Listing benchmarks: Q1 2026 — what 'good' CTR actually looks like.

Every quarter we refresh the benchmark report — median, top-decile, and bottom-decile CTR for the twelve most active Amazon categories. The point isn't to celebrate the leaders; it's to give the seller at the median a concrete target to beat.

Data comes from anonymized Seller Central exports shared by partner brands plus public traffic-rank scraping. CTR is calculated as clicks ÷ search-result impressions, smoothed over a 90-day rolling window.

Skincare

Median CTR: 0.42%. Top decile: 1.08%. The gap is almost entirely explained by image-stack completeness. Top-decile ASINs have all 7 slots filled plus video; median sellers average 4.1 slots and almost never use video.

Kitchen & dining

Median CTR: 0.51%. Top decile: 1.32%. Lifestyle photography drives the spread — top sellers show the product in a real kitchen; bottom sellers show it on a white sweep.

Apparel

Median CTR: 0.38%. Top decile: 0.96%. Variation imagery — multiple colorways or sizes — explains most of the gap.

Pet supplies

Median CTR: 0.61%. Top decile: 1.47%. Pet supplies reward the dimension callout image more than any other category we track.

The median Amazon seller is leaving 60–70% of their possible CTR on the table — and almost all of it is photography, not pricing.

The fastest way to move from median to top-decile is the same in every category: fill every image slot, add at least one lifestyle scene, and include a dimension callout. The next quarter we'll track which of these three has the largest individual lift.