Amazon Standard A+ Content Modules Explained: Designer's Guide 2024
A design studio’s guide to building Standard A+ Content that will boost your Amazon sales and make Jeff Bezos jealous
Explore Standard (Basic) A+ Content that can boost your sales by up to 8%
A+ Content is the section that Amazon customers reach when they scroll down past the Gallery images and the text descriptions in your listing. You as a seller can have either Standard or Premium A+ Content (see eligibility requirements), and you want to have Premium by all means.
If you’re eligible for Premium A+ Content, see our Guide on Premium A+ Content, as it offers many more options.
In this article, we will go over all the available modules for Standard A+ Content, aka Enhanced Product Description, and share our insights on how to use them effectively to increase your sales. Having completed over 1,000 Amazon projects, most of them involving A+ Content, we know what we’re talking about. If you’d like to see for yourself, feel free to check out our portfolio.
How Standard A+ Content differs from Premium A+ Content
While both Standard and Premium A+ Content have their benefits, Premium A+ Content offers some clear advantages. In Premium, images are larger and wider, providing a more immersive and visually appealing experience. According to Amazon’s calculations, using Premium A+ Content can boost your sales by up to 20%, while Standard A+ Content improves the stats by up to 8%.
Additionally, Premium allows images to flow seamlessly without gaps, creating a more cohesive, custom-designed look. The visual elements are arranged vertically, giving it the appearance of a high-end landing page—perfect for making a strong first impression.
One of the biggest benefits of Premium A+ Content is that it includes a mobile version, an essential feature in today’s mobile-first world. Since most Amazon browsing happens on smartphones, having dedicated mobile modules ensures that your content looks sharp and performs well on smaller screens. The mobile images are smaller (800×600 pixels compared to 1,464×600), but we can arrange the layout to optimize the user experience for mobile shoppers.
On the other hand, the main advantage of Standard A+ Content is that it’s more cost-effective to design. If you’re looking to keep your design budget in check, Standard A+ may be the better option, but it lacks the advanced features and design flexibility that Premium offers.
Before we dive in: What not to use in A+ Content
When you upload your A+ Content to Amazon, it will be checked by a human moderator before it becomes visible to the shoppers. Amazon is quite strict on what you’re not allowed to include in your A+ Content, so to stay on the safe side, let’s consider a few major taboos. (See full A+ Content Guidelines for details; below are some highlights with our professional insight.)
Exactly the same images as in the Gallery
A+ Content is an extra opportunity for you to hook potential customers, so don’t use the visual materials you already have in the Gallery. Make more visuals to tell shoppers a story they’ll want to be part of.
If you’re on a tight budget, creating absolutely unique images for A+ might not be feasible. In this case, you can go 3R: reuse, recrop, and repurpose images you already have in the Gallery (while adding some new content as well). We do it for our clients, and it works great for their listings.
Avoid claims like "Best-Selling" or "Top-Rated"
Even if it’s true, avoid using phrases like “best-selling” or “top-rated” in your text or images. We believe you, but Amazon’s rules are strict on this. If you absolutely need to boast about something, let us know—we’ll help find a workaround.
Mentions of discounts, bonuses, and warranties
Amazon won’t let you say anything about any promotions or special offers in A+ Content because A+ Content is supposed to be just a fair description of your product with no marketing tricks in it. The words to steer clear of are “bonus,” “affordable,” and “free” as well as calls to action like “buy now,” “add to cart,” “get yours now,” and “shop with us.”
We can sometimes get around it, though. If you sell a kit where you include a special something that your competitors don’t include, we can bring it up as an “extra item” or “included” to emphasize your unique selling proposition (USP).
Registered and trademark signs
The ® and ™ characters aren’t permitted. If your product features a technology or a material that’s trademarked, we’ll show it on the Gallery images and in the Feature Bullets, but we can’t use these two characters in A+ Content. What we still can do is mention the uniqueness of your technology or material, and we’ll make it conspicuous in A+ as much as in the Gallery.
Any logos apart from your own
If your product is certified by a reputable organization, we’ll add the organization’s logo to the Gallery images, but we can’t use it in A+ Content. Nor can we use your competitors’ logos: we’ll stick to yours only to avoid bans.
It’s not an absolute no-no, though. Amazon may allow logos from partner companies in A+ Content if they’re “logical or beneficial” (Amazon’s wording). So we can try using logos that aren’t yours in special cases.
Environmental claims
Amazon is allergic to the words “recyclable” and “ecological” anywhere in A+ Content. If you use them, make sure you have proof that you can show Amazon to avoid rejection. The words “eco-friendly,” “biodegradable,” and “compostable” are simply not allowed, either in text or on images.
Amazon graphic elements
It may seem a good idea to show a praising review from your customer in A+ Content, but Amazon forbids it. We won’t show any five-star reviews (or any reviews at all), even if your product has plenty of them. Same restrictions stand for any UI element, such as an “Add to Cart” button.
Small text
The minimum size for texts in A+ Content that Amazon allows is 16 pixels, and it may seem tempting to add a lot of textual information to describe all the benefits of your product. But we know from experience that 16 pixels is way too small (virtually unreadable on mobile devices), so we recommend much larger writings.
Irrelevant alt-text
To each image in A+ Content, you can add a short description (100 characters or less) that used to be called “image keywords” and is now called alt-text. That’s for shoppers who use screen readers to listen to your listing rather than look at it.
Alt-text is indexed by Amazon (i.e., it affects the search algorithms and becomes one of the factors in what people see when they search for something on Amazon), so sellers used to just stuff it with keywords instead of actually describing the images. Amazon doesn’t like it, so when we write alt-text, we stick to accurate descriptions of what an image shows with one relevant keyword in each description at most.
Now that we’ve covered what we can’t do, it’s time to explore what’s possible. Let’s take a look at each available module.
1. Standard Company Logo
One module that’s missing from Premium A+ Content is the Standard Company Logo, a small 600×180 pixel block where you can display your logo along with a tagline or product name. However, be mindful that this module takes up space that could be used for more product-focused content. If you have a lot to showcase, consider choosing another module to maximize the visual impact of your Enhanced Product Description.
Nothing beside the image is allowed in this module.
2. Standard Image Header with Text
We postulated at the beginning of this article that Premium A+ Content is better for you than Standard. For our clients who aren’t yet eligible for Premium, we’ve lately been making Standard A+ Content that looks as much like Premium as possible, and this module is our go-to solution.
The image here is big: 970×600 pixels. We want to make the most of it and grab the shopper’s attention with highlights that showcase the benefits of owning the product.
In many cases now, if we’re doing Standard A+ Content, we use this module as much as we can to tell the product’s story boldly. No texts under the pictures: just large images. In Standard, they’ll have gaps between them (especially big ones on mobile devices), so if we want one image to “flow” into another, we use white backgrounds.
A general note on adding texts: we’ll always prefer to write something right on the image instead of writing it under the image. In the first case, we can use our client’s brand fonts and make it all look pretty. That’s better in most cases than textual blocks under images (not many people are going to actually read it, and it’s most likely not indexed by Amazon), so we usually ignore the option to add text underneath.
- Headline: 150 characters
- Text: 6,000 characters
3. and 4. Standard Image & Dark Text Overlay AND Standard Image & Light Text Overlay
These are useless. The image size here is too small: 970×300 pixels as opposed to 970×600 pixels in the previous module. There’s no point in using image size that’s smaller than the maximum.
Adding textual overlay, as we explained above, doesn’t make any sense, either. It’s always better to write something graphically right on the image than to use Amazon’s textboxes.
- Headline: 70 characters
- Text: 300 characters
5. Standard Three Images & Text
That’s the second coolest available module (after the one listed number one here). It’s three images in a row with headlines and paragraphs under each of them.
Don’t underestimate this module: the images are small (300×300 pixels), but on mobile devices, each of them is almost screen-wide, which makes them eye-catching.
We normally put the three images at the bottom to add all the necessary textual explanations of key features and benefits, especially if we want to introduce content that benefits from the “image + longer text” as a structure. It makes Standard A+ Content look fluid.
- Headline: 160 characters
- Text: 1,000 characters
6. Standard Four Images & Text
We use this one when there’s more than three important features we want to stress. The images here are quite small (220×220 pixels), but it’s normally enough: on mobile devices, they’re arranged in two rows.
- Headline: 160 characters
- Text: 1,000 characters
7. Standard Four Image/Text Quadrant
We never use this module because it’s too poor in visuals. As a design studio, we stick to the idea that stunning images sell. Here, they’re too small (135×135 pixels), and there’s too much text that no-one’s actually going to read anyway.
- Headline: 160 characters
- Text: 1,000 characters
8. Standard Multiple Image Module A
While this one might look cool, we don’t like it. That’s the one and only interactive module in Standard A+ Content: the shopper needs to click on thumbnails to go to the next image, and many just won’t be doing it.
We prefer to show all the images we want to show right away, without leaving it up to the shopper what they’ll see and what they’ll miss. Besides, it’s a rare module, and most shoppers just aren’t used to clicking on anything in A+ Content, and we don’t want to make browsing hard for them.
- 1 to 4 images
- Headline: 160 characters
- Text: 1,000 characters
9. Standard Single Left Image
A bad choice because if you want image + text, go with the three images and three texts in one module. Triple is better than single. Makes sense, right?
Sellers use these when they want to say something important about their products but don’t have high-quality images to do it. Our clients don’t have this problem: we provide them with high-quality images that they can use in more visually appealing modules.
- Headline: 160 characters
- Text: 1,000 characters
10. Standard Single Right Image
This one is absilutely the same as the ‘Standard Single Left Image’ but the image sits on the right side.
- Headline: 160 characters
- Text: 1,000 characters
11. Standard Single Image & Highlights
This module relies too much on off-image text, which isn’t ideal for creating a visually engaging presentation. However, it can be useful when there’s detailed information that needs to be conveyed in writing rather than visually. For instance, if you’re selling a tech gadget and need to provide a comprehensive list of compatible devices, this module can help present that information clearly.
- Headline: 160 characters
- Subheadline: 200 characters
- Body text: 1,000 characters
- Headline 2: 160 characters
- Subheadline 2: 200 characters
- Body text 2: 1,000 characters
- Bullet points headline: 160 characters
- Bullet point text: 100 characters (up to 8 bullet points)
12. Standard Single Image & Sidebar
The sidebar module is a better option than the highlights one, as it offers a cleaner layout and features two images. It’s particularly useful when you need to share helpful, detailed content. For example, we’ve used it effectively for a food product to showcase a recipe that customers could try with the product. This way, the text complements the image without overwhelming it.
- Headline: 160 characters
- Subheadline: 200 characters
- Body text: 500 characters
- Bullet point text: 200 characters (up to 8 bullet points)
- Sidebar headline: 200 characters
- Sidebar text: 500 characters
- Sidebar bullet points: 200 characters (up to 8 bullet points)
13. Standard Single Image & Specs Detail
A waste of space. Amazon does have fields where you can add technical specifications about your product, and if you use this module, you’re just reduplicating this information. Instead, it’s always wiser to enrich your listing with a big, engaging picture.
Modules 10, 11, and 12 (Single Image & Highlights, Single Image & Sidebar, and Single Image & Specs Detail) are quite similar and should primarily be used if you need to, or are legally required to, provide a detailed explanation about your product. Otherwise, these modules tend to be too text-heavy, which generally isn’t as engaging for potential customers. Visuals are often more effective in capturing attention, so we typically avoid these text-centric modules unless necessary.
- Top headline: 200 characters
- Specs headline: 160 characters
- Spec subheadline: 200 characters
- Spec text: 400 characters
- Spec subheadline 2: 200 characters
- Spec text 2: 400 characters
- Sidebar headline: 160 characters
- Sidebar subheadline: 200 characters
- Sidebar bullet points: 200 characters (up to 8 bullet points)
- Sidebar subheadline 2: 200 characters
- Sidebar text: 1,000 characters
14. Standard Technical Specifications
Same as the previous one: don’t waste the limited A+ Content modules (it’s six at most) on boring text that your potential customers will simply skip. We’re a team of designers, and it’s our ambition to deliver your product’s benefits in a visually appealing way. Textboxes on Amazon are not visually appealing.
- Headline: 80 characters
- Specifications: 4 min. 16 max.
- Specification name: 30 characters
- Specification definition: 500 characters
15. Standard Comparison Chart
This one’s important. Until recently (when the Brand Story option was added for Amazon sellers), this module was your only chance to insert links to other products you have. It’s a precious opportunity to engage potential customers.
The images here are large enough (150×300 pixels), and “Add to cart” buttons are added automatically. It’s one of our favorites, inferior only to the big pic module and multiple-images-in-a-row modules. If you have multiple products and don’t have the Brand Story module, this Comparison Chart is a must-have for your A+ Content.
- Product comparison: 2 min., 6 max.
- Comparison metrics (1 min., 10 max.)
- You can choose between V sign and text (up to 250 characters) for each metric
- Product title: 80 characters
- You can choose to show or hide reviews, prices, and ‘Add to cart’ button
16. Standard Product Description Text
You’ve guessed it right: we totally disregard this module. There are a lot of places in your listing where you can add plain text if you want. In A+ Content, you always want to go for the visuals.
- Headline: 160 characters
- Text: 5,000 characters
Bottom Line
By all means, get Premium A+ Content: it sells better. Until then, use Standard A+ Content to make it look as much like Premium as possible: maximally big images, no text underneath (except for the very last module perhaps). All textual information should be provided graphically right on the images.
Check out other articles:
