Amazon is shrinking product titles to 75 characters from 200, enforced 27 July 2026, and Carolyn Lowe explains exactly what to fix first.

Summary

Carolyn Lowe spent years at Dell — including running the consumer side of Dell.com — before leaving corporate life to build ROI Swift, an Austin agency that helps consumer brands grow profitably on Amazon. In this episode she and Matt dig into the single mistake she sees most often, which is founders throwing more money at ads when the real problem sits somewhere else entirely — a weak product page, a poor main image, or a listing the algorithm can't read.

She shares the numbers behind her thinking, from the 18–20% of ad spend most brands are quietly wasting to the 25% packaging saving she found for one client, and the clean rule she keeps coming back to, which is that the main image drives traffic while the content drives conversion. There's also a hard deadline every Amazon seller needs to act on, plus why she prefers affiliates over influencers and why Amazon Business is worth a look.

• 00:00 — Welcome and two ecommerce "dinosaurs" meet
• 06:13 — Why more ad spend usually burns money
• 13:12 — Agencies that think like owners
• 23:48 — Grading a listing A to F and the 75-character title cut
• 26:20 — Main image drives traffic, content drives conversion
• 32:00 — Why Amazon is shrinking product titles
• 34:55 — Launching her own brand with Vine and TikTok affiliates
• 40:05 — Where AI actually helps on Amazon
• 45:20 — Saving the best till last, SKU analysis to Amazon Business

(Chapter markers aligned to the episode video.)

Why Throwing More Money at Ads Usually Backfires (06:13)

Carolyn's view is that most brands reach for the ad budget when sales dip, when the fundamentals are what actually need fixing. If a website isn't converting at 2–3% with an average order value under $100, or an Amazon listing isn't converting at 15–20% or higher, more spend simply pours good money after a bad page.

"If your website isn't converting at 2 to 3% and your AOV is less than $100, go back and fix your product pages." — Carolyn Lowe

She points to the 18–20% of ad spend she routinely sees wasted. On a £30,000-a-month budget, that's roughly $6,000 a month set on fire. One example she gives is a women's fertility product whose automated software kept spending on "dog, cat, horse, pet" keywords, which is why ROI Swift uses AI to analyse the data but keeps a human in the loop to make the call.

The Amazon Title Change Every Seller Needs to Action Before 27 July (23:48)

The most time-sensitive point in the episode is Amazon's move to shorten product titles. Titles are dropping to 75 characters (including spaces), down from 200, with enforcement from 27 July 2026. The change applies to all categories except media, and it's largely driven by mobile, which now accounts for the majority of Amazon traffic.

What sellers need to know:

• Over-length titles get auto-rewritten by Amazon's AI if they aren't fixed
• Only brand-registered sellers get a 14-day review window to adjust
• Amazon has added a new Item Highlights field (around 125 searchable characters), so total indexable space stays close to 200

Carolyn's advice is to go back in now, rewrite titles to be compliant and intentional, and get the most important product details in first — before Amazon does it for you.

Why Your Main Image Drives Traffic and Your Content Drives Conversion (26:20)

This is the cleanest framing in the episode. The main image is what earns the click in a crowded search result, so it's a traffic lever. The content further down the page is what turns that click into a sale, so it's a conversion lever.

"Your main image is going to get you more traffic. Your content is going to get you more conversion." — Carolyn Lowe

Carolyn shares a worked example. Changing a main image from a pair of shorts on their own to the same shorts worn on a person — so buyers could see whether they were 5, 7 or 9-inch — lifted conversion by around 30%. A follow-up change to the content added roughly 12% more, with no extra ad spend. Her category-by-category tips include putting the product next to its box to signal a legitimate brand over cheap knock-offs, and showing the fruit a flavour is based on so shoppers can imagine the taste.

What It Means to Hire an Agency That Thinks Like an Owner (13:12)

Carolyn's differentiator is that ROI Swift thinks like owners rather than vendors, looking at the whole business instead of just the ad account. That's how they spotted a packaging change that saved one brand 25%, switching floss picks from a bag to a box and taking $1 off every unit across 200,000 units a month.

It shows up in how they charge, too — a retainer to keep five specialists working on each account, plus a share of the brand's growth, so incentives are aligned. Their four core values run through the whole approach.

• Care about what you do
• Make it better
• Always be learning
• Glass-half-full mindset

"We sort of are in the business of making other people millionaires and billionaires." — Carolyn Lowe

Before they wrap up, Carolyn's parting tips are to start with a SKU-level benchmark of where a brand is today, and not to sleep on two growth channels — TikTok Shop and affiliates (she backs paying on sale over paying influencers for visibility), and Amazon Business, where 96 of the top 100 Fortune brands hold accounts and over $30 billion is transacted.

Today's Guest

Carolyn Lowe is the CEO and Co-Founder of ROI Swift, an Austin-based agency that helps consumer brands scale profitably on Amazon. ROI Swift has worked with 150+ brands and generated more than $100M on Amazon. Before founding the agency, Carolyn spent years at Dell, running a large division and the consumer side of Dell.com. She is also the author of Business Growth Do's and Absolute Don'ts and a licensed pilot.

• Website — roiswift.com
• LinkedIn — Carolyn Lowe
• Book — Business Growth Do's and Absolute Don'ts

Carolyn has also offered a free one-page listing audit for any listener doing $5,000 or more on a single Amazon product page.

About the eCommerce Podcast

The eCommerce Podcast helps you deliver ecommerce WOW with real talk about building online stores. Matt Edmundson talks to experts and founders who've built the stores and learned the hard way, so you don't have to.

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Episode link: https://www.ecommerce-podcast.com/is-amazon-cutting-your-product-titles-to-just-75-characters-with-carolyn-lowe