Most Amazon sellers are asking themselves the most important question: “How do I launch a product successfully?” The second most important question, however, is “How do I Re-launch your product?”

What is the problem?

A seller might want to relaunch their product for many reasons. Listings of products face many challenges over the years. An unsuccessful initial launch, mistakes made by amateurs, or a flood of competition or unexpected changes from Amazon could cause a listing to fail.

No matter the reason, product sales directly impact a seller’s income. It is easy to see why this topic is so important. It is important to remember that Amazon products often have a shelf life. This means that sellers need to be able to identify when a product is at the end of its journey. A relaunch may be all that is required to revive revenue.

How Amazon Product Relaunch Works

First, determine if your problem is ranking or conversions (or both). Ranking and conversions can often be closely related. If a product is not ranking well, it may show up only for long-tail keywords or lower on pages. Conversions could also drop. It can be difficult to pinpoint what happened first.

It is important to have a clear assessment of your current situation. Compare where your product is now for key keywords to see where it was. To ensure that it wasn’t a temporary glitch or a sudden change, you can also monitor keyword movements over several days or weeks.

Also, be aware of conversions (unit sessions percentage) and sessions. These data will help you to gain a better understanding of the possible causes and assist in troubleshooting.

You should also consider the rate at which your listing is declining. Did sales stop overnight? Was it gradual or did sales stop overnight? It is important to understand this as they can often be symptoms of other issues.

Next, examine the competition

Competition is often the largest factor in a product’s performance decline. This is not surprising considering the rapid rise in third-party sellers Amazon is experiencing.

Although Amazon does not share the number sellers on its platform, estimates indicate that over a million third-party sellers entered the marketplaces last year, with approximately four hundred thousand of these sellers going to Amazon.com. You can use our ASIN Report Tool to get an estimated number of unit sales and total revenue the competitor’s product has done over the past 30 days for any specific ASIN.

These statistics, combined with new browsing layouts featuring more listings on page 1, mean that buyers have more choices than ever. It also means that search pages are constantly updated with new products, ideas, and brands.

The “honeymoon” period is a good example of how newer items get extra attention when they are given the chance to be seen. These factors all contribute to the demise of older listings that are not offered by major brands.

Many larger brands are beginning to realize that Amazon is a viable channel for sales and are putting more effort into their marketing strategy. We can be easily swayed by a drastic increase in the quality of a niche’s listing and ruin our momentum.

If you want to find the root cause for a listing’s poor performance, look at your category and ask these simple questions:

• What are the additional listings available for my main search terms and key phrases? If you want to find what are the most popular keywords and sales revenues being generated in association with those keywords, check out our Keyword Report Tool.
• What are the other listings on page one?
• What number of reviews does the average page one listing have (compared to mine)?
• How is page one’s main image and title quality?

Check Your Main Category, Subcategory, Item-Type-Keyword

Too often, a diligent seller works hard to get their listing to decent sales and then wakes up to discover that their listing has fallen in rankings and sales overnight. It was a glitch on Amazon and usually resolves within a few days. Sometimes it continues to happen. Worse, promotion and ranking efforts don’t seem to work. It feels like the listing has been canceled.

This happens 95% of the times because there has been a change in category. The reason the listing is not being relaunched is that Amazon or a competitor has modified the listings browse node, item type-keyword, or moved it to another category or subcategory.

This is because subcategory relevance is what determines keyword relevancy, which determines how easy a listing ranks for keywords.

Is the Honeymoon Period over?

You may have seen the mention of the “Honeymoon Period” earlier, this idea is only a hypothesis.  Despite this, strong evidence suggests that it is valid from the large pool of shared data from global sellers over the past five years. We will now consider the Honeymoon Period a fact.

The effect of listing activity, promotion and sales within the first few weeks suddenly became more prominent. This was the start of a new honeymoon.

When you create a new list, relevancy is assigned to all keywords. Only listing activity can reveal what is really relevant and how relevant it is. It is therefore much easier to rank keywords (and get PPC impressions), regardless of how relevant they may be at the beginning. However, relevance will decrease over time for some keywords while it remains strong for others.

How does the starting period affect listings today?

It is possible for both to exist. This could indicate that listings are being pulled down by poor sales history benchmarks and lost relevance due to poor organic converts. This brings me to the next stage of the troubleshooting process… Take a look at the history of discount promotions. Your listing may be at risk if you have only ever been ranked for a deep discount or sale and receive very few full-priced organic (or PPC) sales.

Although it’s hard to accept, this could mean that Amazon doesn’t want your product. It may not want your product at the price that you offer. In the complex relevance factor, conversion rate is extremely important. If your listing is not up to par with competitors, visibility will be affected. Conversion rates are affected by many factors, beyond page position.

Review rating, review number, in comparison with competitors close in rank and price, main images, and probably loads of subconscious psychological elements unknown to them are also factors. It is important to have a high quality product that has been thought through in its messaging. It also may be that your product listing wasn’t optimized for what customers are searching for when making a purchase for your related product.

Using Keyword Research Tools are important as you’ll be able to see which keywords have the highest search volume. It will make a big difference if you have a keyword with 10,000 monthly searches in your Product Title, vs a keyword with only 100 monthly searches in your Product Title. By optimizing your listing, you’ll be able to get your product seen by the most number of potential customers that are in the market for your product.

Relaunch Options

Most believe that there are three choices, each with different levels of potency.

1. Aggressive rerank
2. Start over with a new ASIN
3. Rebrand

Each one will be covered now.

Aggressive Rerank

It’s not the most effective way to relaunch your business. It is however the most cost-effective and easiest to implement. This is when you increase your ranking efforts and invest a lot of money in promoting the listing. You can run full-price promotions, low-priced promotions and high discount promotions simultaneously.

This technique works for most, provided the product is good quality, has a decent review rating, and the listing is optimized. You may be able to revive your listing if you can re-rank key terms that are important for conversion. It can be difficult to know when you should pull the plug if it doesn’t work. This will lead to higher total losses.

Start over with a new ASIN

This is a complex and expensive method. This may be the best choice if you have been subject to black hat attacks and sabotage that Amazon will not allow. To start over with a new ASIN you must first remove your inventory and then send it back with a brand-new listing and UPC. You can also send in a variation if you have positive reviews.

Re-brand

This option is the most expensive and requires a lot of work. Sometimes a great product deserves another chance. A rebrand is like a facelift. Perhaps the packaging and branding weren’t very well received or perhaps the latest generation of millennial shoppers doesn’t like your “look.” If your branding is stale, you can update it without needing to look for new suppliers.

You would sell as much inventory as possible to rebrand and then restock with new designs. You could use a new logo or packaging, or even a combination of both. Another option is to send the rebranded batch in completely new listings, but with variations of the original style. This way, you can take advantage of both a new listing and a fresh look.