be structured?
  5. How can you optimize Amazon bullet points?
  6. Conclusion

Introduction

The so-called Bullet Points are an essential part of the Amazon product listing. They are also called highlights or bullet points. In the browser on the desktop, bullet points can be found directly next to the images, below the product variants and the hazard pictograms. They are thus often visible after page load ("above-the-fold").

Bullet Points in Desktop View
Figure 1: Bullet Points in Desktop View

On mobile, the bullet points only appear much further down on the product page. Unfortunately, you can't optimize the mobile view independently of the desktop view. Therefore, you have no influence on the positioning.

As a Seller or Vendor, you don't have to use Bullet Points, but if you don't use them, you also give up a way to get potential buyers to buy your product.

Why is the use of Amazon Bullet Points important?

  1. Assist customers in their buying decision process: Amazon Bullet Points allow you to convince potential buyers to buy your product. Few customers scroll down to the product description. Bullet points, on the other hand, briefly and concisely describe the most important features of the product.
  2. Indexing: Bullet points are indexed alongside titles and general keywords for Amazon search. Therefore, by using keywords in Bullet Points, you can optimize your Amazon Listing and provide increased visibility.

What are the Amazon guidelines to follow when creating bullet points?

As an Amazon Seller, you have a maximum of 5 Bullet Points at your disposal. Vendors are eligible for 5 additional Bullet Points. For the length of all bullet points, Amazon recommends a maximum of 200 to 250 characters including spaces. However, Amazon even advises only 150 characters for some product categories (read the respective Style Guide. In general, you should make sure that all bullet points are approximately the same length and that maximum knowledge transfer takes place in a minimum number of characters. Technically, it is possible to use more than 250 characters across all bullet points, but then the characters may no longer be detected by the algorithm. Our experiments have shown that the sum of the bullet points should not exceed 1,000 bytes so that everything is indexed.

Amazon also claims that using synonyms in your bullet points (e.g. bicycle, mountain bike, BMX) does not have a positive effect. On the contrary, this could create a negative impression on the customer and lead to purchase abandonment. Instead, Amazon recommends that you use these product-specific keywords in the Backend Keywords.

How should Amazon bullet points be structured?

Many users just scan the bullet points. Therefore, the most important should always be at the beginning of the bullet points. Hence, highlight your Unique Selling Points first: What exactly makes your product unique? This allows the customer to recognize the essentials at first glance. In the best case, the bullet points answer the most frequently asked questions about the product. In addition, you should make the benefits of your product clear to your customer: What can the customer benefit from your product? In addition, don't forget to use words to create as visual a representation of the product in the customer's mind as possible.

No-go's in bullet points are:.

  1. Keyword duplications
  2. Special characters (emojis can look unserious to customers)
  3. Use of UTF-8 special characters, e.g. to make the font bold
  4. False or misleading product features
  5. Competitor brand names
  6. Wrong spellings
  7. Sales offers / discount promotions

A good example of successful bullet points can be found in the image below. However, it remains to be seen whether Amazon will tolerate capitalization in the long run.

Good example of bullet points
Figure 2: Good example of bullet points

In contrast, the following image is a bad example of bullet points. The text is not only way too long, it is additionally overloaded with emojis.

Bad example of bullet points
Figure 3: Bad example of bullet points (use of emojis and other symbols)

How can you optimize Amazon bullet points?

Two things are important when optimizing bullet points:

  1. Formulate bullet points from the customer's point of view. After all, it's about convincing the customer of your product.
  2. Use relevant keywords. How you can research relevant Amazon keywords is explained in detail in our Amazon Keyword Guide. It does not matter for the relevance whether a keyword is further up or down in the bullet points. The only important thing is that the keyword appears at all.

Conclusion

Amazon bullet points are a significant component of Amazon listings. They are relevant to both the Amazon search algorithm and the purchase decision process. Due to the limited character length of the bullet points recommended by Amazon, it is advisable to always formulate the product features from the customer-centric point of view, taking into account the Amazon keywords. Frequently asked questions should be answered directly with the bullet points. Always attract the customer's interest and present your product as a solution.

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