Bullet Point Best Practices: Complying with Amazon's Latest Guidelines

To maintain your edge as an Amazon seller, staying on top of the latest changes and rules is vital. Today, we’re highlighting an important update that will change how you write your product listings. Amazon is revising its bullet point requirements starting August 15, 2024. This is a crucial change that all sellers need to be aware of.

What’s Changing?

The new requirements restrict the use of special characters, emojis, and certain phrases in your bullet points. If you’ve been using emojis to add flair to your listings, it’s time to rethink that strategy. While Amazon has hinted at these restrictions before, enforcement has been inconsistent. However, this new update indicates that Amazon is now taking these rules more seriously, potentially leading to listing suppression for non-compliance.

In addition to these restrictions, Amazon will introduce AI-driven tools to help optimize your bullet points. This AI will scan your listings, remove non-compliant content, and generate high-quality, compliant bullet points for your review before they are published. This process is similar to Amazon’s approach with image and title requirements, where they can step in and make changes if your content doesn't meet their standards.

What You Can’t Include in Your Bullet Points

Amazon's guidelines have become stricter on what you can and cannot include in your bullet points. Here are some of the key things to avoid:

Special Characters and Emojis: These are no longer allowed and could lead to listing suppression.

Phrases like “eco-friendly” or “antibacterial”: Surprisingly, common terms like these are not permitted. Also, claims like "made from bamboo" or "contains soy" are restricted.

Guarantees or Refund Statements: Phrases such as “full refund,” “unconditional guarantee,” or “if not satisfied, send it back” are not allowed. Company Information or Repetition: Avoid including your company’s name or repeating the same information in multiple bullet points. You’ll also need to ensure that your bullet points are within the specified character limits: between 10 and 255 characters per bullet. Additionally, Amazon requires a minimum of three bullet points in each listing.

What Does This Mean for You?

If you’ve been skirting the rules, now is the time to audit your listings and make sure they’re compliant. While it might be tempting to wait and see if Amazon enforces these rules, the risk of having your listings suppressed or altered by AI isn’t worth it. Once Amazon changes your content, it can be challenging to revert it back to what you originally intended.