What to Expect When Selling on Amazon.com – The Drill Down: Amazon Classification

As part of our continuing series around the basics of Selling on Amazon, today we’ll start to clarify what is a mystery to some – the Amazon classification requirements. The way to manage the attributes varies based on the listing option you choose, so this post will provide an overview of the considerations when determining how to best classify your products.

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hy should you spend time classifying your product for Amazon.com sales when you don’t do that elsewhere? This is the question sellers often ask. They want to know what classification is all about. It typically is something you do not see in other selling channels. It seems to be complicated. Why spend the time? The reason is straightforward: On Amazon.com you want to be sure each product is displayed in the correct category and sub-category to provide the buyer with the easiest path to find your products. Rather than being lost among a list of millions, correct classification can place your product right where the buyer is looking.

For example: If you are selling a Junior Wrap Dress and the classification is only dresses, then yours will be among over 100,000 of every type and style of dress. Rather than classifying it as a dress, you’ll choose additional attributes that will link you to Junior Wrap Dresses, and also Wrap Dresses and Dresses – maximizing your exposure when that is what the buyer wants.

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f you’ve been following this “What to Expect When Selling on Amazon.com” blog series, you know that a central theme has been tuning your products for the optimal Amazon.com single detail page. The focus today is to make sure you are on the correct detail page in the correct category. Not only do you want to be as specific as possible, you want to avoid having that dress show up when a buyer is looking for golf clubs! One of the strengths of the Amazon marketplace is the ease with which a buyer can discover the products they want to purchase. There is a complex system behind this ease, of course, involving a robust classification system. Webster’s defines classify as assigning to a category. What this means on Amazon.com: Rather than have every listing show up in a long, unorganized list, each is part of a group of products that are specifically categorized through the use of a set of terms that creates a structure. This structure has proven quite effective as a shopping resource for buyers.

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ow do you take advantage of this powerful feature? Now that you know why, the how involves a bit of research. Think about the product you are selling. Let’s imagine that you are selling trick and novelty golf balls. You will look at the classification guide in Seller Central and determine the best “Item Type” for your product. You could choose to classify those as golf equipment, but that would only present your product among some 16,000 or more different items that are golf equipment. It’s not likely customers will scroll through to find your products.

    

When that trick and novelty enthusiast clicks on Golf Balls, if you’ve chosen Golf Equipment, you will not be among the 511 listed there. Even worse, you won’t be there when the buyer clicks on Trick & Novelty Balls – that one other seller you see that has a product (screen shot below) might get the sale instead. Not every classification is as dramatic, but the point still stands. When buyers are looking, you want to be in the right place at the right time. And when you choose the right classification, your product is also in the related classifications for Golf Balls and Golf Equipment and Golf – this is the way to take advantage of this powerful feature.

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ant to learn more? There are lists of these attributes for each category in Seller Central called Item Classification Guides. Other options include identifying target audience (looking for men’s coats instead of women’s), what a product is used for (indoor, outdoor, occasions, and so forth), and many more attributes about specific products than can be listed here (colors, ingredients, design styles, etc). There are three options for diving into this. The easiest is the online item classification guide (not available for apparel at this time) where you can search for the best terms through an interactive interface. Another option is the Item Classification Guide as presented in a full list. That will provide the opportunity to compare available terms and identify what works best for your product. An additional tool in Seller Central is the Browse Tree Guide. This works in the reverse direction when you know where your product should appear and searching for that browse navigation name will take you to the information about which item type and attributes get your product listed there. When you ask the question, “how do I get my product in the right place on Amazon?” one of the answers is to use all of the classification options available to you. One further tip: it helps to arrange your products by product type when planning your attributes, especially when using bulk upload methods. Take advantage of every opportunity to link your product into Amazon’s search and browse structure to optimize your opportunities to get your product in front of those buyers.

Additional Resource:To start your research, you may want to read the help topic about Using Search & Browse. This provides an overview about how to maximize your exposure on Amazon.com with the correct product information. What goes with data and classification to round out the presentation? Images! Pictures are worth a thousand words, they say, so next we’ll explore why Amazon image requirements might differ from other sales channels and how to manage those to optimize your results.

Cathi C.

What to Expect When Selling on Amazon.com – The Drill Down: Accessory Relationships

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ccessory relationships – what does that mean? Accessory relationships are a method for cross-selling your products on Amazon.com. The use of the word accessory stems from the early days of the Selling on Amazon program when the apparel category crafted a way to connect a belt to a pant listing and a blouse to a skirt listing. The term carried through as new categories launched and here we are today. What it means is that this is a method to “accessorize” your products in order to show buyers that you have other related items.

This merchandising option is not available in all categories since each has been designed a bit differently. Also, it may display differently in one category vs. another. Use the table below to determine if your category displays accessory relationships. Accessories also involve a number of logic steps to connect products, so we recommend that you try one or two to see how they will work for you. You’ll use a specially formatted inventory template file to upload these products, so the key to success is planning the relationships between your products ahead of time.

Accessory Relationships work in the following categories:

Apparel	Auto Accessories	Beauty
Camera & Photo	Gourmet Food	Grocery (Food & Beverage)
Health	Home	Jewelry
Musical Instruments	Office Products	Pet Supples

Frequently asked questions about this feature:

1. Why use the accessory relationships?

• Accessory relationships increase exposure for your products and promote additional purchases.
• Accessory relationships between products help customers find complementary products for the product they are viewing. For example, a T-shirt might include links to matching shorts, or even to a larger T-shirt.
• Customers often want to purchase multiple products from the same merchant and accessory relationships help customers find multiple items from one merchant.

2. Where do I manage these relationships?

• Accessory relationships are built using the same inventory templates available in Seller Central for product data upload.
• The information about how to set up these relationships is in Seller Central at: Creating Accessory Relationships (You will need to log-in to your account to access the link).
• You’ll be providing a subset of information to identify these products – titles, SKUs and the fact that they will be related as accessories. An example of the data for adding two or more accessories to a single product:

SKU	Title	Parent SKU	Relationship Type
101	Lip Glace
102	Lip Pencil	101	accessory
103	Lip Kisses	101	accessory
104	Lip Silk	101	accessory
103		102	accessory

o Please note:  You cannot establish accessory relationships between products using the Add a Product feature. If you want to take advantage of accessory relationships, you must use inventory templates to create product feeds that you then upload to Seller Central. See Building an Inventory File for more information.

3. How can I set up a feed where I indicate one specific product as an accessory under multiple different products?

• This is a separate upload from your core product upload.
• You may be connecting products to each other in one-way, two-way or multi-way relationships: meaning a product is related to another in just one direction, not reciprocal; a product is related to another and this goes both ways; many products are set up with relationships to many others.
• To start, build the simplest relationship to test and get a sense of the process. Using the instructions in Seller Central you’ll learn to chart out a list of products by SKU, and a list of what products will be related to each. It can be somewhat circular, so start carefully!

4. For the products that are accessories, do they also stand alone as their own products and are these special listings?

• Yes, the products do stand alone as well.
• No, the products are not listed differently – they are your standard product listings. What is special is the way you will think about cross-referencing them for potential cross-selling.
• In fact, these products must be uploaded as sellable products BEFORE they are available to establish these relationships.

5. Does the accessory display show only our own cross promotion products or will other merchants show up there?

• Since you are establishing this relationship between products, it will be only your products that are linked in the display.
• Where there are multiple sellers, your relationships may not always display based on what seller’s product is being featured on the detail page.

The instructions in Seller Central provide a great overview. Open a blank inventory template and chart out your product relationships. For example, if you have a crib and there are special rails to go with it, you would probably connect those is a two-way relationship. If the buyer finds the rails, it shows the crib as a related product. If they find the crib, they see the rails as a related product. This way they get the rails that go with that crib. It could be one-way if you only want them to find the rails after they find the crib.

Another example would be something like sports fan products. If there is a team that a buyer prefers and you have a number of products for that team, you would relate those in a multi-product accessory relationship where every product is an accessory of every other product. You might have a hat and a t-shirt that are related to a coat, so that each of the other two is displayed as an accessory to the third product.

Or in health and personal care you might have shampoo, conditioner and other products in the same scent that go together. You get the point…

That’s the high level “why” about accessory relationships and a bit about how to think about starting. The best recommendation, again, is to go try it out! Next we’ll be demystifying how to approach the Amazon product classification process.

Cathi C.

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star

If I could think of one word that could strike fear into almost any dedicated seller, it would be…..Feedback.  Specifically, negative feedback.  Oh, the power of those little stars.  

 

If you’ve managed to avoid any bad ratings thus far and still have 100% positive feedback, consider yourself one of the very rare.  And if you have a very high rating, but not the elusive 100%, there’s still a good chance that you’re doing everything right.

Hard work, promptness, and all around good customer service (thank you, Captain Obvious) can get you a very high feedback rating, but sooner or later, everyone gets That Buyer.  If you’ve been selling for any length of time, you know what I’m talking about.  That Buyer is going to leave you a bad rating no matter what you do.  There’s any number of reasons for this to happen:

Misunderstanding – rating the seller on something unrelated to order fulfillment, and entirely out of their control (“The post office left my package out in the rain.”)

Substitution for contact – instead of e-mailing the seller, using the feedback link to complain about a problem

Unrealistic expectations – the package didn’t arrive the day after it was ordered
The list goes on.  Regardless of the reason, at this point, you, the seller, need to decide how to handle it.  Pop Quiz!  Do you:

    a)    Contact Amazon Services and demand that it be removed, since it was clearly not your fault

    b)    Leave a comment in response to their rating about how ridiculous and unfair it is

    c)    Contact the buyer to try to work it out

Ok, that was a pretty easy one.  Contacting the buyer should always be your first action.  

In case you don’t get an immediate response, you might also want to respond to the feedback in your account, but keep your audience in mind.  Although it can be directed to the buyer, there’s a much better chance that future potential buyers will be reading it, not the buyer who left the response.  After leaving a rating, he has no real reason to return to your feedback page.  Anger-driven replies will only make potential buyers think you’re unreasonable and difficult to work with.  I like to see comments like “We’re sorry to hear about the problem with your order.  We have a 100% satisfaction policy.  Please contact us and we will be happy to arrange a return with you.”  This tells me (the potential buyer) that, should something go wrong with my order, the seller is responsive and really wants to make me happy.

When contacting the buyer directly, it should also be pleasant and professional.  Is the buyer intentionally trying to sabotage your reputation?  Probably not.  And once they realize that you’re a reasonable person just like them, they are usually more than happy to remove their negative rating.  It often helps to include a direct link to the feedback removal page in the e-mail:  https://www.amazon.com/gp/feedback/view-all-feedback.html/

When you contact the buyer, the solution and content are entirely up to you, but there are a few ground rules.  Removing the feedback should always be at the buyer’s option, after you resolve their issue.  Offering to help them if they remove their feedback would be considered feedback manipulation.

OK: I’m sorry to hear that your IPod was broken when you received it.  I have issued you a full refund, and hope this is to your satisfaction.  I would appreciate if you would consider removing the negative rating left on my account on Amazon.

Not OK:  If you remove your negative feedback, I’ll refund your money.

The final option of contacting Amazon Services should be very rarely used.  There are only a few, very specific instances when we are able to remove feedback:

    1)    Personally identifiable information about the seller that is not publicly available on the site (“I called Bob Anderson at 555-2039”)

    2)    Profanity – This is a pretty narrow definition.  If it’s a word that can’t be said on prime time network TV, we can remove it.  Otherwise, it stays.

    3)    Product Review – Again, there are very strict guidelines on what is and is not a product review.   “The strap on the camera case is too short” is pretty clearly referencing only the product.  “It fell apart as soon as I opened the package” could indicate a poor quality product, but it could also mean that the seller didn’t package it well enough, or inspect it for obvious defects before shipping it. And if it mentions both the product and the service, no dice.  It's your review.

And that’s it.  No matter how unfair the feedback seems, or how much the Amazon Services support person sympathizes with you, or even if you ask to talk to a supervisor, we can’t remove it.  Your best option is to work with the buyer and leave a response on your own feedback.  If the buyer later removes their feedback, your response will be removed as well.

And if all this fails and the feedback is going to stay, I have one final piece of advice to offer: let it go.  Every seller runs into this at some point or another.  If you have good business practices and truly want to take care of your buyers, it will show through in the majority of your feedback.  Consider it a learning experience and move on to the next sale. 

Yes, those little stars are important.  But they’re not the only important thing.  Don’t let them ruin your day.

~Kelley

What to Expect When Selling on Amazon.com – The Drill Down: Data Definitions

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ata definitions are another frequently questioned aspect of the product uploads for Selling on Amazon. Why does Amazon ask for this-or-that data, and what difference does it make if I include that information? Today’s drill down provides some answers about why you need to include some required information to make the upload complete, why you need other information to make a viable offer for sale on Amazon.com, and why some of the so-called optional information can really make a difference for you and the buyer.

Why does Amazon require me to provide specific information about products in a specific format?

In order to provide the best buying experience, Amazon.com is created around the concept of a “single detail page.” This page is where you see all variations (all sizes for example) and offers for a single product to quickly make a buying decision.

• To assemble all of the information on that page, there is a template that is designed to provide the information the buyer needs.

• In order for you to take advantage of this selling expertise, we ask that you provide your product information to fit that template.

The good news is that this is a tried-and-true online selling format and one of the reasons that you’ve chosen Amazon.com is for that ecommerce expertise.

It may be a bit of a challenge to understand this structure at first, but there is a wealth of information in Seller Central for guidance.

Once you start to understand the pattern, you are ready to go.

It’s all about getting your product offer on the right page with the right information to help the buyer make a choice!

On Amazon.com each product has its own page with detailed information, customer reviews, and more. When you add your information on Amazon.com, information regarding the product will appear on this single detail page as shown in the example below (each category may vary).

What are the data definitions and why do they matter?

• The category-specific templates are a great place to start to understand what each field in an Amazon.com upload is meant to do. Each includes definitions and accepted values appropriate to the category. Check those out even if you are using a different upload method by looking for inventory templates in Seller Central help.
  
  • What is required and why? To add the product, a SKU, UPC, Title, Manufacturer, ProductType and ItemType are required. Those last two are Amazon classification data. Notice what’s missing? Price and Inventory! Those aren’t required to add a product, but they are definitely necessary when creating an offer for sale. Then there are other desired fields such as images, bullets and descriptions, and there are additional attributes Amazon provides to link your products to the right locations. The takeaway here is that all of the data is probably used somewhere (as shown above), and the more you include the better chance you’ll have to create a listing, have it show up for sale, and have it show up in the place your buyers will be looking. 
     
  • Why is a SKU required? SKU stands for Stock Keeping Unit and is simply a unique, alphanumeric identifier you will assign for that product in your catalog. Many sellers have these already, and you may think of them as your inventory number. This number is determined by you and tied to your seller identification number so the system is able to identify that this product is the one that you sell.
  • Why is a UPC required? UPC, or universal product code, is the manufacturer-assigned bar code that can be used by point-of-sale scanners. In order to tie all of the same products together, we use this identifier as a StandardProductID. In conjunction with your SKU, we now know that this product identified with a UPC is a specific product, and when linked to your SKU and seller ID we can recognize the product that is being purchased and that you are selling that item. Including a UPC for each product listing will enable us to match all identical products on our site, eliminate duplicate listings, and ultimately improve the customer experience by improving customer searches and enabling accurate product comparisons.
  • What are we looking for with the title? The title is at minimum the product name and, at maximum, a short description. We've found that the best titles in apparel accurately represent the product and give additional information such as the brand name. A short but descriptive title is especially important on the search results page to make a decision where to click next.
  • Calvin Klein Solid Poplin Boxer Underwear (Great example – the buyer knows this is what they are looking for)
  • Big shirt (Poor example – not sure what they would be buying)
  • Then what are the bullets and descriptions? Look at the detail page as a one page sales flyer. The buyer gets to a detail page from any number of sources. Once they get there, the image and the title let them know they are in the right place. But those do not provide all of the information to make a decision. If the price is right, they’ll want to be sure the product has the features they are looking for – the bullets. Testing shows that well-crafted bullet points increase sales. Customers rely on them to understand key product features as they highlight important or distinguishing facts about your product. Use the following guidelines as you craft your bullet points:
    • Highlight the five key features you want customers to consider, such as dimensions, age appropriateness, ideal conditions for the product, skill level, contents, country of origin, and so on.
    • Reiterate important information from the title and description.
    • Begin each bullet point with a capital letter.
    • Write with sentence fragments and do not include ending punctuation.
    • Do not include promotional and pricing information.
  • Close the sale with a compelling description. This is your opportunity to describe the product in detail. Put yourself in your customers' shoes: what would they want to feel, touch, think, understand? Incorporating information about the feel, usage and benefits of your product can inspire the customer's imagination. This is as close as you can come to creating an in-store experience. We cannot stress strongly enough how crucial the description is when customers are making a buying decision. A desire for more descriptive information is one of the most common pieces of feedback that Amazon receives from customers. The description is also a key piece of marketing real estate on the product detail page. Profile your customers and figure out how your product fits in with their lifestyle.
  • Why aren’t quantity, shipping weight and time-to-ship required fields? These are not required to create a product listing because a product can be on Amazon.com without inventory. However, if you want to sell your product you’ll keep these current. Shipping weight may not be applicable, but time-to-ship (also known as leadtime-to-ship) defaults to 1-2 days if nothing else is entered. Make sure you can get the product out the door in 1-2 days or use a different value there.
  • What about the rest of the fields?
    • Brand is the product brand, not your company brand.
    • Manufacturer is who made the product. Sometimes these are the same, but unless you make the product yourself this is never your company name.
    • The ProductType and ItemType are gathered differently, based on listing option, and will be covered more in a future classification blog. These are the minimal attributes required to be sure your products show up on Amazon.com.
    • Further classification and variations will be discussed in future blogs, but instructions are found throughout Seller Central help.

An extra resource: It may also help to understand what data parts are used for Search & Browse. There is a help topic about this, but the basics are that a search looks at the Product Name/Title, Brand/Manufacturer, Manufacturer Part Number, and Search Terms; that makes these all critical fields for success. (You will need to log-in to your account to access the link below)

https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/help-page.html?ie=UTF8&itemID=10471

The more you prepare your data and learn these definitions, the better your product will display on Amazon.com and the better chance you have to sell. One specific type of upload that has many people asking “how” will be covered in the next on-boarding blog. Tomorrow we’ll continue with the series of “Drill Downs” with the topic “Accessory Relationships” and how to use this cross-sell option.    

Cathi C.

What to Expect When Selling on Amazon.com – The Drill Down: Listing Options

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ach aspect of Selling on Amazon will be examined in this series to answer the most frequently asked question, “why?” Today’s drill down answers why you might choose each of the available methods to list your products on Amazon. There are benefits to each, based on how you run your business. Taking some time to find the right solution can make a difference in the ease of managing your Selling on Amazon experience.

What are the listing options?

• List products one-at-a-time if you only have a few products that don’t change often – use the Add a Product tool in Seller Central.
• For larger catalogs the Amazon Seller Desktop (ASD)  provides a central interface for bulk uploads.
• When you have UPCs for all your products and most of them are already available on Amazon or in Amazon’s catalog, there is a quick way to upload your inventory and offers using the Listing Loader.
• Finally, for the most control of your data and when listing a large number of items use the various Inventory File Templates (also called “text files”). Using this method you can list all the information about a product is at one time and, for ease of use, you can group products by type and attributes. 

  Why would I choose one over another? The chart here provides some details about each, but what do you really need to think about to make the right decision?

• Start right: Each product is a standalone option. You won’t be able to switch between them, so if you have a lot of work, make sure you start where you want to finish. Perhaps you’ll want to test each by trying a product or two.
• Choose the best option for your catalog size: While the Add a Product interface may seem simple, there are some limitations for data management. Let’s imagine that you want to change an attribute or the level of inventory on all of your products at one time. You may not want to do that one-at-a-time, so a bulk upload option may be better.
• Develop the best data management plan: The Add a Product tool can be ideal for the quick start, but for complete data control, nothing is quite as useful as the various category-specific inventory templates. There are currently no tools available to get an list of what you list on Amazon, but the templates are a great place to keep track of what you send. Each provides you with a single line to input all of the pertinent data about every product in your catalog using the Amazon format.
  
  • You can make bulk changes through the Excel drag-and-drop editing option to place the same information in multiple cells quickly. 
  • Once you’ve made changes in the template it then becomes your historical record of your product information for Amazon.com.
  • Each of the inventory templates provides an outline of "data definitions" that help you determine the right information to provide. Those data definitions sheets are useful for understanding how to prepare your product information, no matter which option you choose.  

Even if you choose the templates or ASD, you can still make a quick change on a single item or two using the edit options in the Add a Product tool, but any future bulk uploads will overwrite those changes.
  

Who Can I Contact?

We receive lots of calls, and emails, on a daily basis regarding all types of issues effecting sellers. Quite often we are able to successfully answer your questions while we have you on the phone, or during our reply to your email. Other times, the issue is too complex to be resolved immediately and we have to get our engineers involved to assist.

Then there are the questions we receive for issues that cannot be resolved by Seller Support. These questions usually arise due to an email that was sent directly to you by another department within Amazon or, as a seller, you're being required to send an email directly to another team to assist with your request.

While we are here to assist you with your questions, not all issues are technical in nature and therefore cannot be resolved by contacting Seller Support. In these situations, there is a group within Amazon that Seller Support will direct you to when you contact us.

Due to the technical nature of what we do and the guidance we need to provide within the web-based user interface of your Amazon seller account, or the desktop applications you are using, Seller Support has to provide phone support. Quite often we need you to "click here" or "go to this website" or guide you through the installation of software. So phone support is a way for sellers to get assistance with navigating around these tools.

So, in the spirit of the holidays, and saving time for our sellers, here is a list of some of the most popular issues Seller Support regularly gets contacted about that we are unable to resolve and for which we can only provide you with an email address for the appropriate team. (You'll need to sign into your seller account to get to the list!)

Cheers!

Click here for the list

Keep it real,
Jay

What to Expect When Selling on Amazon.com – The ABCs of Getting Started

If you read yesterday’s installment, you understand how the Amazon platform works with a single detail page and what expectations that sets for you. You may still be wondering what you really need to do to get started, so today we’ll talk about the ABCs of getting started: Adding your products to the catalog, Business information, and Communication management.

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Add your products to the catalog: The first thing to do is look at the available upload options, learn how to fill in the fields, get your product data in the format required for Amazon, and start listing.

→Take a tour of Amazon.com to understand how the categories look, how a buyer navigates to products, and what makes you want to buy a product. It’s probably the same for the customers!

→Prepare to list everything you have to sell on Amazon so when the buyer is looking for just that thing they will have a chance to find yours. Find the better listings on Amazon by searching around, and review best practices for listing in Seller Central. Which are the best? Those that make it easiest for you to understand what is being sold.

→Learn the best method for uploading your products and manage those uploads by visiting Compare Listing Tool in Seller Central help. (You will need to log-in to your account to view the help solution). Keep the pricing and inventory current, follow the image guidelines and, where you are creating a new detail page, be sure that all the information is clear, concise, and about that product. TIP: Don’t include your name or URL in the product data or brand unless you are the manufacturer or own the brand. Doing so risks having your offer removed from Amazon.com.

→Think of each product detail page as a single web site. You never know how a buyer will get to that page and everything there has to grab their attention and close the sale. The key content details that display are: product name, item price, images, bullet points and a product description. The title and image grab their attention, the bullets highlight the value of the product and the description helps buyers make a decision. Those, along with the best product and shipping prices are elements of your success.

→In addition to your product data, you’ll be including various Amazon classification attributes and your own search terms so the buyers can find your products whether they search or browse (upcoming topic – demystifying Amazon classification). And this is where you want the titles and images of your products to be specific to that offer so it is easy to find in a search result page.

→You won’t need to list the same product over and over, but you’ll want to keep that information fresh and, since there are no listing fees, why not?  Make sure you’ve only listed what you can ship, refresh the product details if it will help sales, use promotions, and watch your pricing to stay competitive.

→Customer service focus: Listing the right products and making them easy to find.

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Business information: The second thing to do is set the stage for buyer information including shipping charges and policies, return and refund guidelines, and Amazon-specific information about your company.

→From the start, you want to make sure you’ve got the right business information listed in Seller Central. Confirm your business name – the one that will display on Amazon.com – as well as telling buyers how to contact you, providing information about where your products ship from, and ensuring we have the correct credit card and bank account information for payments and settlements.