A+ doesn't sell because it looks nice. It sells when it answers, in the right order, the three or four doubts stopping the purchase. Most listings we audit have A+ published and the single most important module sits in position five, underneath a lifestyle shot that tells the shopper nothing. That's an afternoon's work to fix.
What A+ is and who can use it
A+ Content (previously EBC, Enhanced Brand Content) is the set of enriched modules that show up in the "From the brand" or "Product description" area of a listing: blocks with imagery, formatted text, tables and comparison grids. They replace the plain-text description.
You need Brand Registry (Amazon's brand registration programme, which requires a pending or granted trademark) to use it. No registered brand, no access. Sellers and vendors both have it; resellers without their own brand don't.
A+ Premium: what changes
Premium A+ (also sold as A+ Brand Story Premium or premium modules) adds formats the basic version doesn't have: video inside the module, carousels, hotspot images, expandable FAQs and wider layouts. Eligibility has shifted over the years — it used to be invitation-only or revenue-gated, and it has since opened up to brands meeting certain content and review requirements — so check your own Seller Central before you budget for an expensive production.
Is it worth it? If your product has a doubt that's better explained in motion (assembly, texture, real-world scale, usage), yes. If your product is self-explanatory, Premium gives you a marginal lift over a well-built basic A+. Fix the basic one first.
Module order: whatever unblocks the purchase goes on top
This one makes brand teams uncomfortable, but it holds: the top slot belongs to whatever unblocks the purchase, not to your story.
Think about who actually reaches the A+ section. Someone who has already seen the main images, the price and probably the first few reviews. They scrolled down because a piece of information is missing. If your first module is a sunset shot with a brand slogan, you've wasted the moment.
An order that works across most categories:
- Proposition reinforcement: product in use plus three or four concrete benefits with numbers. Not adjectives.
- The block that answers the main doubt: sizing, compatibility, how it installs, what's in the box, how long it lasts. It varies by category; pull it from customer questions and negative reviews.
- Product comparison: where this model sits within your range.
- Proof and trust: certifications, materials, warranty, where it's made.
- Brand story: here, at the end, for the shopper who's already convinced and wants to justify the choice.
If your first module could be deleted without the customer losing information, it isn't your first module.
One technical detail people forget: on mobile the modules stack and the shopper sees far less than you see in the desktop editor. Mobile is well over 60-70% of Amazon traffic in most consumer categories. Always check the mobile preview before you publish.
The modules you'll actually use
You don't need fifteen. Five or six well-chosen ones cover any product.
| Module | What it does | When to use it |
|---|---|---|
| Standard image with text overlay | Opens strong with the headline benefit | Always, as the first block |
| Image with four text quadrants | Breaks benefits into scannable chunks | Products with several independent advantages |
| Three-column text with images | Explains steps, uses or modes | Installation, routines, recipes, assembly |
| Product comparison chart | Places the model in the range and cross-sells | Any time you have more than one ASIN |
| Full-width standard image | Context of use, real scale | Furniture, textiles, sports, homeware |
| Technical specification table | Dimensions, materials, compatibility | Electronics, spare parts, tools |
| Logo / certification module | Trust and regulatory signalling | Food, cosmetics, baby and child |
| Brand Story | Emotional close and navigation to the Store | Brands with a broad catalogue |
Brand Story deserves its own note: it's the horizontal carousel that sits above the A+ and is configured once at brand level. It's inherited by every listing, it links through to your Store and it works as internal recirculation. Set it up even if you touch nothing else.
Product comparison: the underrated module
The comparison chart does three jobs at once, which is why it outperforms its production cost:
- It removes choice friction. The shopper torn between your 500 ml and your 1 litre stays inside your brand instead of going off to look elsewhere.
- It rescues badly matched traffic. If someone landed on the wrong ASIN, you redirect them into your catalogue rather than losing them.
- It creates internal links between your ASINs, with live imagery and pricing.
How to build it properly:
- Put the current ASIN in the first column and mark it as the one being viewed.
- Five or six products maximum. Any more and it truncates on mobile.
- Rows that decide something, not filler rows: capacity, who it's for, lifespan, included/not included. Avoid "high quality: yes" repeated across every column.
- Never include competitors. Your products only.
Compliance mistakes that get the listing pulled
Amazon reviews A+ submissions and can reject them — or worse, approve and then remove them later. The most common causes:
- Health or medical claims. "Cures", "prevents", "treats", "antibacterial", "kills 99.9% of viruses". In cosmetics and supplements this is rejection reason number one. If it isn't substantiated and permitted in your category, cut it.
- Comparisons with named competitors. You can compare your own products. You cannot say "better than Brand X".
- Prices, deals and discounts in imagery. "Save 20%", "sale", "free delivery", "cheapest". Banned: prices move and Amazon won't host static content that contradicts them.
- Safety warnings used as selling points. If your product requires hazard warnings (chemicals, button cells, small parts), those go where they belong — label, bullets, documentation — not dressed up inside a marketing image.
- Unsupported superlatives. "Number one in the UK", "best-selling", "the best on the market".
- References to other channels. Your website, your email, your social accounts, warranties handled outside Amazon.
- Text baked into an image with no equivalent in the text field. As well as being a rejection trigger, it makes that content invisible to screen readers and to crawling.
Keep a checklist of those seven points and run it before every submission. It saves you 48-72 hour review cycles.
Alt text: the field almost nobody fills in
Every A+ image has an alt text field: the description a screen reader reads out and that Amazon uses to understand what the image contains.
Two reasons to write it properly:
- Accessibility and compliance. It's effectively mandatory, and leaving it blank is a rejection trigger under stricter reviews.
- Indexing. Text inside an A+ image isn't text — it's pixels. The only indexable parts of that module are the alt text and the text fields. If you've buried your three selling arguments inside a JPG, as far as Amazon's search engine is concerned they don't exist.
How to write it: describe what's visible in the customer's language. "30-litre backpack with padded compartment for a 15-inch laptop" is useful. "Image 3", or a comma-separated pile of keywords, is not. A couple of lines per image, and don't repeat the same string across all eight.
Measuring whether the A+ worked, honestly
This is where nearly everyone fools themselves. You publish the A+ on a Tuesday, you look at the following week, conversion is up two points and you call it a win. Except that week you also raised bids, a five-star review landed and seasonality shifted.
What to look at, in order of reliability:
| Method | What it tells you | Reliability |
|---|---|---|
| Manage Your Experiments (native A/B test) | Real difference between two A+ versions | High |
| Before/after against the same period last year | Trend, not causation | Medium |
| Plain before/after | Very little: it blends price, ads, reviews and seasonality | Low |
Manage Your Experiments is Amazon's A/B testing tool inside Brand Registry. It lets you run two A+ versions (or titles, or main images) head to head for several weeks. It needs a minimum traffic volume — long-tail ASINs won't qualify — but if you have it, it's the only clean measurement available.
The metric: unit session percentage from the detail page sales and traffic report at child-ASIN level. Don't look at total units, which move with traffic. And freeze everything else during the test: no price changes, no budget increases, no new coupons.
As an industry reference point, across the accounts we manage a brand-new A+ replacing a plain text description tends to produce mid-to-high single-digit relative conversion lifts. Rebuilding an A+ that already existed and was decent delivers considerably less. Set expectations before you commission the production.
What to do this week
- Open your five highest-traffic ASINs on mobile and check which module the customer sees first. If it's the brand story, move it to the bottom and promote the one that answers the purchase question.
- Read the last 20 two- and three-star reviews on each and note the objection that repeats most. That objection is your second module.
- Add the comparison chart to every ASIN in the same family, with the product being viewed in column one.
- Run the compliance checklist (health, competitors, prices, superlatives, external channels) across all published A+ and fix what you find before Amazon does.
- Fill in alt text on every image with descriptive sentences, and launch an experiment in Manage Your Experiments on your highest-session ASIN.