Amazon Seller Support

Webstore Tips for the Holiday Season

The holidays are a busy time for everyone, including your customers. Use our list of tips to make it easy for customers to find your products and site, view your best deals, and find all the information they need to make confident purchasing decisions.

Holiday Selling Tips:

1. Get the word out! Reach out to your social networks and e-mail list; generate buzz about your holiday offerings.
2. Make your products easy to find: The holidays are a great time to sell on Amazon and comparison shopping engines, Amazon Webstore makes both easy!
3. Promote! Holiday shoppers expect deals. Free shipping options or promotions (like “free shipping on all orders over $100”) are always popular. Dollars off, percentage off, and “buy x, get y” can also work well. Highlight your best deals on your home page and other popular landing pages if not site-wide. A regularly updated “deal of the day” or “sale” category are great ways to keep customers coming back to your site.
4. Make a good first impression: Focus your merchandising efforts on making your home page, key category pages, and other popular landing pages look great. Slow pages drive customers away, so avoid heavy merchandising that slows key pages down.
5. Clear messaging: During the holidays customers are overwhelmed with messaging. Effective merchandising and promotional text is descriptive and accurate while being brief, to the point, and with a clear call to action. Keep things simple and easy to understand, avoid repetition, and don’t mix messages.
6. Offer fast and free shipping: Fast shipping and free shipping are always important, but especially during the holiday season. Eliminate shipping cost from the buying decision by making it free. Customers need to know their gifts will arrive on time. Provide clear, site-wide messaging around delivery timeframes, shipping cut-off dates, and contact information.
7. Returns: Returns are part of the holiday experience. Make sure your return policy is available on your website and very clear, especially about any limitations.
8. Get your servers tuned and ready for more traffic?!? Don’t worry, we have that covered for you!

Happy Selling!

The Amazon Webstore Team

Be a Star this Holiday Season - Give Great Customer Service

Sellers who provide great customer service can see results in good feedback and repeat sales to buyers. Here are some buyer-pleasing selling habits that can bring buyers back for more:

• Make a point of responding to customer inquiries within 24 hours.
• It goes without saying that communication between you and a buyer must be courteous. Customers remember sellers who treat them well.
• To add a personal touch, include "thank you" notes on packing slips.

Learn more about providing great customer service and managing refunds, returns and cancellations.

Keep Safety and Security in mind

Amazon wants to be the safest place to buy and sell online. Here are some things you can do to help us in that goal:

• Only accept payment through Marketplace Payments by Amazon for your orders. Transactions that are conducted outside of the Marketplace Payments by Amazon system are not protected by the Amazon.com A-to-z Guarantee.
• Ship orders only to addresses provided to you by Amazon. If you are asked to ship to a different address, cancel the order and ask the buyer to place a new order with the preferred address selected. Learn more about seller protection.
• Learn about “spoof” emails and how to report them to us immediately.
• Change your password regularly.
• Consider setting up a separate bank account for disbursements from your Marketplace Payments account.
• Amazon.com never asks you to verify sensitive information via e-mail. Submit such information only when completing an order on our website, registering for Marketplace Payments by Amazon, or contacting us directly through our online forms.
• Review the terms of our online Privacy Notice and our other Privacy & Security resources.

Listing tips to help buyers find your products

Categorize Products Accurately

• If a product type or subcategory is incorrect, the item may be unsearchable or can be placed into the Everything Else category.
• For Pro Merchants: make sure item-type-keyword values are correct and only use lower-case letters and dashes.
• When in doubt, search for existing products on Amazon.com to help guide how your item is popularly categorized.

Professional Product Titles

• Keep your titles tidy and maintain the continuity of Amazon.com sold items with crisp, professional product titles.
• Avoid providing gimmicky terms like "super”, “cheap" or "quality" unless it is part of the trade name.
• Remember that in a catalog of over 90 million items, including the unique and specific language of your product into your keywords can help your product stand out.
• Good images are important. Let your product image entice customers.
• Keep less essential information within the product description and bullet points.

Brand uniformity

• When entering the brand, keep it accurate to the brand of the product, keep spelling consistent and exactly as the manufacturer has it, and keep capitalization uniform. This assists in better brand browsing within the site.
• Avoid using trademark symbols, and use the word “and” instead of “&” (ampersand character) when possible.

Dealing with negative feedback

When you sell at Amazon.com, you should work with buyers to resolve any differences. Communication is usually the key--simply explaining a delay or reassuring a buyer puts most issues to rest. But sometimes an order results in the seller receiving negative feedback from the buyer.

If you receive a feedback comment that you are not happy with, we encourage you to contact your buyer, and work with them to resolve any order issues. Your buyer could then remove the feedback if they feel it would be appropriate.

If the buyer has indicated that they're willing to remove the feedback, here are simple instructions to give them. They are also available on our buyer Help page, Leaving Feedback.

1. Go to http://www.amazon.com/your-account
2. Under "Personalization," in the "Community" column, click "Seller Feedback Submitted By You."
3. A list of all of the feedback left by you will display. Click the "Remove" link next to the feedback would like to remove.

(If there is no "Remove" option next to a comment, this means the 60-day removal period has expired.)

Amazon will remove feedback only in the following cases:

• The feedback includes obscene language.
• The feedback includes personally identifiable information.
• The entire feedback comment is a product review.
• The entire feedback comment is regarding fulfillment or customer service for an order fulfilled by Amazon.

When you receive negative feedback, put it in perspective. A 0-2% negative feedback rate is great! If your negative feedback rate is greater than 5%, you may want to review your business practices. Remember that you can do a lot to avoid receiving negative feedback by providing great customer service!

Manage your orders effectively

Order volumes can increase rapidly during the holiday season. To manage your orders effectively, use the tools in your selling account and follow some suggested “best practices”:

• Don't rely solely on "Sold, ship now" e-mails to let you know you have new orders. The Manage Orders tool in your account provides up-to-the minute views of orders.
• The Manage Orders tool gives you lots of information about orders, including buyer name or shipping address.
• If you need to refund an order, do so promptly. You can make refunds through the Manage Orders tool.
• If you have a Pro Merchant subscription, you can download Inventory Reports to help you track open listings, sold items, order fulfillment, and listings canceled by Amazon.
• Get in the habit of shipping your orders right away. You’ll have more time to resolve any problems that might arise.

Check out our Help pages for more information on managing orders.

Monitor your Customer Metrics Closely

Amazon.com has established a set of performance targets for sellers to follow so buyers can shop confidently, with a sense of safety and security about their third-party transactions.

Your Customer Metrics indicate how you are doing with respect to our performance targets. During the holidays, it’s important that you monitor the Customer Metrics Scorecard in your selling account frequently so you can spot and resolve operational problems promptly. Excessive order defect rates (negative feedback, A-to-z Guarantee claims and chargebacks) can cause account suspensions and even account closures.

Check your feedback and A-to-z Guarantee claim pages daily, and proactively resolve any issues.

Learn more about Customer Metrics, improving feedback ratings and resolving A-to-z Guarantee claims.