The Knowledge: ASINs, Images, and Global Changes
In our semi-regular series, the Digishare team take a moment to share some of tips, tricks, or things they’ve noticed during their time deep in the product content mines. We hope you find these nuggets of knowledge interesting, and check back for more in the future!
The Power of the ASIN
One of the peculiarities of dealing with the Amazon system is how the small changes you make in one marketplace can instantly affect your products all over the world.
Ever see review scores instantly appear when launching a product in a brand-new marketplace? Chances are Amazon is pulling the reviews from your established markets and displaying them for your new customers to read. Moreover, the same happens with other assets Amazon has in its catalogue.
The catalyst for this? The ASIN. Each product in the Amazon catalogue is assigned this 10-character code, based on its barcode. This means that if a product is sold in different marketplaces but has the same barcode, the Amazon system will understand that these products are linked. What’s more, the Amazon system will attempt to present them across its many websites consistently.
The Downside
The value of this presentation is clear for both brands and Amazon, but there are some potential pitfalls to be aware of.
Over the years, Amazon has refined its system to prevent localised copy being published automatically in different marketplaces. This ensures a product description written in French doesn’t appear on the Amazon.de website, and vice-versa.
However, the Amazon system can’t differentiate between images that have copy and those that don’t. This means, if you upload product gallery images with localised text (in English, French, etc.) to your product in one marketplace, you run the risk of these images appearing in all markets where you list this particular product.
The Solution(s)
There are two ways to safeguard against this:
-
- Don’t differentiate: the easiest method is to utilise only universal product and lifestyle shots in the product gallery images. Save any copy or diagrams for enhanced content placement, which is localised on a marketplace basis.
- Ask Amazon not to syndicate imagery to other markets: It is possible to arrange with Amazon to prevent your images from being used in other marketplaces, but this requires submitting a ticket to Amazon beforehand to get the process underway. Only then will you be able to upload the localised imagery without them being automatically duplicated.