I’m going to let you in on a little secret: the product-level content on Amazon Europe sites stinks. All told, 4 of 5 companies treat their Amazon EU product pages as an afterthought, investing zero money to enhance the product page experience.
Why are so few brands creating A+ content for Europe?
I’ll get into the content challenges faced by brands further down in this post, but first, let me share some high-level results from our audit of Amazon Europe A+ content.
Amazon Europe Content Audit Results
We looked at the European content of 149 brands with reputations for having high-quality product-page content on Amazon.com US. We focused on the UK, Germany, and France, as past research has shown that Amazon Italy and Amazon Spain are the least likely to have enhanced content.
Our research shows that only 19% of brands have enhanced content for products sold on Amazon Europe sites. Less than 1% of brands are taking advantage of Amazon modules to build A+ content (there are exceptions, such as this Linksys router). Amazon launched self-service modules in the US in August 2014 and in Europe on January 1, 2015.
There were differences across countries and verticals:
- Companies were more than twice as likely to sell on Amazon UK than Amazon France
- Only 7% of Amazon France pages had A+ content
- 68% of CE (consumer electronics) brands have European A+ content
- 6% of CPG (consumer packaged goods) brands have European A+ content
Why Are Brands Ignoring Amazon Europe?
Here are the main reasons why brands aren’t creating A+ for their European sites:
- Not a budget priority: There’s often internal disagreement about who should pay for content creation, design, translation, and Amazon upload fees.
- No internal process: Most e-commerce teams don’t have anyone to coordinate international content with brands.
We can’t do much about the first reason, but we shine when it comes to the process.
Take Our Quiz
Check out our recently published 10-question quiz to help you determine if you’re ready to begin publishing on Amazon Europe. Taking it can help you identify what you still need to figure out. We also put together an Amazon Europe content checklist to help you get ready.
4 Tips for Getting A+ Content onto Amazon Europe
If you know your A+ content will eventually end up on Amazon’s international sites, the best thing you can do is to talk to your content provider immediately. At content26, our experience has been that we can produce content much more efficiently and cost-effectively when clients let us know from the beginning that the enhanced content we’re creating is destined for other countries. To say it another way, if you plan for international content from the outset, it will be cheaper and more efficient.
But let’s say all of your content is already on Amazon.com. What then?
- Evaluate your European content: This will help you know how to prioritize your international content creation and also will help you figure out how much it will cost. Content26 can advise on this.
- Formulate a multi-country content creation plan: You’ll need the buy-in of both your central e-commerce team and your in-country colleagues. Once you have it, you’ll need to work as a group to come up with a centralized plan that includes an efficient approval process. If this seems daunting, content26 can help create a content plan.
- Figure out translation: Content that is properly translated and localized ensures consistent branding. No matter whether you have your own translation agency or get content26 to translate your content, it’s important to get this right.
- Outsource the content creation: If you plan to create A+ content for 10+ products in multiple countries, you should consider using a company like content26 to handle this project. We’ve had many clients who have become overwhelmed when they’ve tried to do it themselves.
Want to learn more about content26’s international pricing? Email us.
