In the early morning of May 11, Amazon began to strictly review the variants that violated the regulations again. This storm swept the entire cross-border circle! This time there was no advance warning, which directly violated Article 3 of the Business Solutions Agreement. There was only one box for appeal!

Recently, there have been more and more cases of sellers having their accounts blocked for abusing Amazon product variants. It’s not that there are more sellers abusing variants, but that Amazon has strengthened its supervision in this regard.

Amazon illegal variant suspension is a headache for every Amazon seller! Simply put, illegal variant suspension means that some product variants you created on Amazon have been suspended by Amazon because they violated the platform's regulations. This is usually because the seller did not follow Amazon's rules when creating the variant, resulting in confusion in product information or misleading consumers.

Common Amazon variation errors and consequences are as follows

In order to help sellers better create product variations, this article details the requirements and rules for creating variation listings, as well as the common mistakes made by sellers and their consequences, as follows:

1. Terms related to Amazon variation listings

Parent: This is the main detail page to which the product variant (or child ASIN) belongs. Parent ASINs cannot be purchased by consumers. Parent ASINs should contain all key product information for all ASIN groups in the variation group, but should not contain information related to the variation theme, specific GTINs, stock levels or prices.

Child: Child ASINs are purchasable ASINs listed under a parent ASIN and will appear as available product options on the detail page.

Variation Theme: reflects the differences between each sub-body in the same variation group. Different product categories can have different variation themes, and some variation groups can have 1 to 2 variation themes. For example, scent is a single variation theme, and color and size are a pair of variation themes.

Variation Family: refers to the parent ASIN and child ASIN under a variation theme.

2. The impact of multiple variants on products

1. Increase product ranking

2. Maximize Buyer Reviews

3. Increase purchase conversion rate

3. Use Amazon advertising grouping to help determine the main variant

Steps:

Put all multi-variation ASINs in the same ad group and enable automatic targeting:

When the automatic delivery campaign you set for all variations has been running for a while, you can easily filter out unique search terms that match different variations: such as specific colors, model features, etc., to discover shoppers' preferences. Then, open manual ads for the variations and set the unique search terms that perform well in the search term report as the delivery keywords for the corresponding variations.

Split campaigns:

After the first step, we will find that the variant ASINs are divided into two camps, variants with excellent performance and variants with average performance. At this time, we can use different ad groups to strategically reallocate the budget, put the variants with excellent performance into the same ad group and increase the budget investment; put the variants with average performance into another ad group and set an appropriate budget.

4. Can advertising only the main variant avoid competition from other variants?

Campaigns under the same account will not compete with each other. Instead, different variations in the same ad group can share the same set of keywords and bids, and more relevant products will be displayed in shoppers' search results, such as sellers searching for a specific color or model.

The above operation process can come in handy again. According to the search term report, identify the keywords that match the customer's search habits, and start manual advertising campaigns for the variants with good conversions to increase exposure opportunities. At the same time, you should also pay attention to the "purchased products" report. Find other sub-ASINs in the report that shoppers purchased by clicking on the ads of one variant, create manual advertising campaigns for these ASINs separately, and increase the bid to increase the range of ad display.

5. All variants have advertising campaigns enabled, but some have low traffic. Should they be closed?

Although the variants at this time perform poorly, they are still opportunities for sales conversion after optimization. Try to consider from the following perspectives: The bid is too low? The search terms are not precise enough? The product details page is not attractive enough?

1. Create an automatic campaign for each variation:

Automatic advertising can help you capture traffic automatically, but when your bid is not competitive, the impressions you get will be very limited. Therefore, you can create separate automatic advertising campaigns for these poorly performing ASINs, increase keyword bids appropriately, and observe for two to three weeks to monitor whether the traffic increases. If the traffic increases, it means you have found the cause; if there is still no significant change, you need to proceed to the next step.

2. Create a manual ad group:

If the traffic is still low after increasing the bid, you need to filter out keywords that represent the unique characteristics of these variants from the search term report, create manual ad groups, and further monitor traffic changes. If you eliminate the above two problems, it may be that the product detail page is not attractive enough and needs further optimization.

6. All variants have started advertising campaigns, and some traffic is particularly high. How to take advantage of it?

Enable Bid+ for high-performing keywords:

Based on the search term and keyword reports, enable the bidding+ function for high-performing keywords to obtain better ad positions and thus achieve higher sales conversion rates.

Use exact matching to get more conversion opportunities:

Monitor the exposure of Top of Search through the position report and use precise matching to improve the performance of keywords.

Use Sponsored Brands in combination with Stores to drive in-store sales:

Enable brand promotion (original headline search) for high-traffic ASINs to gain prominent placement on the search results page. Shoppers will click on the ad to enter your product collection page and brand flagship store.

7. When can you use variation listings?

Sellers can create variations in the following situations:

1. Amazon allows sellers to create variations of products in this category.

2. The differences of the product are consistent with the range of variation themes allowed by the product category.

3. The products in a variation group have no differences other than the variation theme. If your variation theme is color, then your child ASINs can only differ in color.

4. Listings are for multipacks of different sizes from the same manufacturer.

8. What should you do if your account is suspended due to variant abuse?

If your account is suspended due to variation abuse, the first thing you need to do is to check your listings and find out the problem yourself, because Amazon will not give you any prompts or respond to your listings or account until you solve the problem. You can mainly follow the following steps:

Self-check: See how you are abusing variations. Are all your listings consolidated? Make sure you fix all your listings before you submit your appeal.

Root cause: Understand what caused you to misuse variations, whether it was a misunderstanding of Amazon’s policies or insufficient supervision of your listings.

Plan of Action (POA): Identify how you will resolve the issue and ensure it doesn’t happen again. You need to be specific about the steps you’ve taken to correct the situation and ensure the quality of future listings.

Format your Statement of Action: Amazon investigators have to go through many appeals within an hour. For best results, be careful to ensure your appeal is readable and should not exceed one page in length.

Note: To show your attitude, you can proactively ask Amazon to mark your behavior in terms of seller performance.

Final summary

Through good variations, sellers can provide buyers with a seamless shopping experience, thereby increasing their sales.

But now more and more sellers are losing their products and accounts due to ASIN abuse. In order to avoid this kind of situation from happening to you, it is very important to take the time to understand Amazon policies. Note that not only you, but your employees also need to have a deep understanding and strictly enforce them.