SOP: How to Change Your Amazon Listing Title Using a Flat File

Yesterday, I discovered that my product listing title on Amazon had been truncated. The change made my title nonsensical, and I knew I had a challenge ahead. Amazon makes changing your listing title quite difficult, and doing so can risk a full reindex of your listing. However, my title had already changed, so I had nothing to lose.

Changing Your Title: GUI vs. Flat File

Amazon provides two methods to change your listing title: the graphical user interface (GUI) inside of Seller Central and using a flat file. Unfortunately, the GUI is unreliable. Despite Amazon’s assurance that it will consider your changes, I often found that my title remained unchanged hours later.

Consequently, the most effective method is to use a flat file. That said, this method isn’t without its challenges, but I chose to face them and document the entire process, so you don’t have to.

Step-by-Step Guide: How to Change Your Listing Title Using a Flat File

Preparation

You will need to gather a few pieces of information before downloading your flat file template:

1. Your product listing category. Find this on the product detail page on Amazon and note the subcategory. For instance, “Standard Cat Litter Boxes”.
2. Your product SKU. This can be found in Seller Central under Inventory > Manage Inventory.
3. The updated text for the listing fields you wish to change. This includes your new title, description, bullet points, etc.

Download Your Flat File Template

This part can be a little tricky, hold onto your horses, put on your game face, and let’s do this!

a. In seller central, head over to Catalog > Add Products via Upload

b. Click on the download spreadsheet tab

c. Choose “Get Product Template” under Update Product Details Section

d. Choose “product template” link from the second bullet point

e. Choose your marketplace

f. Type the category you collected earlier in the search bar. For example, “Standard Cat Litter Boxes”

Choose the correct subcategory by looking through the category tree. In this example, we want the one under litter boxes and not the final subcategory of litter box enclosures. Click the select button to download your Flat File Template.

g. Now you’ll see a summary of the template you selected, the marketplaces to update, and you can scroll down to step 3 on the screen and select your language (if other than English) and select “Generate Template“

h. Select your folder destination and download the template

Update the Template

Whew, we made it this far, time to update the template! Let’s go!!

a. Open the template you just saved on your computer in Microsoft Excel and click ENABLE EDITING on the top toolbar. This is important or you will not be able to edit the file.

b. Click on the template tab in the worksheet

c. ONLY FILL IN THESE FIELDS AND LEAVE EVERYTHING ELSE BLANK:

1. Product type: Select the item from the drop-down. This enables the rest of the drop-down options in that row.
2. SKU: copy and paste plain text from your amazon inventory screen
3. New title: copy and paste your text into the product name field
4. If you have a new description and you don’t have A+ content, you can update the product description field which is 2 fields to the right of the product name in the above image
5. New bullet points (if you are updating, otherwise leave blank): copy and paste new bullet points into each of the fields titled Key Product Features under Discovery
6. The last and most important field to update is the Update Delete Column under Basic. You’ll see if you select the cell there are 3 options: Update, PartialUpdate, or Delete.

   Select PartialUpdate from the dropdown

d. Leave everything else blank. The point of choosing PartialUpdate is to tell Amazon you only want to update the fields you filled in. This also allows you to not have to fill in the other required worksheet fields.

e. Save your workbook. If you’d like to rename it so you can remember what it’s for you can. It won’t affect the file upload.

Upload Your Template to Amazon

a. Now return to seller central https://sellercentral.amazon.com/listing/upload?ref_=xx_upload_tnav_download and click the upload your spreadsheet tab.

Drag and drop or browse for your file and include your email if you’d like a notification of when your file is done processing.

Click Upload file.

b. Check your upload status – Click the “Spreadsheet upload status” tab and check to see if your status says Done.

c. Download the processing summary report to see if there were any errors.

d. Open the report and click the template tab. Then you should see a SUCCESS bar. If not, you can read and fix any errors in your original template as shown in this report, and then upload again.

e. If the upload was successful, give it a few hours and your listing should update. Mine took 4 hours but did update. A great way to check it is if you click edit on the listing in your inventory tab and you go to the vital information page and you see the title is updated there in seller central but just not on the listing page on Amazon yet, it is a good indicator it is processing and will update.

If All Else Fails, Contact Brand Support

If your changes don’t appear after a few hours, it might be time to reach out to Amazon for help. If you are a registered brand, open a case with brand support, NOT SELLER SUPPORT.

Login to Brand Registry at https://brandservices.amazon.com/ and select contact brand support from the dropdown.

Then select “technical issue” from the left side menu and explain your issue.

Here’s a template you can use to explain it properly:

Hello,

I’m trying to update the title for SKU and ASIN to improve the customer experience on Amazon.

I have edited the title using the edit function in seller central, and by uploading a flat file with the “PartialUpdate” option. Both of these appear successful, yet the title has not been updated on the product detail page after several hours.

The current title showing up on the page is “”

The corrected title is “”

Please help me correct this title to improve the customer experience on Amazon.

I really appreciate your help in this matter.

 

Sincerely,

Need More Help with Your Amazon Seller Woes?

I hope this SOP has helped you update your listing on Amazon. If you need more help, you can book a consulting call with Amy at https://amazingathome.com/coach

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You can also join our free Facebook group for Amazon sellers at https://facebook.com/groups/amazingathome.

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