The 12-point Amazon listing audit we run before buying a single unit

We do not buy a brand's inventory until we have been through its catalog properly. Not because we are being difficult, but because we are about to own that stock, and a catalog full of suppressed listings and orphaned variations is a very expensive thing to discover afterwards.

Here is the checklist. It takes an afternoon for a small catalog and it consistently turns up problems the brand did not know about.

Structure

1. Duplicate ASINs

Search your brand name and look for the same product appearing twice. Duplicates split reviews and rank between two pages that should be one. They usually come from a listing created by a reseller before the brand got organized.

2. Orphaned children

A variant that got detached from its parent now ranks for nothing and inherits no reviews. Check every parent-child family has all its children attached.

3. Mis-parented variations

Genuinely different products grouped together to inherit reviews. Amazon has tightened enforcement here and the whole family can be split or suppressed. Fix it before Amazon does.

4. Suppressed listings

Seller Central's Fix Your Products page. A suppressed listing does not sell and does not announce itself, revenue simply stops. We have found brands with suppressed ASINs going back months.

5. Stranded inventory

Stranded stock is units in Amazon's warehouse with no active listing. You are paying storage on product that cannot sell, and it drags your IPI down at the same time.

Content

6. Main image compliance

Pure white background, product filling 85% of the frame, no text, no props, no logos. The main image wins or loses the click in search results, so this is the highest-leverage asset on the page.

7. Image stack depth

Count them. Three photos of the packaging is not an image stack. You want an infographic, a scale reference, a lifestyle shot, a detail shot and a comparison chart.

8. Title construction

Is it built around terms customers actually type, or around how the brand describes itself internally? Check the search term report for the real language.

9. Backend search terms

Open the field. On roughly half the catalogs we audit it is empty, or stuffed with words already in the title. Backend search terms are where synonyms, misspellings and Spanish variants belong.

10. A+ Content and Brand Store

Both free with Brand Registry, and both frequently missing. The A+ comparison chart module is one of the most valuable placements on Amazon because it cross-sells your own catalog to someone already on your page.

Competitive position

11. Who else is on the listing

List every seller on every ASIN. Note their price against your MAP. This is where you find out how big your unauthorized seller problem actually is.

12. Buy Box ownership

Over a week, not a day. An unstable Buy Box is a symptom, usually of the problem you just found in step 11.

What to do with the results

Fix in this order: suppressed and stranded listings first, because that is revenue currently at zero. Then main images, because that is the biggest conversion lever. Then titles and backend terms. Then A+ and Store.

Change one thing at a time and measure against conversion rate and sessions, or you will never know what worked.

If you would rather we ran this on your catalog, send us your storefront. We do it before every partnership anyway, and we will share what we find whether or not we end up working together.