Amazon Sales Down 70%: How to Rebound from a Sales Crisis and Boost Conversions

The Moment of Panic

You know that feeling. You open Seller Central with your morning coffee, expecting to see your usual daily sales numbers. Instead, your stomach drops. Sales are down 70%. Maybe more.

Your first instinct might be to panic, slash PPC spending, or assume Amazon's algorithm has turned against you. But here's the truth: most sales craters aren't platform failures. They are fixable breakdowns in your own process that you can identify and repair, often within hours.

This isn't about blame. It's about action. This guide provides a three-phase action plan to help you diagnose the problem, stabilize your sales, and optimize for long-term conversion growth. Don't shut down those PPC campaigns yet. Let's fix this together.

Phase 1: The 60-Minute Emergency Diagnosis

When sales plummet, you need to stop the bleeding fast. The first hour is critical for identifying catastrophic failures that are costing you money by the minute.

Check the Obvious Technical Glitches

Start with the fundamentals. These are the issues that can completely kill your sales overnight:

Buy Box Status: This is your first and most important check. If you don't have the Buy Box, you effectively don't exist to most customers. Navigate to your product detail page and confirm you're the featured offer. If a competitor has taken it, or if it's suppressed entirely, you've found your problem.

Listing Status: Head straight to the "Fix Your Products" page in Seller Central. Are any of your top ASINs showing as Suppressed, Blocked, or Inactive? Even a single out-of-stock flag can remove you from search results entirely. Check each of your main revenue drivers individually.

Account Health: Open your Account Health dashboard and scan for any new Performance Notifications from the past 48 hours. Focus on your Order Defect Rate, Late Shipment Rate, and any intellectual property claims. A single policy violation can trigger listing suppression faster than you realize.

Check Your PPC Lifeline

Your advertising campaigns might be silently failing:

Budget Depletion: Open your Campaign Manager and check if your main campaigns ran out of budget early in the day. If your ads stopped showing at 9 AM, you've lost most of your daily traffic.

Payment Issues: Verify that your credit card on file for advertising hasn't expired or been declined. Amazon won't always notify you immediately, but your ads will stop running.

A/B Test Disasters: Did you recently launch an A/B test for images, titles, or pricing? Check if your conversion rate crashed after the test went live. Sometimes a "winning" variation in small samples fails dramatically at scale.

Check the Competitive Landscape

Your market position can shift overnight:

Price Spike Alert: If you're using repricing software, verify it didn't accidentally increase your price beyond the competitive threshold. Even a dollar too high can cause Amazon to suppress your Buy Box eligibility.

Hijacker Detection: Look at who else is selling on your listing. A new seller undercutting you by 20% can redirect all traffic away from your offer, even if you're the brand owner.

Phase 2: Immediate Stabilization (The First 72 Hours)

You've identified the problem. Now it's time to implement quick, high-impact fixes to regain eligibility and restore traffic flow.

Reclaiming the Buy Box

The Buy Box is your lifeline. Treat this as your absolute priority:

Inventory and Fulfillment: Double-check that your inventory levels are accurate in Seller Central. If you're Fulfilling by Merchant (FBM), confirm your shipping speed is competitive with Prime sellers. If possible, switch high-volume ASINs to FBA to regain the algorithmic advantage.

Strategic Pricing: Lower your price incrementally—start with $0.05 to $0.10 decreases and monitor Buy Box status after each adjustment. Don't slash prices dramatically unless you're certain it's necessary. Small adjustments often work, and you can raise prices again once you've stabilized.

Manual Review Request: If the Buy Box remains suppressed after pricing adjustments, contact Seller Support immediately. Reference specific competitors who are winning the Buy Box at similar price points and request a manual review of your offer eligibility.

Fixing Listing Suppression

When your listing is blocked or suppressed, speed matters:

Use the Catalog Team: For persistent issues, especially those related to intellectual property or image quality violations, use the "Fix Your Products" tool to resolve the specific error. Then open a support ticket and specifically request a transfer to the Catalog Team for faster resolution. General support can take days; the Catalog Team can resolve issues in hours.

Content Compliance: Review your listing for any forbidden terms that might have triggered automated blocks. Search for words like "pesticides," "antibiotics," "FDA-approved," or unauthorized brand names. Remove them immediately and resubmit your listing.

Phase 3: Long-Term Conversion Optimization

Once you've stabilized, it's time to build resilience. The goal here is to improve your conversion rate so dramatically that every click becomes more valuable, improving both your organic rank and your advertising efficiency.

Master Your Visual Assets

Your images are the single most powerful conversion tool you have:

The Main Image Audit: Pull up your listing on mobile—that's where most customers are shopping. Is your main image instantly clear? Does it stand out when placed next to competitor listings? If there's any ambiguity about what your product is, you're losing sales.

Strategic Infographics: Create one or two new infographic images that directly address your top negative reviews. If customers complain "smaller than expected," show a scale comparison. If they say "confusing setup," create a visual installation guide. These images remove objections before they form.

A+ Content for Brand Owners: If you're brand is registered, A+ Content isn't optional. Use it to showcase high-quality lifestyle images, comparison charts against competitors, and brand storytelling that builds trust. Products with A+ Content consistently see conversion rate improvements of 3-10%.

Enhance Social Proof and Trust

Amazon customers buy based on confidence signals:

Systematic Review Strategy: Use the "Request a Review" button in Seller Central on all recent positive orders. Better yet, automate this through approved third-party tools. Your goal is to inject fresh, legitimate reviews regularly to counteract the inevitable negative reviews and maintain a healthy rating.

Proactive Q&A Management: Go to your Q&A section and answer the top three customer questions yourself. Better yet, answer them in a way that positions your product as the solution. An unanswered question is a lost sale, and the Q&A section appears prominently on mobile.

Revamp Your Keyword Strategy

Your keywords determine who finds you:

Refresh High-Converting Terms: Use your Search Term Report from PPC campaigns to identify new, high-converting customer search terms. Look for phrases that convert at above-average rates and integrate them naturally into your title and bullet points. Don't keyword stuff—aim for readable, benefit-driven copy that happens to include search terms.

Maximize Backend Search Terms: Use all 250 characters in your backend search terms field for less obvious, long-tail keywords that don't fit naturally in your listing. Think synonyms, alternate spellings, and related product terms. No commas, no repetition, just space-separated terms.

Beyond the Crisis: Building a Resilient Amazon Business

A 70% sales drop is terrifying. The panic is real, and the financial pressure is immediate. But here's what most sellers miss: this crisis is also a diagnostic tool.

The issues that caused your sales crash were probably building for weeks or months. The suppression, the Buy Box loss, the declining conversion rate—these don't happen overnight. You just didn't notice them until the numbers became impossible to ignore.

That's actually good news. It means that by addressing the technical debt and doubling down on conversion-focused content, you're not just recovering to where you were. You're building a stronger, more resilient business than you had before.

The sellers who thrive on Amazon aren't the ones who never face crises. They're the ones who use crises to identify weaknesses, fix them systematically, and emerge with better listings, tighter operations, and higher conversion rates.

Make a commitment today to regular, proactive audits. Check your Account Health weekly. Monitor your Buy Box status daily. Review your key visuals monthly. Test new infographics quarterly. The next sudden drop is coming—for all of us—but you'll catch it on day one instead of week three.

Your sales didn't drop 70% because Amazon doesn't work anymore. They dropped because something specific broke. You've learned how to diagnose it, fix it, and prevent it. Now get back in there and reclaim that Buy Box.

Need Expert Help to Recover Faster?

If you're still struggling to identify what's killing your sales, or if you need someone to handle the technical fixes and conversion optimization while you focus on running your business, we can help. Our Amazon specialists have helped hundreds of sellers recover from sales crises and build conversion-optimized listings that perform consistently.

Ready to stop guessing and start recovering? Schedule your free strategy today and let's get your sales back on track.

Visit Freebirds Academy to learn more about our Amazon optimization services.