Resolving an Unsolicited Category Change on Amazon: Case Study
Greetings from the Solver team!
Amazon often changes the categories of your products in the Best Seller Rank. There may be several reasons. For instance, a policy change or keywords that identify a different category.
For a long time, one of our clients was selling knives in the right category for his product, but after a while, Amazon changed it to a similar one in this niche. In this regard, the rating and sales of the client suffered.
We started by determining whether the client’s product fits their desired category. Answer: yes. Next, we looked through the entire listing – title, bullet points, images, product description – and found a few keywords that moved the product to another category. In addition, we also conducted research on other listings in the desired category and studied shootouts, titles, and photos. Through the “edit” button and the flat file, we uploaded the updated data to the listing and waited for everything to be displayed in the backend.
Important! The product really fits the desired category, so we made changes. But this is manipulation if you make changes to fall into the right category artificially. Such actions will lead to the listing deactivation.
The next step is writing an appeal. We recommend not to paint a lot of text here, but keep it short. Therefore, we wrote point by point why our product fits into the category we need. We described the shape of the knife, handles, parameters, purpose, and the difference between the two categories of knives.
The first time, Amazon did not accept appeals in such cases, so with the help of constant calls with the Support Specialist, where we explained the difference between the categories and what we wanted, the category was changed to the desired one.
