Amazon A+ content: a design blueprint for Basic and Premium A+

A+ content is the part of an Amazon listing that most brands either over-invest in or ignore. Some spend thousands on a Premium A+ design before their main image is right. Others never replace the plain product description at all. This guide sets out what Amazon’s rules allow on Amazon.co.uk today, what Amazon’s sales claims do and don’t tell you, a module order we use as a starting point, and how to measure the result instead of guessing.

What A+ content is, and who can use it

A+ content is the branded section of images, text, comparison charts and, in Premium, video, that sits in the Product description area of a detail page. When you publish it, it hides your plain-text product description². A separate feature, Brand Story, appears in its own From the brand section².

To add A+ content to an ASIN, you need a Professional selling account and a brand representative or reseller role for that brand in Amazon Brand Registry². Amazon also opens it to some emerging brands in managed programmes such as Launchpad and Amazon Exclusives, and since January 2024 generic products in a Professional seller’s catalogue can use Basic A+ only². It isn’t yet supported for books, music, video or DVD sold through Seller Central¹.

Brand Registry itself is free. To enrol, you need a registered trademark, or in some cases a pending application, from a government trademark office in a country with an Amazon store, and your brand name or logo must be permanently on the product or its packaging⁵.

One placement rule catches brands that also sell through Vendor Central or a distributor. If Amazon Retail already holds A+ content for an ASIN, that vendor content appears in a From the manufacturer section and takes priority, and you cannot add or edit seller A+ on that ASIN².

Basic A+, Premium A+ and Brand Story compared

Amazon now describes three types of A+ content¹:

The technical rules are the same for all of them: .jpg, .bmp or .png files in RGB colour (not CMYK), under 2MB each and at least 72 dpi, with no animated GIFs, watermarks, QR codes, HTML or links¹. Amazon reviews each submission within up to seven business days and publishes approved content within 24 hours, with a limit of 20 pending submissions at once¹.

Premium A+ content: who qualifies and what it costs

Premium A+ costs nothing, and on Amazon’s current guidance any seller who can publish Basic A+ can use it, although one older Amazon page still sets extra conditions. Here is the detail.

What it costs. Amazon’s UK A+ Content guide says A+ Content “is available at no additional cost for basic and Premium features"¹. The older UK A+ page describes Premium as free “during this promotional period”, and adds that if Amazon ever announces a fee you would have to opt in, and Premium content you had already published would stay free². The real cost of Premium is production: more modules, larger 1,464 × 600 images and, usually, video¹.

Who qualifies. This is where older guides, including the earlier version of this one, go wrong. Amazon’s UK A+ Content guide now says: “There is no additional eligibility criteria for sellers to access Premium A+“¹. Amazon’s older UK A+ content page, still live, lists two criteria: a published Brand Story on every ASIN you own, and at least five A+ projects approved and published in the past 12 months. Amazon re-checks eligibility weekly and shows a banner in A+ Content Manager when Premium is switched on².

In practice, open A+ Content Manager and look for the Premium option. If it isn’t there, meet the older two criteria. You also need the same basics as for any A+: a Professional selling account and a brand representative or reseller role in Brand Registry². Generic products can’t use Premium; since January 2024 they can use Basic A+ only². A Brand Story on every ASIN is worth publishing anyway: it is free, it links shoppers to the rest of your range, and it is the only part of A+ where time-sensitive wording is allowed³.

What Amazon’s “up to 20%” really tells you

Amazon’s US A+ page says that “Basic A+ Content can increase sales by up to 8%” and that “well-implemented Premium A+ Content can increase sales by up to 20%“⁴. The UK Brand Registry page uses the same words, and adds that “knowing what content drives conversion and implementing changes to your listings based on optimised content can increase sales by up to 25%“⁵. On the US page, the footnote for the 8% and 20% figures reads, in full, “Amazon internal data"⁴.

Read those figures for what they are:

• “Up to” is a ceiling, not an average. Many listings will see less, and some none.
• No method is published. We don’t know the sample, the period, the categories or what the listings had before.
• A+ rarely changes alone. Brands that invest in A+ usually improve their images, reviews and advertising at the same time, so part of any lift may belong elsewhere.

That is why this guide ends with measurement. The figures are a good reason to test A+ on your best-selling products, not a number to put in a forecast.

Where A+ sits in the order of work

An earlier post of ours argued that A+ content mattered far less than the main image, and put figures on it: roughly 22% of a listing’s conversion impact for the main image and 4% for A+. Those percentages were not from a controlled study, so we have withdrawn them. The underlying point still holds, for a reason you can check on any detail page: shoppers see your main image, title and price in search results before they ever reach the product description.

So we fix things in the order a shopper meets them. First the main image: a pure white background, the product filling 85% of the frame, and at least 1,000 pixels on the longest side so zoom works⁹. Then the title, price and first bullets. Then A+. Our listing optimisation guide covers the first three, and the listing checker will flag the basics in a minute.

A+ earns its place once shoppers are on the page and still deciding. In the accounts we manage, it does most for products that need explaining: several variants to choose between, a size or compatibility question, or a price higher than the obvious alternative.

The blueprint: order modules by the shopper’s questions

Amazon’s own guidelines point the same way: answer common customer questions, keep a clear visual hierarchy, use images that aren’t already in the gallery, and format for mobile¹. We build A+ as a sequence of questions a shopper asks, in the order they ask them. This is our starting point, not an Amazon rule, and the right order for your product is the one that wins a test.

Three rules make the blueprint work:

1. One job per module. If a module tries to do two things, split it or cut it. Amazon asks for paragraphs of no more than three sentences¹.
2. Every benefit has a fact next to it. “Keeps drinks cold” means little. “Keeps drinks cold for 24 hours” answers the question. Any claim that something is certified, tested or proven needs a note naming the body and the year³.
3. Write your reviews back into the page. The questions buyers ask and the reasons they give for returns are the best brief you have for module 3.

Brand Story does a different job. Use it to say who you are in a sentence or two, and to send shoppers to the rest of your range and your Brand Store².

What Amazon will reject

Most rejections we see come from a short list of rules. Amazon’s UK guidelines don’t allow³:

• Price and promotion: pricing, discounts, words like “affordable”, “cheap”, “bonus” or “free”, and calls to action such as “buy now” or “add to basket”.
• Competitors: any comparison with other brands, named or described as “others”. Comparison charts may only include your own brand’s products; comparing categories, such as LED against halogen bulbs, is allowed.
• Guarantees and service: warranty or guarantee information, off-Amazon returns policies, shipping details and contact information.
• Boasts and unproven claims: “No. 1 rated”, “best-selling”, “100% satisfaction guaranteed”; awards more than two years old; “eco-friendly”, “biodegradable” or “compostable”; and any claim to cure, treat or prevent disease.
• Time-sensitive wording: “new”, “latest”, “now” or holiday references, except in Brand Story.
• Quotes from customers: quotes may only come from well-known publications or public figures, with a maximum of four, each with the author and date.
• Links and redirects: hyperlinks, QR codes, or text sending shoppers to other sites or other Amazon products.
• Symbols and formatting: ™, ® and © in text copy, more than one brand logo, all-caps strings, and text too small to read on a phone.

Two house-style rules also cause rejections: spell out numbers under ten, and use serial commas³. If your images show photorealistic people generated by AI, Amazon asks you to tag them with the metadata keyword contains-synthetic-performer, or tick the “AI-generated people” box when uploading³.

Write it to be read as text, not only seen

Many A+ designs put every word inside the images. It looks polished, but it has costs. Amazon rejects small text that is unreadable on a phone³, and it asks for alt-text on every image that describes the image for a shopper using a screen reader¹³. It also says it assesses A+ for “readability, information completeness, visual presentation and conversion effectiveness”, with results in a Content quality analysis tab in A+ Content Manager².

AI shopping assistants add another reason. Amazon reported that shoppers using Rufus were 60% more likely to complete a purchase¹¹, and says Rufus helped over 300 million customers in 2025. In May 2026 it combined Rufus with Alexa+ as Alexa for Shopping, which it announced for US customers¹². Amazon doesn’t publish exactly which parts of a listing its assistants read. Our working assumption is that facts written as text are easier for any system to use than facts drawn into a picture, so we write the key specifications in text modules and alt-text as well as in the images. There is more on this in our guide to optimising for Rufus and Alexa for Shopping.

Two practical habits follow:

• Keep the plain description up to date. A+ hides it on the page, but Amazon still recommends mirroring your A+ changes in that field².
• Write alt-text as a sentence a person would find useful, such as “Stainless steel bottle beside a 24-hour timer showing cold drinks after a full day”, not a list of keywords. Amazon can reject alt-text that doesn’t describe the image³.

How to measure A+ without guessing

The honest way to know whether new A+ content works is to show it to half your shoppers and the old version to the other half at the same time. Amazon’s tool for this, Manage Your Experiments, is available on Amazon.co.uk⁶. Our guide to Amazon experiments covers it in full.

What you need to know before you start:

• Who can use it: the brand owner, meaning someone internal to the brand and responsible for selling it on Amazon⁶.
• Which products qualify: ASINs with enough recent traffic. Depending on the category, Amazon says that may mean several dozen orders a week or more⁶. If a product doesn’t qualify, test on a bigger seller in the same range.
• What you can test: images, titles, bullet points, description, A+ content and Brand Story. For A+, the product must already have published A+ content, version A must be approved, and version B must be approved before the test can start⁶⁷.
• How long: experiments typically run for 8 to 10 weeks, and Amazon recommends eight weeks for a fixed-length test⁷.
• Search ranking: Amazon says experiments do not affect search rankings⁶.

At the end, Amazon shows units, sales, conversion rate and units per unique visitor for each version, and the probability that one version is better⁸. It also shows a projected one-year impact, calculated as the average daily sales increase multiplied by 365. Amazon notes that this ignores seasonality and price changes⁸, so treat it as a rough guide, not a forecast.

Depending on what you changed, an inconclusive result can tell you that a certain type of content is not worth investing in because it does not affect customer behaviour.

That line is worth taking seriously. If a £3,000 Premium redesign can’t beat your Basic A+ in an eight-week test, you have learned something useful for the rest of the catalogue.

If you can’t run an experiment

For low-traffic products, compare before and after, and be strict about it. In Business Reports, track Unit Session Percentage, Amazon’s conversion rate (units ordered divided by sessions)¹⁰, for four weeks before and four weeks after publishing. Keep price, coupons and advertising steady, avoid peak weeks, and compare against a similar product you didn’t change. If both moved by the same amount, the A+ didn’t cause it.

Conversion also flows straight into advertising cost. ACoS equals cost per click divided by conversion rate times average order value, so a real conversion gain lowers ACoS without touching a bid. Our guide to break-even ACoS shows the arithmetic.

A+ checklist before you submit

1. Main image, title and price are right first⁹.
2. Brand Story is published on every ASIN you own².
3. Each module answers one question, in the order the shopper asks it.
4. Key facts appear in text and alt-text, not only in images¹.
5. No price, promotions, competitor comparisons, guarantees, links or time-sensitive words³.
6. Every claim of “certified”, “tested” or “proven” has a note naming the body and the year³.
7. Images are unique to A+, RGB, under 2MB and readable on a phone¹.
8. A test is planned: Manage Your Experiments if the product qualifies, a controlled before-and-after if it doesn’t.

Good A+ content is not decoration. It is the answer to the questions that stop a shopper buying, laid out in the order they ask them, and then tested.