$553M in Amazon Sales. Zero Strong Product Pages.
Some of Amazon's biggest sellers have surprisingly weak product pages. That's what we discovered when we put Via Surface to work across four different categories: robot vacuums, air fryers, bully sticks, and HEPA air purifiers.
We scored 40 flagship product listings representing approximately $553 million in estimated annual revenue. These weren't obscure products struggling to find customers.
They were among the leading sellers in their respective categories.
Yet not one product page met our benchmark for a strong listing. And some of the biggest gaps involved basic product-page upkeep that even established brands can overlook.
This research builds on the thinking behind why we developed Via, Channel Key's proprietary commerce intelligence system designed to help our teams connect information, identify opportunities and make better decisions faster. Surface is one of the modules within Via, focused on scoring product-page quality and uncovering opportunities for improvement.
The findings raise an important question for brands investing heavily in retail media and marketplace growth: How much opportunity is hiding in the product pages you're already sending shoppers to?
Strong Sales Don't Always Mean Strong Product Pages
When a product consistently ranks among the category leaders, it's easy to assume the listing is doing its job. But sales performance and product-page quality are two different things.
Across the four categories we examined, none of the 40 listings reached 80 out of 100, the minimum score required to earn a B under our Via Surface scoring system. Of the 40 listings, nine earned a C, 17 earned a D and 14 earned an F. The highest score was 79.
Sales rank and product-page quality didn't consistently line up, either. While each category included just ten listings, the findings suggest that selling more doesn't necessarily mean having a better product page.
In bully sticks, the category's top-selling listing earned an F, while the strongest product page belonged to the smallest seller in our sample. In air fryers, the highest-scoring page earned a 79, yet that listing ranked ninth by estimated revenue.
These findings don't diminish what the category leaders have accomplished. Building that kind of sales volume requires strong products, distribution, advertising and customer demand. But they challenge the assumption that a successful product must already have an effective product page.
Strong sales can make it easy to overlook weaknesses in the very place customers make their purchase decisions.
Some of the Biggest Gaps Were Surprisingly Basic
We expected to find opportunities for better imagery, stronger product messaging, and more effective content. What surprised us was how many issues involved basic product-page maintenance.
Consider product titles. Amazon introduced a 75-character product title limit in July 2026 and began gradually updating noncompliant titles using AI-generated recommendations.
In robot vacuums, Amazon had rewritten six of the seven titles that met the new limit. Those six listings represented nearly $170 million in estimated annual revenue. In bully sticks, Amazon had rewritten all four titles that met the limit.
As a result, many of the product titles shoppers encountered had been rewritten by Amazon rather than authored in their current form by the brands themselves.
Enhanced product content revealed another disconnect. All ten robot vacuum listings featured Premium A+ content, but only two of the 64 modules examined contained body copy. Many returned no readable text or little more than a short tab label.
In bully sticks, 58 of the 70 A+ modules we examined returned no indexable text.
The visual content was available to shoppers, but much of the messaging wasn't available as readable page text to systems that rely on it.
Then there were the smaller details. Two robot vacuum listings, representing $30.3 million in estimated annual revenue, had no Buy Box when we examined them.
Five bully stick listings featured comparison modules that offered little meaningful comparison. One used checkmarks in every cell. Another displayed "no data" throughout.
These aren't obscure technical issues that require an entirely new marketing strategy to understand.
They're the kinds of problems that are easy to overlook when teams manage large catalogs, multiple channels, and competing priorities.
Finding these issues among category leaders raises another question: How many similar opportunities are going unnoticed across the rest of a brand's catalog?
Product-Page Scoring Makes the Opportunities Easier to See
Finding weaknesses in a product page isn't difficult when you have enough time to examine it. The challenge is doing that consistently across an entire catalog, understanding how each listing compares to competitors and deciding which improvements deserve attention first.
Via Surface scores product pages against a consistent framework covering eight areas, including imagery, titles, bullets, keywords, descriptions, A+ content, Brand Story and social proof.
For our State of the Shelf research, we examined hundreds of gallery images and A+ content modules across 40 listings, scoring each page against the same framework.
That consistency helps us move beyond subjective opinions about whether a page looks good.
It gives our team a way to identify specific weaknesses, compare listings against competitors and understand which improvements deserve attention.
The public benchmarks don't tell us how much additional revenue any individual listing could generate. We don't have access to the brands' actual traffic, conversion rates or advertising performance.
But when a brand combines its own performance data with what Via Surface identifies, we can take the analysis further, modeling the potential revenue impact of closing specific gaps before making changes.
That moves the conversation beyond what needs to be fixed to what should be fixed first.
What This Means for Brands Competing on Amazon
The State of the Shelf findings point to an opportunity for brands on both sides of the category rankings.
For established leaders, strong sales don't necessarily mean there isn't room to improve. A product can dominate its category while relying on years of reviews, distribution strength or advertising investment to maintain its position. That success can mask weaknesses competitors may be able to exploit.
For smaller challengers, the findings suggest that the category leader doesn't always set the standard for product-page quality.
A brand may not be able to match a competitor's review count, distribution network or advertising budget overnight. But it can take a closer look at the product experience and identify opportunities to communicate more clearly, address shopper questions, and make product information easier to understand.
Of course, better product pages don't automatically guarantee more sales. The public research can't establish that relationship on its own. However, it does reveal something worth investigating.
Brands are investing substantial resources to bring shoppers to product pages that may still have room for improvement. Before increasing that investment, it makes sense to understand how well those pages are built.
What Will Via Surface Find in Your Catalog?
Our State of the Shelf research started with a simple question: How well do the product pages behind Amazon's biggest sellers actually perform?
Across 40 listings representing $553 million in estimated annual revenue, not one reached our benchmark for a strong product page.
The full findings reveal even more, including category-specific trends, competitive opportunities and areas where brands may be overlooking relatively simple improvements.
Now we're giving brands an opportunity to see how their own listings measure up.
Through Via Surface, our team can score your product pages against the same framework, identify gaps against competitors, and help you prioritize where to focus next.
What is Via Surface?
Via Surface is the product-page intelligence module within Channel Key's proprietary commerce intelligence system, Via. It scores product pages across eight areas, including imagery, titles, keywords, descriptions and enhanced content, helping brands identify opportunities to improve product-page quality.
How does Via Surface score product pages?
Via Surface evaluates product pages using a consistent 100-point scoring framework. Listings are scored across eight areas of product-page quality, making it easier to identify weaknesses, compare performance against competitors and prioritize improvements.
Can Via Surface score my product listings?
Yes. Channel Key can score your product listings using Via Surface to identify gaps, benchmark against competitors and help determine where improvements may have the greatest impact. Surface supports product pages across Amazon, Walmart, Chewy and direct-to-consumer commerce environments.
