What to Expect When Selling on Amazon.com – The Basics

This kicks off a series of posts that will attempt to answer the one global question many new sellers ask: why? Why does Amazon do this or that? Today we’ll start with the basics. Whether you are just coming on board, or have been selling a while, there are some fundamentals about Amazon that – when you know them – help put what you’re asked to do in perspective.

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irst, let’s explore why it’s good to sell on Amazon. You have the product people want; Amazon has the eCommerce experience people expect and trust. If you put them together, you can benefit from increased exposure and traffic which can help drive your company’s bottom line. Amazon has millions of active customer accounts worldwide (customers who have purchased from Amazon in the last 12 months) – which means that selling on Amazon.com will expose our products to a wide audience.

So, you’ve decided to sell on Amazon.com. Excellent choice. But what have you agreed to do when selling on Amazon? You’ve embarked on a path that can put your product offers in front of millions of Amazon customers, but they are just that – Amazon customers. And we are going to ask you to present your products in our format, to ship products on time, and to provide them with the experience that Amazon itself (and all the other sellers) must provide to maintain the safe and trusted online retail environment. Be prepared to enter a selling channel focused on world class customer service, fast and efficient fulfillment, and great products at great prices.

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ith that in mind, let's start with why we ask you to upload your product information to the same pages that Amazon and others also sell on. In order to provide this great buying experience, Amazon's framework is based on the “single detail page.” What that means is that you will be listing on the same page as other sellers who sell the same thing, and uploading your product information, inventory and prices within Amazon's prescribed format. What this means for the customer is they have a wide array of choices for the products they see, all presented in one easy view. Perhaps you have size 3, 4 and 5 while someone else has only size 1 and 2, and yet another seller has all sizes but only in blue. For the customer, none of that matters because they see all the sizes and colors on one page as well as all of the sellers with their varying prices and fulfillment practices. For your business, you gain easy access to present your offer to those buyers in the single place they are looking. You know what else happens? Search results are based, in part, on sales history and now you've gained the accumulated history of everyone selling that product and the buyer finds the best selling products at the top of their search – and you are there too!

 
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It's simple really: Amazon's goal is to be earth's most customer-centric company and provide a place where people can find, discover and buy anything they want online. With this understanding, it becomes easier to decide how to start and manage your business on Amazon. You can focus your every effort on making the shopping experience for the buyer the best it can be. You can take advantage of this approach with a few easy ideas.

• Start by listing all of your products. You never know what the buyers want.
• Include the best possible information for the buyer to easily make a decision.
• Ensure your systems will be ready for fulfilling that order quickly.
• Be prepared to handle problems. Sometimes things go wrong with an order.
• The way to succeed on Amazon, despite problems, is to have planned ahead of time what to do and how to make that experience the best it can be by acting quickly and with courteous responses to the buyer.
• Make their buying experience just like one you would want to have every day.

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hy do we think this works? You are part of a “virtuous cycle” leading to a vibrant marketplace. This is the original drawing of the concept that Amazon lives by every day – and now you do too. You see where you are in the cycle. You bring selection to the buyer which improves the customer experience. When it's a great experience they come back, increasing traffic for the platform and that is good news for everyone. This leads to growth and economies of scale and increased buying power so we can all offer the best prices and customers love that so they come back and the cycle repeats.

You may have only heard that Amazon is the place to sell these days – low fees without having to list over and over, less customer communication than other channels, and retail pricing instead of unknown auction revenues. All great stuff! But there are things about Amazon that you want to do correctly to take full advantage of those benefits. Now that you've got some of the basics” – single detail page, listing all your product information in Amazon format, and great customer experiences – spend some time reviewing the different categories on Amazon.com where your products will appear, understanding how the detail pages are laid out, searching for products like your own, and taking the time to think about product presentation from a buyer's point of view. The next step is learning how to optimize your selling experience within that environment. What does all this mean to you, exactly?

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et's take a closer look at the Amazon “single detail page.” Why do we ask for all that data input? In order to achieve the desired result, all the information about a product on one page, we ask everyone to combine their product details with attributes we provide, and to put it all into a format that maps to the information on the page (see illustrations below). We provide a variety of tools for doing this, from a basic 1-by-1 tool for small catalogs through more robust upload mechanisms that let you manage your catalog changes in bulk. In all tools, the concepts are the same: give Amazon the information that is unique to you, combine those with Amazon attributes designed to place your product in the right sub-categories, and add search terms to link your products into buyer searches. The more complete the data and attributes, the easier it will be for the customers to make a decision about buying.

 

You might think, “Excellent, I can do that: List once, no per-item listing fees, set-it-and-forget it.” Not quite. Even though you don't have to relist your product, you will want to be able to make changes to pricing and inventory, put things on sale, add promotions and, in many cases, you'll want to pay particular attention to how the descriptive product information and images look.

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he last “why” today is about keeping customers satisfied. You're in business, you know a lot of those answers, but there are a few that are critical for success on Amazon. If you are a multi-channel seller, one of the most important is to list only what you can actually ship. Amazon buyers have come to expect that their purchase will arrive when they make and pay for a selection. Cancellations and refunds due to not having product in stock leads to negative feedback and a bad buying experience. After all, the buyer had to start their search and buy process over again. List what you can ship and check into Seller Central daily to be sure you are managing all your orders and fulfillment processes.

Another key to customer satisfaction is to ship on time. Why do Amazon customers expect the product so quickly? The expectation is set by the displays on the site. The default expectation is out of your hands in 1-2 days and then the in-transit times based on the Shipping Manager tool. If that doesn't work for your company, change the setting to reflect the time it really takes to leave your business to avoid negative customer feedback. Make sure you upload those shipping confirmations as those trigger a process where Amazon confirms the shipment, charges the customer, and collects the funds that will be transferred to you. Remember that you cannot get paid unless you ship and confirm the order. There isn't much mystery as to why that's important!

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inally, be proactive in your customer interactions and be prepared to answer buyer inquiries. The volume of that communication is likely much lower than some other channels, but it's one of those things that you need to be there when they need you. Also, you'll want to be proactive when things do go wrong to make even that part of the experience the best it can be. Again, that daily check-in at Seller Central is a time to review feedback and claims, to handle issues, and to learn how to improve in this dynamic selling channel.

The best customer service you can provide is accurate listing of your products, great prices, and on-time shipping – where the buyer doesn't need your help at all. Amazon.com sets a high standard of customer service worldwide and invites sellers to meet or beat that standard. Take the time to learn and understand the expectations in the agreement you signed, in the policies posted in Seller Central, and read how feedback, claims and chargebacks will be handled. Being prepared to handle the process quickly and professionally can make the difference between success and frustration – for both you and the buyer. Consider how you might deal with these costs of doing business to turn an unfortunate situation into an opportunity to gain a loyal buyer, or to lessen the interruptive nature of dealing with anything other than a smooth transaction. For more about customer service, see the Customer Service by Captain Obvious post from November 12th.

Now that you understand the basics – why Amazon looks and sells the way it does, and how you fit in – we'll start drilling into the details of how to manage your selling experience. Tomorrow's installment is What to Expect When Selling on Amazon.com – The ABCs of Getting Started.

Cathi C.

Comments

[tula]

Great intro! Looking forward to more in this series.

[Randy Smythe]

Keep up the good work. It is nice to see Amazon communicating more effectively.