Selling on Amazon means playing by their rules, which include putting some real limits on how you describe and present your products to potential customers. Amazon marketers are used to getting creative within the confines of the Amazon platform. So, when the company gives you a little extra room to work with – you take it. For registered third-party brand sellers, Enhanced Brand Content provides that extra bit of room to shine.

What is Enhanced Brand Content?

Enhanced Brand Content (EBC) is a feature in Seller Central that allows you to provide additional content and images to your product listings. Any content you add here will appear in a section labeled “Product Description” that’s located below the main product details and the sections of recommended products Amazon puts right below them but above the product reviews.

While that means anyone who lands on your product page briefly before moving on won’t be swayed by your EBC, someone interested enough to scroll down and learn more will see a section you can fill with arresting images and persuasive copy to help drive the sale home.

Benefits of Using EBC

EBC provides you with an additional opportunity – beyond what’s on the main section of the product listing above the fold – to capture the attention of your prospects and make the case for why they should choose your products. The section provides a few key benefits:

How to Start Using EBC for Your Listings

First off, you have to be a registered third-party seller on Amazon and you have to use Seller Central. If you use Vendor Central (even if you also use Seller Central), then Amazon will have you use A+ Content instead, which is similar in many ways.

If you’ve already got that part covered, then go into Seller Central and select “Enhanced Branded Content” under the Advertising tab.

Where prompted, enter the SKU of the product you want to add EBC to.

Once you’re in the EBC editor, you’ll see five premade templates you can choose from as well as a custom option. Choose the one that’s the best fit for the product and the content you’re planning to add – or, select the custom builder to arrange the modules yourself (Directional Cue can help with this, too).

When you select your template, you can begin to fill in the different sections with the images and text you’d like to use. You can drag and drop some of the template sections to different parts of the page to arrange everything just as you’d like it. Loading your content to Amazon is a relatively easy part of EBC. What will probably be a little harder is creating really great content to fill the modules in the template.

How to Create Strong Enhanced Brand Content

Know the rules.

When you update an Amazon listing with EBC, it goes through a review process with Amazon before it will be published. If the content you add isn’t in line with the company’s policies for EBC, then your listing will be rejected, and you’ll have to go back and make changes. You’ll save yourself a lot of time and trouble if you take the time to familiarize yourself with the rules of what you can and can’t include. For example, you can’t mention competitors, provide a warranty or guarantee, or talk about shipping details in your content. Stay within the rules, and you’ll have a much easier time using EBC.

Pay attention to sizing.

While EBC gives you more options to customize your product page, you still have to work within the constraints of the template. You want to make sure your images are high-quality and sized for the right effect based on where they are on the page and how much space is available for them in the template. There is also a file size limit for images, so you may get a “reduce KB size” warning if you overdo it.

If you choose the custom template, it’s often a good idea to keep the images below the header aligned on the same side of the page to make them look neater alongside the text you put beside them. The text modules are not full width, so the alternating image placement may create some misalignment.

Pay attention to word count.

You also want to pay attention to how much text you can put next to, above, or below your images while still keeping the whole picture looking neat and organized. You may have to play around with the wording you use to get the visual element of the text just right here. Try to line the text up so that it fits alongside the image, rather than using too much copy so it overflows past your images, which will push the rest of your content down.

Use several high-quality images.

Do here what you can’t with images in the product listing. You can show your products in different settings, show related images, and include images that have text callouts overlaid on them. Use this section to show off clean, attractive visuals that will catch consumers’ attention.

Create original content.

Don’t copy and paste wording from your website. While your listing may not always have enough content to create SEO issues with duplicate content, it’s important to optimize your product listing specifically for Amazon. Take some time to craft original content here that’s written for the space it’s in.

Think about what someone browsing Amazon for products like yours would most want or need to know, and use your Amazon PPC learnings to inform your organic strategy. Luckily, if you’ve been selling on Amazon for a little while, you have a good window into figuring out exactly what your customers are usually thinking. You can even go through your reviews to see what trends come up in terms of what people most often like about the product, and what they most often don’t like.

You can’t quote reviews directly, but you can learn which features and uses of your product you should highlight in your EBC, and which issues are worth addressing so that people know what they’re getting before they buy. It’s bad for both you and your customers when someone’s disappointed because they were expecting something different.

You can use the EBC section to give your customers a visually enhanced experience and help them make a more informed decision before they decide to buy. It can increase your conversions and decrease the number of unhappy customers with unmet expectations. A strong EBC section is a win-win for both you and the consumer, so it’s worth taking advantage of it on your Seller Central Listings.