The Amazon Strategist Show

How to Optimize Amazon Images For Maximum Sales

• The Amazon Strategist Show • Season 3 • Episode 69

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Join host John Cavendish on the Amazon Strategy Show for an insightful episode with Kamaljit Singh, CEO and founder of AMZ One Step.

In this episode, Kamaljit shares his journey from learning about Amazon FBA through forex trading to becoming a leader in Amazon creative services, providing over 100,000 images under his guidance.

Dive deep into the nuances of Amazon image optimization, and the pivotal role of the main image in driving conversions, and learn about Kamaljit's unique "Label It Strategy" for standout product visuals.

Whether you're an established seller or new to the platform, this episode offers valuable strategies to elevate your Amazon game.
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Connect With Kamaljit and AMZ One Step
Website: https://www.amzonestep.com/
Email: kamal@amzonestep.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kamaljit-singh-52175855/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AMZonestep/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amzonestep/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ @AMZOneStep 
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Connect with John Cavendish
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jgcuk
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thejohncavendish
LinkedIn: https://hk.linkedin.com/in/thejohncavendish

Know More About Seller Candy
Website: https://www.sellercandy.com
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/SellerCandyPro
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sellercandyamz
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sellercandy/
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Speaker 1:

If others are doing it, don't limit yourself. Don't be too afraid to not go beyond what Amazon allows.

Speaker 2:

Hello, I'm your host, john Cavendish, and welcome back to the Amazon Strategy Show. The show that's all strategy, with no hacks, no silver bullets and no magic pills, just real, practical strategies to grow your Amazon business. So today I'm joined by none other than Kamal Singh, who's the CEO and founder of AMZ One Step. He's also an official member of the Forbes Council, so if you want to hear him, hear what he likes to say, google him and I'm sure he'll come up on Forbes. He began his journey back in 2015 with retail arbitrage and then private label after that, before selling that business in 2018. In 2022, he expanded his influence by acquiring Kenji ROI, which I think we've had Danny on the podcast a couple of years ago, which was one of the leading Amazon creative agencies back then and I guess still is. Under his leadership, amz One Step has done over 100,000 images and he's also a really big intercommunity and organizes meetups all across his home of Canada. So, kamal, welcome to the show.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, thank you so much, John. I'm super excited to be here. I'm excited to talk about creatives and conversions, so thanks for having me.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we love all of the deep strategic stuff here at the Amazon Strategy Show, so I guess diving right into it. How did you get into Amazon in the first place? So I guess diving right into it. How did you get into Amazon in the first place?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it was. You know I was trying to learn Forex exchange from a friend of mine and you know he was posting like his successful trades every single day on Snapchat. Hey, I made $100 and I made like $200 today like easy trades. I was kind of very curious like how is he doing it? He used to be my roommate. I was like man, like if we went to the same college, we lived in the same house, if he can learn something new and make money, why can't I?

Speaker 1:

I felt like I was wasting a lot of time. I was going in the wrong direction, you know. I approached him. I was like hey, man, teach me how you do this. He said it's going to be $2 dollars, which means 2600 Canadian back in the days and I did not have any money at that time. You know I somehow I got a couple of friends to chip in and buy his course and then, you know, I could not understand, like those candlesticks, you know, those charts and everything you know. Two days later I was like, okay, this is not for me. You know, I need to find something unique, I need to find something which is working.

Speaker 1:

And I somehow remember somebody talking about Amazon FBA in three years.

Speaker 1:

Back then I was like months and watched thousands of videos and made my seller account, you know, started doing retail arbitrage, you know.

Speaker 1:

But back of my mind it was, I was always thinking that I want to teach others, like how to sell on Amazon, or I want to help Amazon sellers, just like what my friend was doing by posting, you know, screenshots of like how he was making money, posting you know screenshots of like how he was making money. So that kind of led me to start Amazon FBA and also start my Amazon agency. I was doing meetups and everything. So people were asking me like, hey, where do you get your photos and where do you get your images done Like and videos? Ppc, that kind of gave me an idea to start the Amazon agency and Danny used to be pretty big at that time so I kind of copied him, watched you know his podcast, his blogs, you know website. I told my developer like, hey, copy this guy like you know whatever he's doing on his website. I want to sell the same services. So just to connect back with that so that you know, that's how I got started with Amazon FBA.

Speaker 2:

Awesome, Cool, that's a really good story that you know that's how I got started with Amazon FBA Awesome Cool. That's a really good story that you know you launched a business you're inspired by. Someone eventually acquired their business. That's really cool.

Speaker 1:

Exactly. Yeah, that was very you know kind of emotional acquisition as well, so super proud of that.

Speaker 2:

Nice. It's like when you look at your heroes, you grow like your heroes. Then you eat your heroes. I love it. Cool, cool, awesome. So I mean, out of everyone I've ever talked to, you've probably or at least your company has done the most amazon images of anyone I've ever met. So what are some insights you've had from from doing that, from, uh, working on so many images?

Speaker 1:

okay. So the biggest uh takeaway that I can, you know I can give you guys is, after creating so many images, the only image that matters the most is your main image, because your main image is the gateway to your listing, right? You spend thousands of dollars on PPC, right? You spend so much money doing SEO, trying to get ranked by doing giveaways, but that is all of no use if you don't get a click. So the main image, you know, is the most important image in your image stack. So spend as much time as you possibly can on the main image trying to split test, see which one is the better main image which can get you extra click-through rate. That also, you know, means, which means, like your CPC. On your PPC, you know better organic results.

Speaker 1:

And one key takeaway I would like to give on the main image, that the main purpose of the main image is to increase traffic, but also to decrease the irrelevant traffic. So purpose is increase the relevant traffic and decrease the irrelevant traffic so that less people click, people who don't want your product. It filters out. Your main image should be like hey, this is not for you, and when more people click on your listing, they are very likely to buy that, which means your conversion goes up. That also helps you in organic ranking better ppc results, like with everything.

Speaker 1:

So that is the 80 20 cradle principle. There's like 80 20 and your main image that 20 also has 80 20 in it and that's your main image. Like it's 4, 96, 2, if you could think of. So that's my main takeaway, and there are like different strategies that you can use to make your main image stand out. So, so the main goal of the main image is to break the pattern from the search results. When somebody searches for a keyword on Amazon, your main image should stand out instantly. So that is the whole goal of the main image. So just work around that. Everything else also matters your video A plus content, your secondary images, your copy, but this is something which has the highest value, right? So that's my takeaway from after creating, like you know, hundreds of thousands of images.

Speaker 2:

Nice, yeah, I like that as well. Is the opposite also possible, then? Is it possible, if you get it wrong, to create an image that will increase traffic but reduce conversions?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that does happen. I think I see that very often, like, for example, when we work on a existing listing and we change the creative. Sometimes what happens? Your traffic just goes up and your conversions goes down. That just means that your main image is not attracting. You know the relevant traffic enough and it's also attracting. You know the relevant traffic enough and it's also attracting. You know the non-buyers or irrelevant people that you don't want. So you just got to split test your main image. You know, see what works the best, and so that is the only solution to that. But I see that very commonly. But before you, you know, upload your main image. I highly recommend that you split test on upload your main image. I highly recommend that you split test on on you know, external software like bigfoot, intelliv, and then also use manager experiments on seller central so that you don't lose much of conversions for very long period of time, so that you can instantly make decisions which are, you know, data driven cool, yeah, I love that.

Speaker 2:

And then you're actually tracking that ratio. Then, when you were changing image, you're tracking the ratio of basically just conversion rate, isn't it? So you're tracking the change in conversion rate and also the overall sales, and do you? We see increase in sales, but they start to lose like ranking, organic ranking.

Speaker 1:

If that starts to play an impact, you know that's the time, you know, we take a look and be like, you know, do some more investigation. But 90% of the time it's just the more sales. If your sales goes up, that's all that matters. But sometimes, you know, your sales just go up by. You know PPC, because your PPC is very focused but your organic ranking is going down. So so it's kind of, you know, we track it based on how fast you know overall tackles right, if your tackles is also going up, you know, then that means that our main image is bringing a lot of irrelevant traffic, that we might need to make some changes.

Speaker 2:

Cool, perfect. That sounds great. Changing lanes slightly. When I was reading up about you, I heard about your label it strategy, but I'm not really sure what it is, so can you, can you take us through that?

Speaker 1:

Yes, there are like 14 different strategies that I normally talk about, um, you know, on how to make your main image stand out, but what is working really really well is label it strategy. So what does that mean? Basically, you add your unique selling proposition or your main keyword onto the product packaging and do it in a natural way so that it does not violate Amazon's terms of service. That is one way. Or, if your product does not come in a product packaging, you can also create a you know fake label around it, right, which just tells about your product, you know, unique selling proposition or the main keyword. So that way, you know, your main image just stands out. So try not to make your you know, make your label in such a way so that people would leave you a bad review or they think that they have got a wrong product. Right. So do it in a natural way so that you don't change the expectations of people but also you get your main image stand out. So that is working really really well. You might have noticed you know lots of you know product packaging. They put like you know, for example, if you're searching for a protein powder on Amazon, you know a lot of sellers. They have put like 25 gram or unflavored. You know, made it bigger, but in reality it's not really there. But they're just leveraging the label or the packaging to tell people what exactly are they going to get. Which means you know two purposes. Again, you know they make sure main image stand out and it also brings in the relevant traffic. So that's what has been working really, really well.

Speaker 1:

And another example I could give for example, if your product does not have product packaging think of like chopping boards or cutting boards you know you would see if you search on Amazon like cutting boards or Gorilla Grip, that's a brand which is absolutely killing it with this strategy. You know you can it. Just you can see that they have created a label around the cutting boards and it does not even change your expectations because everybody just knows that it's not going to arrive with the product, that label, and it's not even such a big factor that they would leave a bad review just because the label wasn't there. So that's what we call a labeled strategy and it's been working every single time and now it has started to get popular. If you do see your competitors are also using something similar, then you know you're going to stack it up with multiple other strategies. So there's like so many strategies that you can, you know, use to make your main image stand out, but the whole purpose is again to to stand out, to look different love it cool.

Speaker 2:

So, yeah, I guess I want you to go and check out gorilla grip and see how they're using it. Now. I mean, would this be on like are you just, you know, photoshopping the main image? Do you still using many renders Like how does that, how's that usually work for you?

Speaker 1:

designers out there that can do the job with Photoshop, but 3D rendering is also one of the strategies that we use. For example, some type of products, if it's a hard surface product, if it's a metal, or if it's a transparent product or reflective product, use 3D rendering because that's going to make your image look so much sharper. Right, and you can stack it up with other strategies. Maybe. Use 3D rendering and then you can also use label it strategy. On 3D rendering itself, and if your product, for example, it does have variations, you can use, like you know. You can add variations on the side, or you can show product in action, or you can show a model you know, using your product within the main image. So there are, like so many things that you can do. You can stack up lots of things. 3d rendering can be mixed and matched with lots of other things, if that makes sense.

Speaker 2:

Nice, Back in the day, Amazon was trying to push out 3D rendering, wasn't it several years ago? What's their opinion on 3D rendering now?

Speaker 1:

According to their terms of service, they don't want any illustrations. They want the actual product photos. But 3D rendering is an illustration, it's not a real image. But Amazon also cares a lot about the user experience, right? So they do want shoppers to see high quality, real, good pictures. So, amazon, I have never seen any listing taken down just because it was 3D rendered. As long as it looks real, looks natural, and even though it's against the TOS, but still it's just been, you know, working perfectly fine.

Speaker 2:

Okay, yeah, and again, we go with what works rather than what they say. Okay, cool. So we've talked a little bit about label it strategy, increasing traffic monitoring, conversion rates, 3d rendering. Is there anything else about increasing traffic that anyone should be thinking about while looking at their main image?

Speaker 1:

There's other factors that you can probably leverage to increase your traffic. There's like six or seven different factors which are responsible. Number one is your, which is the biggest one, your main image. Second one is your product title make sure your product title is mobile optimized. And the other factors, like your price point, your fulfillment method. You know what kind of badges do you have, like bestseller badge or amazon choice badge, or if you are in the editorial sections or special categories by Amazon. So coupon codes or like promotions that you're running. These are all like part of increasing your click-through rate or traffic, right? So I think it's there's no just like one thing which will work best. Use all of them. Like it's just like 1% improvement by every single thing you do, and the main image is the biggest one, obviously. So these are some of the things that you can do to increase your traffic on Amazon without spending more on ads or driving external traffic.

Speaker 2:

Awesome, yeah, and it's super, super helpful. I mean, that's what I like about doing short episodes of people who are an expert on one thing People can actually take away actionable items to to implement in their business tomorrow, you know. So, if you are listening, I would encourage you to think how this applies to your listings and how you can change one listing and do an a b test whether it's using, you know, amazon experiments, whether it's using pick food to see uh see, if it increases people's uh engagement conversion. So we're now going into the controversial take part of the episode. So in this part, we basically ask you do you have any debatable or controversial takes when it comes to selling on Amazon, whether that's to do with what we're talking about or actually anything else in the Amazon seller space?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, there's like so many things which are debatable, but one of my favorite topics is, you know, obviously the main image and traffic. So I posted on LinkedIn. You know one of the SOPs on how to create a main image. Okay. So it was like different layers of like one image. Then you add a second layer, third layer, fourth layer, and by the end we added made in USA label on the product packaging, right? So you know, since we're doing a podcast, I can't really show it visually. Just try to imagine there is a supplement bottle and right behind the supplement bottle there is a product packaging. Ok, so there is no white space between the bottle and the packaging. So we managed to add made in USA label right in the middle and it passed the suppression test, okay. So I was like, okay, hey, this is a cool way of creating a main image. This helped us increase our CTR by this much. You know, feel free to use this or steal this method. And then I got like some comments like, hey, my main image will be suppressed or this is against Amazon terms of service. Okay, number one, I do agree that you want to have something as a backup in case your amazon does amazon main image does get suppressed, you always have a backup image so that you can upload it right away. Make sure you have the notifications on like alerts if. If your listing is suppressed, you change to change it back to the good image like right away. That's the safety net you want to have. Number two, if amazon has different rules for different categories, you will see like lifestyle images in the main image. You know that's like totally against amazon terms of service, but some categories you do see that which is quite common in some categories everybody is perfectly amazon compliant. So there's different rules for different categories. If their competitors are using you know, shady ways or grey hat methods, feel free to do that. Push your limits.

Speaker 1:

Going back to the point we use the made in USA label in the product packaging. One of the comment I got hey, show me this listing, you're lying. This is. This cannot be true. Amazon would express it right away. I posted a screenshot in the comments. I was like okay, there you go and we're running ads on it and the ads were like number one and number two position for two products. So my point is you know if others are doing it, don't limit yourself. You know, don't be too afraid to not go beyond. You know what Amazon allows. Secondary takeaway from the same point is try to use label it, strategy or graphics or anything that you're doing within the product, packaging or product itself, not on the white background. Otherwise, yeah, there's a very high chances that your image will be suppressed. So, yeah, a that's a controversial thing on main image, like what's working, what's not, but yeah, so push your limits.

Speaker 2:

Have a basic image ready as a backup I love that and yeah, I mean, I think I agree like amazon will send you messages sometimes which sound like the end of the world, but I mean that's what. The Seller Candy exists as well, to be honest, which is when they tell you, yes, we're going to suspend you, you're never coming back and like, no, you just need to change the image. So I think that, yeah, I mean, being willing to test and being willing to push the envelope is why some sellers are very, very successful and why they sit at the top for a long time because they're continuing to innovate and no one else is innovating past them. So, yeah, it's really good. I like that. I like that controversial take. Thank you so much for being on the show. If people want to learn more about your other strategies, as well as the label it and or, you know, reach out to you for your support, how is the best way to contact you?

Speaker 1:

if you want to learn more about the other strategies you you can search for, like main image optimization, on Google. You will find my blog number one by AMZOneStep. You can read that. It's definitely worth a read. And if you are looking to increase your click through rate or conversions or launch a new product, go to wwwamzonestepcom. Book a call, you know, see if we can help you out, you know. So that's how you can get in touch with us, uh, but yeah, that's pretty much it. Or search on youtube 13 main image strategies or 14 main image strategies. You will find a very in-depth, like 60 minutes long video to talk about each and everything. So I think that could be very helpful awesome, thank you.

Speaker 2:

Thank you for putting all those resources out there. I know it's super useful when someone watches something like this to go like, okay, I want to learn more. Let's go and binge all of your content for the next five hours. Um so awesome. Kamal, thanks so much for being here and thanks to everyone else who's watched the show. So if you're watching on youtube, or whether that's youtube or apple podcast or spotify, please rate us and leave a review there. It helps with our rankings and, yeah, tune in next week when we have more amazing guests. So, kamal, thanks for being here.

Speaker 1:

Thank you so much. It was a great show. Thank you so much.

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