Amazon Product Titles To Be Capped at 75-Character Limit

We have likely confirmation from Amazon that non-media accounts using Vendor Central will soon be restricted to a 75-character limit for Product Titles, including spaces. This will possibly come into effect on or after July 27th. An additional 125 characters can be inputted into “Item Highlights” to provide product features or benefits that appear separate from the title, and is designed to remove the need to include phrases such as “USB-C support” or “Cable not included” from the title itself.

New guidelines for Seller Central

Just under a week ago, reports emerged that Amazon was advising users of its Seller Central platform that content guidelines were soon to change. In a post shared to the Seller Central discussion board, the official Amazon account stated that from July 27th, Amazon would be moving to a new system of 75-character-long titles, with an additional 125-chracter allowance for Item Highlights, a new element which would be both searchable and visible on product pages and in search results.

Amazon stated that the reason for this change lay within the mobile shopping experience, saying “[t]his ensures that your title will fully display on mobile and is consistent with the title length used by other online stores.”

They went on to say that sellers were not being left to undergo this work alone. Provided to every user was the option to use an AI tool to automatically optimise titles to meet the new criteria. After July 27th, not only would new titles have to comply by the guidelines, but existing longer titles would be “updated to the AI recommendation gradually”.

The only caveat for these new rules is that they only applied to non-media products.

But what about Vendor Central?

Once the news of these changes reached a wider audience, a common question arose: would these changes also effect Vendor Central?

On one hand, unlike for Seller Central users, no centralised notification had been made to the larger brands on the VC platform. Indeed, unlike Seller Central, no resource like their discussion board currently exists for VC, so any announcement would likely appear piecemeal via specific vendor relationships. Given the larger global sku counts managed by those with VC accounts, some suggested that surely they would have received word first? If only to allow enough time to perform the necessary maintenance?

Others pointed out that not only are the SC and VC platforms very closely aligned in capabilities, there is no fundamental distinction in the way SC and VC products are displayed on Amazon. If they want to make changes based on concerns about “mobile experience” and “consistency”, it would make no sense if the guidelines weren’t applied to both sets of products.

Change is coming

In the end, it wasn’t a notification that tipped us off, but a change on the Product Details input page. The option for Item Highlights now appears, with a tool-tip that explicitly mentions a 75-character title limit. A further look at the Product Title Requirements Help Page confirms this:

Character limit: Titles must not exceed 75 characters, including spaces.

In conclusion

Although not all the information provided to Seller Central users has yet found its way through to their VC equivalents, it’s only a matter of time before the full impact of these new guidelines will be communicated to brands. We will update as and when we hear more on this topic, but we’re confident that now is a good time to start planning in the resources needed to make these changes.