Not A Programmer? Scared Of HTML? Then Don't Worry - Let Us Convert Your Product Description To Amazon-Ready "Scrunched" HTML For You!

In fact, you may not know what it is, and that's fine.

Running an online business, especially in the early days when you can't afford to outsource tasks to someone else, requires you to be a jack of all trades - researcher, negotiator, copywriter, maybe graphic designer, marketer, customer service agent, statistician and more, including, unfortunately for some, programmer too.

For most of your Amazon product listing, you really don't need to worry about this technical stuff, but when it comes to your Product Description, then there's no choice in the matter - unless, of course, you want it to be one single paragraph of plain text that nobody will want to read.

Now, you may think that you can use your favourite HTML editor or WYSIWYG (i.e. What You See Is What You Get) software (or website), but there are two main problems with this approach.

	"Hello Rae & Mark, Thank you very much for the HTML conversion & for the edits! New and improved description is great. Best regards," Sami B.

Amazon's Limited Support For HTML

Firstly, Amazon only supports a tiny subset of what most of these programs can generate. This means that if your software creates code that Amazon doesn't allow, which is highly likely, then their system will prevent you from saving your listing.

Don't be fooled by inferior Amazon Product Description generation software. Indeed, there are a few out there and they do a terrible job - in fact, some still generate code that is not supported by Amazon, so they won't work no matter what they do.

To see what kind of things are out there, please see an article we wrote, either here (for AzonSellerTools.com members) or here (for anyone else).

These are some of the standard HTML features that Amazon does not support:

• Colored Text
• Larger Font Sizes
• Images
• Links
• Tables
• Videos
• and features even more basic than these!

And since their system update toward the end of October 2014, they don't allow any CSS at all. (If you're not familiar with what this it, it's a method of styling your content, and it includes features that HTML supports as well as many that it doesn't.)

Note: you may see some products on Amazon that have fancy Product Descriptions - e.g. with multiple images with text that floats around them, maybe even videos, and nicely formatted tables, but these are special features that Amazon reserves for its own products and those sold by "VIP" merchants who have specifically been invited to join their Vendor Central program. Such features are not available to regular sellers.

Amazon's 2,000 Character Limit

The second problem with using HTML generated from most software is that it tends to be wasteful in terms of space.

Remember, there is a maximum limit of 2,000 characters (yes, that's characters, not words - and that also includes spaces) for your Product Description, and that includes both your content and any formatting commands (e.g. to break your text up into separate paragraphs, make text bold, simulate bullet points).

That means you really have to make every single character count - there is simply no room for junk that doesn't work or does nothing.

(At least one other tool tries to count the characters in your Product Description, but it is way out and therefore useless. We tried it with some content that should have been about 350 characters under the 2,000 character limit, according to the Scruncher, which matches Amazon perfectly, whereas this other tool reported the content as being about 350 characters too long. That means their tool was over 40% out!)

The Scruncher

Now, all of our members have access to a tool we call the Scruncher.

This was the very first tool we created and its job is to convert standard HTML (which must be written in a very specific manner) into Amazon-ready code.

Not only will it strip out commands that Amazon doesn't support, but it will also try to fix the code so that it is Amazon-compliant as well as "scrunching" the final HTML to save as many of those precious 2,000 characters as it can. Yes, there are a few sneaky ways you can save space, and our tool takes full advantage of all of them.

The net effect is that you can simply copy and paste the "scrunched" code straight into Amazon, safe in the knowledge that it will work and fit within the character count limit.

However, until the release of v4.0 of the Scruncher, in December 2014, you still needed to enter your HTML code to begin with - and this is where many people tend to freak out a bit. And even though it does try to fix code where it can, it can not cope with the myriad of different ways that all the various WYSIWYG software on the market can generate code.

And that's why the Scruncher requires HTML to be written in a precise way - unless you use its integrated custom WYSIWYG editor to format your Product Description.

To help our members with that, the Scruncher does come with a comprehensive user manual, which tells you everything you need to know about the HTML that Amazon does support, and how to use the tool, with plenty of copy-and-paste examples, as well as video tutorials.

But the manual can be just as daunting as writing program code - the downside of its being comprehensive is that it is a long document, even given the small number of HTML tags that Amazon now supports.

So What If You Don't Want To Learn HTML?

The good news is that all of our members can send us one Product Description, as a formatted Word document, and we will convert it to Scruncher- and Amazon-ready HTML for free. Yes, this is a "thank you" (worth $15, as this free offer is for the Bronze level of this service) for being a member of AzonSellerTools.com!

But supposing you sell more than one product, which is what most vendors do?

Or you don't want to become a member but still need a Product Description creating?

(And sorry, but don't think you can just outsource this task because very few people seem to understand the details of what Amazon does and doesn't support. Even marketers who are selling high-end Amazon FBA courses don't get this right!)

Well, that's where our new Done-For-You Product Description To Amazon-Ready HTML Conversion service comes in handy!

In most cases, it will be a simple two-step process:

1. You send us your Product Description as a formatted document.
2. We will convert that to Amazon-Ready HTML, and send back to you pre- and post-Scruncher versions of it. (The pre-Scruncher version is what you would need to paste into the Scruncher tool, while the post-Scruncher version is ready to paste directly into Amazon.) We will also provide the final character count, so you can see whether your Product Description is too long (or maybe too short - you might as well use as many of those 2,000 characters as you can).

Can I See Some Samples Of How My Product Description Might Look?

Yes, of course you can!

Because Amazon's documentation is extremely inconsistent when it comes to informing you exactly which HTML tags you are allowed to use, we provide three versions of your Product Description, which will comply with whatever policies they decide to apply on any given day.

The first version makes use of all the tags their system currently allowed (which means hardly any at all). This is what we call "Relaxed" mode, and a randomly-selected product from Amazon's website might look like this when formatted in this mode:

The second is what we call "Strict" mode, which allows even fewer tags than normal (i.e. paragraph tags and nothing else):

And finally we have "WTF" mode, which allows no tags at all:

Yes, that's right! According to some Amazon Seller Central Support staff, you are not allowed to use any HTML in your Product Description at all, not even paragraph tags to break up that one large block of text into discrete paragraphs so that somebody might actually want to read it.

We offer three different versions of this Product Description To Amazon-Ready HTML Conversion service:

	Bronze	Silver	Gold
Convert Word Document To HTML
Product Descriptions Converted	1	2	5
Revisions Allowed	2	5	10
Proofreading / Copy Suggestions Included?
Cost (In USD)	$15	$25	$50

Here's how the process will work in detail:

1. You select which service you'd like and click the appropriate Buy Now button.
2. After paying via PayPal, you must click the Return To AzonSellerTools.com link to complete the transation and our web site.
3. You'll then be able to download a PDF document that explains what formatting options are available to you, and any other information you need to know. (If you don't have software to open PDFs, you can get Adobe Acrobat Reader for free here.)
4. Once your Product Description is available as a formatted document, please use our Contact Us page to send it to us. We can accept the following document types, but bear in mind we only use Windows computers here:
   • Microsoft Word
   • RTF
   • PDF (to show how you want your Product Description to look) as well as a plain text document (e.g. created by Notepad, so that we can copy the text instead of having to re-type it)
5. Important: please include your PayPal Transaction Id when you contact us so that we can match up your payment to the Product Description you send us.
6. As soon as we receive it, we'll verify that we have everything we need, and we'll get to work.
7. If you selected the Gold service, we'll get back to you with any suggested changes or corrections to get your approval.
8. Once we've converted and scrunched your Product Description, we'll email it back to you - in both a pre- and post-Scruncher version - together with the total character count. If the final Product Description is too long and you selected the Gold service, we'll make suggestions as to where you might save some space.
9. If you need any revisions, we will go through Steps 4 - 7 again.
10. You take the post-Scruncher version and paste it straight into your Amazon product listing.

If you have any questions about this service, or you have a lot of Product Descriptions that need converting and you want to request a custom quote, then please feel free to contact us before purchasing.