Bullet Points - 5 or more?

The Amazon detail page Bullet Points argument

I did a post about this a couple of weeks ago on LinkedIn - the engagement was awesome so I want to draw on this a little and talk about it in more detail. 

Here is the post-- 

- Almost 10,000 views 

- 201 people that voted

The past as seen below invoked some great responses in the comment section section. 

Here are a few: 

So I agree with what everyone said in the comments 

You can see the post here and dig more into the comments. POST 

Most of what everyone said in the comments was about what amazon wants to see. 

While a completely agree with that -- you have to do what Amazon wants -- you also have to think of the end goal of Amazon -- their customers -- so while some categories have the option to provide more than 5 bullet points (thats what sparked this post in the first place).. should you really do it? 

Here a couple reasons why 5 will work: 

1. Amazon indexing and length of bullet points - as Andy pointed out 1000 characters is what amazon reads so you can accomplish that with 5 bullet points and not have them be too long 

2. Five bullet points have been the norm for as long as I can remember - so physiologically is this the correct way? I would say so until we start to see the shift on more listings. 

3. You should be able to convey your message in 5 bullet points -- 5 is plenty use it wisely 

4. Keep it simple stupid - don't over complicate it and make it easy for your customers 

5. Do what is right for your customer - do what is right for Amazon and your customer -- this leads me to the below 

(see what I did here with the 5 bullet points) 

Other questions that I must ask are: 

Are people attention span reducing even more? 

Would creating 10 bullet points with 100 characters be better and easier to read for the customer? 

These are the kinds of questions you should ask yourself while selling your product on Amazon. 

I would make a case that any tools being sold should use really short bullet points and as many as possible to make the point of how awesome the product is

And I would make the case that 5 bullet points for baby products with longer text for those that research more 

To conclude: 

In my professional opinion - go with 5 bullet points.. for now 

See what is happening in your category and if others are starting to adopt it 

Monitor those that adopt it and track their sales and see if it helping

Do what is right for your product and Amazon 

Until next time friends! 

- Brett Bohannon