Amazon Seller Support

Pro sellers: Decrease feed processing time with Pricing and Inventory feeds

Attention Professional sellers who use inventory templates (feeds) to list on Amazon.com: When you only want to update the prices and quantities of your listings, you can use Pricing and Inventory feeds to speed up processing time.

To create a Pricing and Inventory feed, just eliminate from your feed any product data that typically does not change (particularly Product, Relationship and Image information). Then upload that feed to Amazon using the Upload tool in your seller account.

Below are the fields required for creation of Pricing and Inventory feeds:

• sku, item-price, currency – this will update just your price (you can also submit sale prices in this feed)
• sku, quantity, leadtime-to-ship – this will update your quantity; leadtime-to-ship must be included if the item does not have the default 1-2 day leadtime-to-ship

You can maintain a separate feed that contains full product data that you can upload when that data changes.

Sell more this holiday season with a Pro Merchant subscription

If you're an Amazon Marketplace Seller with a lot of inventory to sell during the holidays, you might want to consider upgrading to a Pro Merchant subscription. Here are just a few of the benefits you'll receive:

• Discounted selling
• Access to our volume listing and order management tools
• Ability to create product detail pages in Amazon's catalog
• Eligibility for Featured Merchant status
• Add an unlimited number of listings that never expire

Learn more about the benefits of selling on Amazon with a Pro Merchant subscription.

If you're wondering whether a Pro Merchant subscription is right for you, our tutorial can help. Watch as our fictional hero, Mike Seller, evaluates the features of a Pro Merchant subscription and walks through the process of deciding if he should upgrade his account.

Proceed to video  

Are you using Amazon Selling Coach yet?

Amazon Selling Coach offers suggestions to you as an Amazon seller. Based on your seller profile and the products you list, the coach makes personalized suggestions and provides links to more information.

For example, if you forgot to add a few important details to a lot of your listings, Amazon Selling Coach might provide a report to make it easier for you to find those listings that need more attention. As you know, customers often want plenty of specifics in order to make a buying decision.

Check the upper right corner of your seller account home page to see if the coach has any suggestions for you today.

What is a Concession?

Sellers can always issue partial or full refunds for order costs, but the Amazon system also allows sellers to compensate buyers for order issues as an alternative to or in addition to refunding order amounts. Buyer credits that exceed the order total are called concessions. There are situations where you may want to issue funds to the buyer beyond the cost of the item(s) and shipping amount. For example, if a buyer receives a defective item and you want to compensate them for return shipping along with the order refund, you could issue a concession.

Concessions can be issued as partial refunds, with partial refunds, or along with full refunds. There are limits on the total amount sellers may provide to buyers when they issue order refunds and concessions. An order refund can't exceed the total amount originally paid by the buyer; however, the amount allowed in concessions may exceed the total cost of the order itself. Amazon displays the concession maximum for each item in an order using a formula that calculates the higher of the following two numbers:

Limit 1: 50% of the sum of original buyer-paid shipping plus product price
Limit 2: Twice the original buyer-paid shipping, plus $10 plus $20

To issue a concession:

1. Log into your seller account.
2. Go to your orders section and bring up the details of the specific order you want to refund.
3. Click the "Refund order" button on the Order Details page.
4. Choose the tab that fits your refund: Full (which is the default page) or Partial Refund (which is a tab below the order number).
5. Use the pop-up menu to select the appropriate Reason for Refund. 
6. Enter the amount of the return shipping and/or other concession into the Amount to Refund box.
   You will receive a pop-up asking you to confirm the concession.
7. Add a memo to the buyer. 
   This is optional but highly recommended, allowing up to 255 characters.
8. Click the Submit Refund button.

Additional facts to note about concessions:

• It can take 15 minutes for the data to be updated in the order to reflect the refund in your seller account.
• Buyers will see a concession amount as a different entry than a partial or full refund on their payment statement.
• Concessions do not contribute to the refund percentage in your seller performance metrics. If one or more products in an order are fully refunded, then the order is counted as a refunded order and is included in your Refund Rate.

If you would like a more in-depth look at concessions, please access the Help section of your seller account and search for concessions.

Best Practices for Submitting Item Feeds

If you use feeds to update your product listings, there are a number of things you can do to decrease their processing time.

After the initial upload, you do not need to provide complete product information in your feed, unless you are updating all aspects of your existing listing. If you intend to update only your prices and quantities, your feed will process quicker if it doesn’t include any listing data you don’t wish to modify.

Feed data can be broken into four parts:

1. Price
2. Inventory and lead time to ship
3. Images
4. Product Data and Relationship Data
    (description, bullet points, category, etc.)

To create Pricing and Inventory feeds, eliminate from your feed any product data that typically does not change (particularly Product, Relationship and Image information). You can maintain a separate feed that contains full product data that you can upload when that data changes. Below are the fields required for creation of Pricing and Inventory feeds:

• sku, item-price, currency – this will update just your price (you can also submit sale prices in this feed)
• sku, quantity, leadtime-to-ship – this will updated your quantity; leadtime-to-ship must be included if the item does not have the default 1-2 day leadtime-to-ship

Improve items' performance in product Search on Amazon.com

Categorize Products Accurately

• If a product type or subcategory is incorrect, the item may be unsearchable or moved into the Everything Else category.
• Mis-categorized items are often at a disadvantage in ranking; however, items can correctly appear in multiple categories as they belong in different subcategories.
• For Pro Merchants: make sure item-type-keyword values are correct, only use lower-case letters and dashes, and use the “other-products” item-type-keyword as a last resort.
• When in doubt, search for existing products on Amazon.com to help determine if your item is categorized properly.

Professional Titles

• Keep 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. Amazon buyers are savvy shoppers, and these terms can make your product seem the opposite by sounding unprofessional or overhyped.
• 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. Some buyers will search for “haircutting scissors,” while others may search for “styling shears.”
• 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.
• Trademark and reserved symbols should be avoided.
• Use the word “and” instead of “&” (ampersand character) when possible.

Are you active on the Amazon MWS developer discussion forum?

Amazon Marketplace Web Service (Amazon MWS) is Amazon’s newest platform for integrating with your Selling on Amazon business. Whether you are actively selling in the Amazon Marketplace, or you’re an Amazon Product Ads seller, or you are busy with your Amazon WebStore, or you’re a professional developer who is creating applications for these sellers, sometimes you have questions about the best way to use Amazon MWS, or possibly you have insights that you’d like to share with other Amazon MWS developers.

The Amazon MWS developer discussion forum at http://www.amazonsellercommunity.com/forums/forum.jspa?forumID=43&start=0 is a busy place. You can search the forum to see if others have already asked and answered the same questions you have. For example, if you’re seeing unfamiliar errors being returned, you can search on the error, or the API method, and see how others have solved the issue.

If you regularly visit the Amazon MWS discussion forum, you will see announcements that are posted about new Amazon MWS functionality when it becomes available, and other announcements that are important to your business. By becoming actively involved in the forum, you can learn from other developers and help to contribute to improvements to Amazon MWS by posting feedback about new features and functionality. Come and help us grow the Amazon MWS developer community!