The standard listing optimisation process starts with a competitor teardown. You look at the pages ranking above you, note what they do, and do a version of it. This is fine and it is second best.
The better starting point is free, sitting in Seller Central, and almost nobody reads it. Pull the FBA Customer Returns report for the last twelve months on your top five products and read every comment.
What you are looking for
Not the return rate. The reasons, in the customer own words, sorted by how often the same complaint appears.
A pet food brand we worked with had a 9.4% return rate on their biggest product against a category norm of about three. The dashboard said the reason code was mostly damaged. The comments said something more specific: the bag split in transit. Repeatedly, in slightly different words, for a year.
That is not a listing problem, it is a packaging problem, and no amount of copywriting would have found it. They changed to a heavier gauge bag with a reinforced base and the rate dropped to 7.3% in two months. Then they added a packaging shot to the image stack, which set the expectation on the page, and it fell under six.
Returns are your objection list
Every recurring return reason is a question the page failed to answer. Sizing complaints mean image four should be a size comparison. Material complaints mean your copy is describing the finish and not the substrate. Compatibility complaints mean you need a fit chart above the fold.
Run the same exercise on your customer questions. A cookware client had twelve of their top twenty questions asking about oven temperature limits, which the listing never mentioned anywhere. That answer went into the first line of image two. Conversion on that ASIN went from 12.1% to 17.9%.
Then look at the competitors
Once you know what your buyers actually worry about, a competitor teardown becomes useful rather than decorative, because you are looking for how they answer the specific objections you now know exist, not cataloguing what they happen to have done.
The order matters. Your returns tell you what to say. Competitors only tell you what everybody else is saying.
