Quick Recap: Changes to Amazon Product Type and Attributes

When it comes to properly positioning your products on Amazon, keywords are probably top of mind. Yes, these are important, but let’s take a step back and look at something that impacts your products right from the start: your Amazon product type.

When you list a product on the marketplace, you must choose the corresponding product type and relevant attributes. For some items, however, your options are pretty limited. You may have been stuck selecting something that wasn’t the best match or didn’t have the level of detail that you wanted.

Thankfully, Amazon realizes this shortcoming and continues to introduce new product types and attribute selections. Keep reading to learn more about the latest launch as well as another important news update: the introduction of three mandatory ASIN attributes that will go into effect later this month.

What Are the New Product Types and Attributes?

Check out the new product types and attributes for multiple Amazon marketplaces. One particularly noteworthy addition is for HAND_SANITIZER. Pretty appropriate, huh?

If you’re adding a new listing, you can find these updated product types and attributes on the Add a product tool and via bulk upload templates.

If you have existing products that fit these new product types, Amazon says you don’t need to take any action — it will automatically re-classify existing ASINS to the newly created product types.

However, you can go ahead and edit your products to provide details for the new attributes by going to the Manage Inventory dashboard.

Why Are Your Amazon Product Type and Attributes So Important?

On a crowded marketplace like Amazon, the devil truly is in the details. A listing that lacks detailed information about an item isn’t going to perform very well. Customers crave information! The more detailed you can be, the better. That's why having a detailed, accurate Amazon product listing is so key to seller success — it helps shoppers make more informed purchasing decisions and leads to higher sales, fewer returns, and better reviews. Sounds good, right?

The same theory applies to your Amazon product type selection. Selecting the right product type and Amazon product attributes allows you to create a helpful, highly detailed listing that makes it easier for customers to find you and say yes to your products as well.

Amazon wants you to choose the most granular product type possible (details, remember?). When you do so, it rewards you in these three ways:

Enablement of the Product Overview Experience: Product Overview positions key product attributes right above the bullet points on the product detail page to help customers find important info faster.
Tabular Spec View in Search: Similarly, Tabular Spec view places key product details next to an item on the Amazon search results page for quick identification of top product features.
Enhanced Search Experience: Product type is now one of the variables in Amazon’s search experience, so having the right PT for your product can help get it in front of more customers.

As you can see, the introduction of new product types and attributes not only benefits sellers but customers as well.

3 Amazon Product Attributes Will Become Mandatory in October

With the same goal of a more streamlined shopping experience in mind, Amazon has also announced that three ASIN attributes will become mandatory as of October 26, 2021. These Amazon product attributes are:

Net Content: A new attribute set that includes net content count, weight, and volume information that will be required for eight product types.

Item Form: A once optional attribute that will now be required for 86 product types. This defines the actual form of your product; for example, a shampoo can be in a cream, liquid, or foam item form.

Number of Items: A previously optional attribute that will now be mandatory for 154 product types. This looks at the lowest level of branded packaging around the product sold. For example, how many boxes of pens a customer receives, not the actual number of pens included in each box.

Amazon also said that it will be adjusting the allowed values for the Unit Count Type attribute for 138 product types. More details and examples of these attributes can be found in Seller Central.

You can find the full list of impacted product types on this FAQ page.

Editor's note: Starting June 6, 2023, Amazon will require sellers to use three new product attributes for certain categories. Read more.

What Happens If I Don’t Update?

According to the Seller Central announcement, all ASINs for the selected product types must have these attributes populated when you submit new ASINs or update any existing ASINs.

Your current product pages won’t be delisted if you fail to act by the October 26 deadline, but you will be unable to add new listings within those product types after that date. It may take a little work to get up to speed, but it's definitely in your best interest to perform this update.

How Do I Add this Information?

If you have inventory for any ASINs in the applicable Amazon product type, you must begin updating them. Amazon will also notify you to add select attributes during regular catalog edits.

To update the attributes of a single ASIN, follow these steps:

Go to the Manage Inventory dashboard in Seller Central.
Find the ASIN that you need to update.
Select Edit from the item dropdown.
Add information for Net Content in the More Details tab; Item Form and Number of Items will be located under the Vital Info tab.
Click Save and finish.

Visit the Manage Inventory page to learn how to update in bulk.

Keep Up With Amazon

Amazon is constantly changing its policies and processes, so it’s critical that you stay on top of this information. Check back on our blog for more important updates about the marketplace, or subscribe to our newsletter to easily stay in the loop!