Amazon Seller Support

Two "time-saving" mistakes you might not think of as mistakes

In a recent post we mentioned the importance of shipping exactly what a buyer orders. Sometimes the reason this goes wrong is obvious, but other times it's more subtle. For example, a buyer might have ordered an item that differs from how the buyer perceived the item based on the detail page information.

Here are two mistakes you might make in the interest of saving time, but that can contribute to customers not knowing enough about an item to make an informed buying decision:

1. Not responding promptly to pre-order inquiries about your listings

   Customers (shoppers) won't necessarily become buyers, but answering their questions can help you make sales that stick. When a customer is fully informed about an item before buying, he or she is more likely to keep that item and to praise it (and you) in reviews.

   Sometimes a customer can't quite make out a particular detail from the product image and description. Talking to you can help the customer move forward and buy.

   Or not. And that's Ok too. If the customer ends up not buying after talking with you, that is a better result than the customer becoming a dissatisfied buyer due to lack of pre-order information.

   For more information, search on "messaging service" in seller Help.

2. Not providing a top-notch image of the exact product you are offering

   The product you ship should not be even slightly different from the product in your detail page image.

   Also, you can be extra helpful to customers who are deciding whether to buy, if in addition to having a perfect main image, you provide more images of the product—different angles, close-ups of key aspects of the product, and so on.

   For more information, search on "image standards" in seller Help.

Though you might save time initially by skipping (or skimping on) these tasks, that time saving can be easily overshadowed by lost sales, too many returned items, unhappy buyer reviews, and dissatisfied customers who don't come back.

Use Amazon Selling Coach to help increase your selling success

You may be wondering how to increase your sales on Amazon.com. If you are on the Professional selling plan, you can use the Amazon Selling Coach to see valuable information about your products and listings:

• Inventory that is low or out-of-stock
• Products that our customers are searching for that you may also want to offer
• Products that may benefit from Fulfillment by Amazon
• Products that match yours, but are being listed by other sellers at a lower price
• Listings that are missing important information

Amazon Selling Coach is updated periodically, so check frequently for new alerts about potential opportunities.

After you have tried the Amazon Selling Coach, please send us feedback by clicking the “Tell us what you think of this new feature” link.

We appreciate the feedback and suggestions we have received so far. Sellers have told us:

“Fantastic!!! Now I never have to worry about my best sellers running out of stock without me knowing!! THANK YOU!!”

“[The Coach] is easy to comprehend. I like seeing what customers look at before deciding to purchase my products.”

To learn more, search for “Amazon Selling Coach” in seller Help.

If you are on the Individual selling plan and would like to learn more about the Professional selling plan, search for “selling plan” in seller Help.

Use your Google Shopping file to sell on Amazon.com

If you have a tab delimited file in the format you use for Google Shopping, you can upload this file to your seller account to list products for sale on Amazon.com. Amazon's listing requirements (e.g., data and image quality) apply to the products that you list.

We currently support the following categories, as specified in the google_product_type field in the file you use for Google Shopping:

• Electronics > Communications > Telephony > Mobile Phone Accessories
• Electronics > Communications > Telephony > Mobile Phone Accessories > Mobile Phone Cases
• Electronics > Communications > Telephony > Mobile Phone Accessories > Mobile Phone SIM Cards
• Electronics > Communications > Telephony > Mobile Phone Accessories > Mobile Phone Stands
• Electronics > Communications > Telephony > Mobile Phones
• Electronics > Communications > Telephony > Mobile Phones > Feature Phones
• Electronics > Communications > Telephony > Mobile Phones > Smartphones
• Electronics > Communications > Telephony > Mobile Phones > Watch Phones
• Electronics > Communications > Telephony > Satellite Phones

For more information, search for “Google Shopping” in Seller Central Help.

Feeds, right? Amazon Marketplace Web Service might be just the thing for you

Amazon Marketplace Web Service (MWS) provides data exchange support for listings, orders, payments, reports, and more. For listings, as an example, you can add, delete, and modify, and you can update price and quantity with a simplified feed. Listing, order, and payment data can be integrated into your existing workflows and business practices.

There is no additional fee for using Amazon MWS but you do need at least one of these Amazon MWS-enabled account types, which do have fees:

Selling on Amazon (Select the Professional selling plan.)
Amazon Webstore
Checkout by Amazon
Amazon Product Ads

The Amazon MWS portals contain client libraries and comprehensive documentation. Take a look around:

Canada http://developer.amazonservices.ca
France http://developer.amazonservices.fr
Germany http://developer.amazonservices.de
Italy http://developer.amazonservices.it
Japan http://developer.amazonservices.jp
Spain http://developer.amazonservices.es
U.K. http://developer.amazonservices.co.uk
U.S. http://developer.amazonservices.com

(Don't miss the forum.)

Avoid stock-outs: Update your listing quantities

With the holiday rush behind us, now is a good time to review your Amazon.com listings and make sure the quantities reflect what you have available.

You can easily modify the quantities of your listings one at a time in the Manage Inventory section of your seller account. Just find the listing you want to update, enter the correct value in the Quantity column, and click the Save button.

If you are on the Professional selling plan and use feeds (inventory files) to upload your inventory, you can use a Price & Quantity file to modify listings in bulk. A Price & Quantity file is the smallest file format with the fastest processing time; the only data required are SKU, price, quantity, and lead time to ship.

For more information on how to use a Price & Quantity file, search on keywords "Price and Quantity" in seller Help.

Not on the Professional selling plan? Learn more about the benefits of selling professionally on Amazon.

Out of stock? Use a Price & Quantity file to update your inventory fast

If you are on the Professional selling plan, you may use feeds (inventory files) to upload your inventory to Amazon.com. Did you know that when you run out of stock of an item, you can use a simple Price & Quantity file to quickly modify the quantity of your listing?

A Price & Quantity file is the smallest file format with the fastest processing time. The only fields required in a Price & Quantity file are sku, price, quantity and leadtime-to-ship. When you’re temporarily out of stock of an item, just set the quantity for that SKU to zero and upload the file to Amazon. That’s it!

When you restock the product under the same SKU, you can use another Price & Quantity file to set the quantity to your on-hand quantity.

(We do not recommend deleting SKUs that are temporarily out of stock. You should use a product-specific feed to delete a SKU only if you do not plan to restock the item in the future.)

To download the Price & Quantity template, search on keywords "Price & Quantity" in Seller Help.

Not on the Professional selling plan? Learn more about the benefits of selling professionally on Amazon.

Improving listing quality

High quality listings can help make it easier for customers to find, evaluate, and purchase your products. A high quality listing will have basic information such as images, brand, and description.

You can use the Improve Listing Quality tool in Manage Inventory to identify and fix your listings that are missing information or that have invalid or poor quality information. Listing alerts are generally updated every 24 to 48 hours and are removed from the tool within a few minutes after you save your updates.

To fix your listings in Manage Inventory:

1. Log in to your seller account.
2. On the Inventory tab, select Manage Inventory.
3. In the left navigation pane, select Improve listing quality.
   Improve listing quality will appear only if you have listings to improve.
4. Select a viewing option, such as All Quality Alerts or Description and Bullets.
5. For the listing that you want to fix, click Actions and select an option.
   Options will vary depending on the quality issue. Once you select an option, you will be taken to a new page (Edit Product Info) or a dialog box (Manage Images).
6. Fix your listings as indicated.
   For example, in Edit Product Info, the missing details will be highlighted. In Manage Images, the dialog box will guide you through uploading product images.
7. When you’re finished resolving a listing alert, save your changes.

For more information about creating high quality listings, search for “listing quality” in seller Help.