Are you an Amazon seller looking to take your business to the next level? If so, you’ll want to read on for some successful Amazon seller best practices. By following these tips, you can streamline your business processes and maximize your profits.
Amazon sales amounted to nearly 50% of eCommerce spending in 2021, so it’s safe to say that most of your target customers are already shopping on Amazon.
Pros and Cons of Doing Business with Amazon Marketplace
Pro: Getting Started is Easy
There are many ways to get your business started in the world of e-commerce, but many require a lot of knowledge and experience. Getting started on Amazon is easier than many other options.
Con: In Rare Cases, Listings can be Hijacked
A handful of sellers using Amazon marketplace have reported that their listings got “hijacked.” The culprit had cheated the system, causing the victim’s sales to decrease while receiving negative feedback. They steal the genuine seller’s legitimate listing, and use it to make their low-quality counterfeits seem trustworthy. Amazon has since cracked down on incidents like this, but it is still something to be aware of.
Pro: The Everything Store
Amazon wants to be “the everything store”, offering shoppers a vast array of products. Literally tens of millions of product listings. So, Amazon tends to have fewer restrictions on product categories than a marketplace like Etsy or GOAT. But, a seller needs to be “ungated” in certain categories in order to sell those items.
Con: Commissions can be High
Amazon’s commissions can seem pretty steep to some people. In addition, the demand for Amazon’s notorious free shipping has the unfortunate side effect of cutting into profit margins to a significant degree. While you don’t have to offer free shipping when you sell on Amazon, most buyers will filter out any products that don’t offer it during their product searches.
Pro: Opportunity to Advertise
With the sheer size of Amazon, it is hard for sellers to rely solely on purchases coming from search results. So, Amazon has its own advertising platform, Amazon Sponsored Products. Sellers can purchase advertising impressions to show their product listings to shoppers. This is a great opportunity for sellers to market their best products and not be totally reliant on optimized product listings.
Con: Success is Not Guaranteed
Amazon offers a wide reach of consumers totaling about half of eCommerce spending. While this is great for increasing the pool of potential customers, it also makes success unpredictable. When looking at your product details page, a customer can scroll down to see recommendations from Amazon for similar (and sometimes lower-priced) Amazon product listings.
While you can do things to improve your chances, there is no way to guarantee or even predict how well your business will or won’t do when working with Amazon.
Ways to Improve your Odds of Success
While there’s no way to guarantee or predict how well your eCommerce business will do on the Amazon marketplace, there are a few ways to improve your chances.
Improve your Amazon SEO
In order for shoppers to find what they’re looking for out of millions of product listings, Amazon’s search engine works to show the listings shoppers are likely to buy. Because of this, you need to think of your product description the same way as SEO keywords on your website. SEO keywords help your site to optimize for a search engine like Google.
Price Competitively
Shoppers are drawn to product images and positive reviews, but that doesn’t mean they’ll go with your product just because it looks nice. Consumers most likely going to look for the lowest-priced option with high quality.
Proactively Ask for Reviews
Speaking of reviews, your product visibility and reputation rely on them – you must repeatedly do everything in your power to get more. Amazon allows you to proactively ask for product reviews as long as you follow the rules, which means no incentivizing, cherry picking for good reviews, asking friends and family for feedback, or petitioning customers to contact you before leaving a negative review.
But instead of manually sending out requests, you can use software such as FeedbackFive by eComEngine to automate this process and reach more buyers in much less time. Other features, like review monitoring and alerting, make this tool incredibly useful for building and protecting your brand.
Be Consistent and Understanding
Few things irritate customers more than inconsistent order fulfillment and poor or robotic customer service. You’ve got to be able to fulfill orders consistently and promptly. Then, when an order or two go wrong, you’ve got to back your business with compassionate, skilled customer service workers. Otherwise, buyers will leave bad reviews and discourage future customers from patronizing your store.
Know Your Best Items
While you may want to think that all of your products are home runs, it’s impossible to make multiple products into overnight bestsellers. You’ve got to know which products draw in the most customers and why. It may be tempting to try and push less successful products, but that may be an inefficient use of your money.
Do the research on products in your industry and what demographic you should be selling to. Know what the current market wants and which items fit current consumer needs.
Be Willing to Put Forth Effort and Hard Work
No matter how good your products are or how skilled your employees are, you’ve always got to be willing to put forth the effort and hard work needed to run a business. This is especially true in the world of Amazon selling. Competitors’ products will be readily available to your potential customers. You have to make products worthy of the customer’s attention, advertise to the right audience, and deliver service that will keep them coming back for more.
How to Ease the Cashflow Drawback
There are a few negative aspects of working with the Amazon marketplace. A common complaint is poor or inconsistent cash flow due to Amazon’s 2-week payment terms.
Fortunately, Payability offers a solution to help you ensure a more stable cash flow for your business. Payability offers accelerated daily payouts and capital advances for Amazon sellers. We are the leading funding platform for eCommerce sellers, helping thousands of entrepreneurs based on their marketplace sales.
