Amazon A+ Content: The 2026 Guide for Belgian SMEs
Amazon A+ Content is the difference between a bare listing and a shop window
Open a big brand's product page on Amazon.com.be or Amazon.co.uk and scroll past the bullet points: a visual banner, wide images with overlaid text, a comparison chart across the range, sometimes a video. Now open the listing of an SME that uploaded its products itself: a title, five bullets, a plain-text description. The credibility gap is decided in three seconds, and it shows up directly in the conversion rate. That enriched block is Amazon A+ Content, and it is free for any seller who meets the conditions.
The paradox is that most Belgian catalogues stay bare. Not because sellers don't know A+ exists, but because producing a polished page per product takes a designer, a copywriter and a working knowledge of Amazon's approval rules, which reject content without sentiment. Multiply that by fifty or five hundred SKUs and the job looks out of reach. This guide explains what A+ Content is, who can use it, what Amazon accepts and refuses, and how AI changes the economics for an SME that wants to cover its whole catalogue rather than three best-sellers.
What Amazon promises, and what to make of it
Amazon presents A+ Content as a tool for adding enhanced images, formatted text blocks, shoppable comparison charts and, in the Premium tier, video and interactive elements to product pages. On its official A+ Content page, Amazon states that Basic A+ Content can increase sales by up to 8%, and that well-implemented Premium A+ Content can increase sales by up to 20%.
Take those figures for what they are: "up to" claims published by the platform, not a guarantee. The real effect depends on the product, existing traffic, the quality of the rest of the listing and the competition in the category. A beautiful A+ page on a listing nobody sees will sell nothing extra; conversely, on a product that already gets traffic but converts poorly, it is often the cheapest lever available. That is why I always recommend starting with an account diagnosis, as described in my guide to selling on Amazon from Belgium, before investing in content.
The Belgian context justifies the effort. According to the Becom Market Monitor, published by the e-commerce trade federation, Belgian consumers spent EUR 17.4 billion online in 2024 across 179 million transactions. A growing share of those purchases goes through marketplaces, where your listing is compared at a glance with those of competitors who have invested in their presentation.
Who can create A+ Content: Brand Registry, Basic and Premium
First condition: a Professional selling account. Second, according to the A+ Content guide in Seller Central: being a brand representative or authorised reseller of a brand enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry, or selling eligible generic products. In practice, for a Belgian SME selling its own products, the normal route is Brand Registry, which requires a trademark registered or pending with the EUIPO, the Benelux Office for Intellectual Property or, for the UK marketplace, the UK IPO.
Brand Registry involves some paperwork, but it unlocks far more than A+: the Brand Store, counterfeit protection, brand analytics and better control over shared listings. For a seller planning to stay on Amazon, it is an investment worth making early.
There are then two tiers. Basic A+ Content currently allows five modules per product page, chosen from fourteen templates: image header, image with side text, text only, comparison chart, image grids. Premium A+ Content goes up to seven modules from nineteen templates and adds what really makes the visual difference: larger images, video in the description, clickable carousels, interactive hotspots on an image, question-and-answer modules. Amazon now states that Premium is available at no additional cost and with no additional eligibility criteria for sellers, whereas for years it was invitation-only. Because conditions vary by account and marketplace, the operational test is simple: if the Premium option appears in your A+ Content Manager, you have access.
A third element is often confused with A+: the Brand Story. It appears in a separate block, "From the brand", as a carousel of cards, and tells who you are rather than what the product does. It combines with Basic or Premium A+ and links to your Brand Store. For a Belgian SME with a real story to tell (family workshop, local craftsmanship, short supply chain), it is free space that would be a shame to leave empty.
The rules Amazon enforces at approval
All A+ Content goes through an Amazon review before publication. The help page on publishing status announces up to seven business days, longer over the holiday period, then up to 24 additional hours for the content to appear on the selected ASINs. Every rejection sends you to the back of the queue, so it pays to get it right first time.
The official guidelines are long, but the rejection reasons I see most often fall into a few families. First, anything about price and promotion: no prices, no discounts, no codes, no "limited offer" or "best price" is allowed in A+. Then anything about shipping, availability or service: no "dispatched within 24 hours", no "money-back guarantee", no email address, phone number or invitation to visit your website. Amazon wants to keep the shopper on Amazon.
Next come unsubstantiated claims: "the best on the market", "number one in Belgium", "recommended by dermatologists", awards or certifications without proof, comparisons naming a competitor. Health, environmental and safety claims are watched particularly closely, and for food or cosmetics sold in the EU they must in any case comply with European labelling rules. Finally, the technical criteria: JPG or PNG images in RGB, under 2 MB, no watermarks, no QR codes, no illegible text, alt text that accurately describes the image, no empty modules. Content must also be written in the language of the target marketplace, with limited tolerance for brand-identity elements.
One rule deserves particular attention for sellers using generative tools: Amazon now requires photorealistic images of people generated entirely by AI to be flagged with a dedicated metadata tag. The seller remains responsible for accuracy, compliance and third-party rights, whether the content was produced by a human or by a model.
One marketplace, one language, one version
This is the point that surprises Belgian SMEs. A+ Content is created for a given marketplace and language. A page approved on Amazon.fr does not propagate automatically to Amazon.com.be, Amazon.de or Amazon.co.uk. For a Walloon company selling in Belgium, France and the Netherlands, that means at minimum a French version, a Dutch version and, if you target Germany, a German version, each submitted for its own approval.
On the other hand, the same content can be applied to several ASINs on the same marketplace, provided it remains true and relevant for each. A range of six colours can share one A+ page if the text claims nothing that isn't valid for all of them. A good practice is to design reusable "range" modules (story, material, care, comparison chart) and product-specific modules, then combine them.
The comparison chart is the most under-used tool. It displays several of your products side by side with a direct link to each, keeping the shopper within your range instead of sending them to a competitor when the size or colour doesn't suit. For a catalogue structured in variation families, it also repairs the experience when a listing has been suppressed or deactivated: the other family members remain visible and reachable.
Why catalogues stay bare, and what AI changes
Do the sums honestly. A polished A+ page means a header visual, two or three secondary images with overlaid text, structured copy, a comparison chart. Produced by a freelance designer and copywriter, count several hours per listing, hence a budget that only products already selling can justify. The result: three best-sellers dressed up, two hundred SKUs bare, and a long tail that doesn't convert.
This is exactly where generative models change the economics of the problem, provided you use them for what they do well. They don't know what is true about your product; they know how to shape what you know. The pipeline I set up for the sellers I work with rests on three locks. The first is a base of facts: the existing catalogue, however incomplete, one real photo per product, the supplier sheet, and nothing else. Generated text must stay within those facts, and an automated check rejects any attribute that isn't in them. I described this discipline in my article on enriching product listings with AI; it applies all the more to A+, where Amazon reads every claim.
The second lock is brand voice. The criticism levelled at generated content is that it sounds interchangeable. The answer is to analyse your website, your existing listings and the way you speak to customers to extract a tone, then write every module in that tone, with a list of banned phrases. For a fashion jewellery seller I work with on Amazon UK, that produces precise, lively British English without a single boilerplate sentence repeated from one listing to the next, and those pages are live on the marketplace.
The third lock is visual. The header visual is generated from the real product photo, faithfully preserving its shape, colours and details: a model that "improves" a bracelet by adding a stone that doesn't exist produces a false image, hence a customer complaint and a rejection. Every image then goes through a visual review before submission. Once these locks are in place, producing an A+ page no longer costs hours but minutes, and you can cover hundreds of SKUs instead of three. That is the core of my Amazon account optimisation service.
A five-step method for a Belgian SME
Start with the inventory. Export your catalogue, identify the ASINs whose brand you own, and rank them by traffic: listings that are viewed but convert poorly come first; listings with no traffic will wait for action on search ranking or advertising, since A+ alone won't change that.
Second step, Brand Registry if not already done, and a check of Premium access in the A+ Content Manager. If Premium is available, take it: larger images and video make a real difference on mobile, where most browsing now happens.
Third step, structure. Design one template per product family: a header showing the product in use, a "why this product" module with three factual arguments, a material or composition module, a comparison chart of the range, and a usage or care module. A stable template makes bulk generation possible and approval predictable.
Fourth step, production, with the three locks described above, then human proofreading by sampling. Don't reread everything: reread a large enough sample to catch systematic drift (a banned claim that keeps recurring, a tone that slips), and let automated checks handle the rest. Submit in reasonable batches so that Amazon's first feedback corrects the template before the whole catalogue goes out.
Fifth step, measurement. Note the conversion rate of the listings before publication, wait four to six weeks, compare. Amazon also offers an A/B testing tool (Manage Your Experiments) that lets you compare two A+ versions on high-traffic listings without guessing. That measurement is what turns an advertised "up to 8%" into a figure that belongs to you, and it fits naturally into a broader view of AI applied to e-commerce.
The mistakes I see most often
The first is treating A+ as a brochure. Amazon shoppers don't read, they scan: a dense four-paragraph text module is ignored, an image with three words and a pictogram is read. Write short, prioritise, let it breathe.
The second is duplicating the image gallery. Amazon rejects or downgrades content that merely repeats the photos already in the main image block. A+ must bring something else: the product in context, the manufacturing detail, the comparison, the use.
The third is forgetting mobile. A header image with fine text, perfectly legible on a desktop screen, becomes unreadable on a phone. Test every visual at thumb size.
The fourth is carelessness with personal data and rights. A customer photo, a named testimonial, a partner logo: each requires permission. And if you use generative tools, keep track of your sources and approvals; the same reflexes described in my article on AI and GDPR for Belgian SMEs apply.
The fifth, finally, is underestimating the cost of inaction. A bare catalogue facing dressed-up competitors is a silent erosion of conversion, month after month, with no alert lighting up in Seller Central. The cost of an AI project for an SME should always be compared with the cost of doing nothing.
Where to start
If you sell under your own brand on Amazon.com.be, Amazon.fr or Amazon.co.uk and your catalogue still shows plain-text descriptions, you are leaving the platform's most accessible conversion lever on the table. It is free, it is documented, and the historical obstacle, the production cost per listing, no longer holds.
I offer an account diagnosis that identifies the products where A+ will pay off most, checks your Premium eligibility, and costs out what it would take to dress the whole catalogue in your brand's voice, with the checks that avoid rejections. Get in touch to discuss it, or browse my services to see how it fits with account audit, compliance and continuous monitoring.