Amazon is an e-commerce platform, owned by Jeff Bezos, that sells A to Z products to millions of customers. The Amazon Marketplace was created especially for third-party sellers and other sites to sell products.
While setting up the account seems easy and having the dream of being your boss is exciting, achieving your business goals is a huge task.
Amazon Marketplace has pretty good competition and making sure to have some information hacks to avoid minor mistakes can help you in terms of saving effort and money.
This article will help you figure out mistakes, enabling you to easily avoid them when setting up your Amazon Marketplace.
1. Product Research
Narrowing down your niche: Look for an active market where your products can be noticed and sold. Narrowing your niche is more of a self-limitation act that stops you from exploring different products in the future.
Setting a lower price for your products: Setting low prices for your products is like lowering your brand standards and sabotaging your business growth. Stop comparing the price range of your competitors when deciding on yours. You have no idea about your competitor’s profit margin, sales rate, sourcing costs, or the logic behind their scheme. Setting your prices low can automatically make the consumer think your brand is of low quality.
Not calculating profit margins: Check your profit margin with the FBA calculator. You should consider Amazon’s FBA fees before calculating your own brand’s profit margin.
Repeating competitor’s drawbacks: You must research other seller accounts in the same product category as you. Pay attention to the review section to get an idea of what customers feel, good and bad, about the products sold. Try to sort out the drawbacks pointed out by more than half of the customers. Customer satisfaction will take your brand a long way in e-commerce.
2. Adding Your Products Under Famous Sellers/Brands
It is a buyer’s mentality to prefer a famous seller account to buy products. As a new amazon seller, try not listing your products on the same page as other famous or well-known sellers fulfilled by Amazon FBA.
Though you intend to become a well-known Amazon seller someday, at the starting point, try keeping it away from show-stealers until you become one.
3. Overly Priced Shipping Costs
It is the users’ mentality to avoid purchasing a product when the shipping is high, even when shipping charges are included. That is why Amazon Marketplace has this fantastic feature of its prime customers for free delivery regardless of the minimum order value (provided they order with sellers fulfilled by FBA and not third-party sellers.)
If you are a third party seller in the Amazon marketplace, try not setting your shipping charges high; however, you cannot avoid adding one since it affects your profit margin. Take shipping charges into consideration before you fix your product price.
4. Failing Order Fulfillment
Failing to send orders to your customers hits your brand value and affects your growth in the Amazon Marketplace. If you are a third party seller and find it hard to deliver products quickly, you can try listing as a seller account of Amazon FBA (Fulfilled By Amazon).
This way, Amazon does its job of delivering your products to your customers in a day or two (Amazon Marketplace is very well known for its rapid shipping).
5. Wrong or Inadequate Product Information
Your product should have its description right. Not just what the product is about, but how it will benefit the customers. Ensure to include the product’s unique selling points.
Your product information needs to have the exact data and not be misleading. Try to add high-quality pictures and optimize your description with your business-related keywords, features, and benefits.
6. Launching PPC Campaigns without a Strategy
Amazon Marketplace lets you do Pay Per Click (PPC) product advertisements. PPC campaigns help list your products on the top search results page, directly leading multiple customers to your products. The most significant advantage comes with a catch. Diving into amazon advertisements without having basic knowledge of PPC marketing or the digital world might cost you a fortune. Brush up your understanding of PPC marketing campaigns and dive into it. You can start with a PPC audit.
You can always find a content marketing agency to help you handle your PPC campaigns in the Amazon Marketplace.
7. Stock Mismanagement
As a seller in the Amazon Marketplace, you need to check your inventory or stock levels. Check your inventory level frequently and try restocking the products even before reaching the minimum count.
Stock or inventory mismanagement can lead to loss of potential sales. Your customers may get tired of constantly seeing your products out of stock. Missing out on delivering your products or delays in restocking your products can affect your customer satisfaction.
8. Not Considering Tax Liabilities
Businesses never run without tax. Not considering your tax liabilities before listing your products on the Amazon marketplace is not good. While the tax changes are based on your location, have a clear understanding of tax filing, collection, and remittance, as well as where they are applied. Have your tax documents safe and updated to avoid misunderstandings, which will be required during your business with the Amazon Marketplace.
9. False Customer Reviews
Next to the product and shipping price, ratings and reviews are the main reason for most customers to consider a product. However, the catch is, if you as a seller force your customers to give reviews or update false reviews through your friends or family, that’s against Amazon’s policies.
Sellers are not allowed to ask for a review from customers explicitly. This can lead Amazon to take strict action against your profile. Customer reviews will be a chance to improve the quality of your products.
10. Not Being Customer-Centric
Be it any business, customer service is the pillar of growth. According to a survey, 32% of all customers would stop doing business with a brand they loved after one bad experience.
If FBA fulfills your brand, then Amazon will take care of the customer service part, which they are pretty good at.
If you are a third party seller in the Amazon Marketplace, get ready to provide solutions as the sales begin and ensure efficient and prompt answers to your customers. This way, the chances are high that customers might return for more products. After all, the customer clicks on the checkout box of your products matter the most.
Conclusion
Amazon Marketplace has kept its platform open for third party retailers to open their Amazon seller accounts. However, given the brand identity, and more sellers like you trying to make it in the search placement of the Amazon Marketplace, trying to avoid basic mistakes can save your seller account a lot of time and effort.
Hope this article helped you learn the common mistakes that can be easily avoided in your amazon seller account. Here’s a summary of the mistakes discussed above as your checklist:
- Product research
- Adding your products under famous sellers/brands
- Overly priced shipping costs
- Failing order fulfillment
- Wrong or inadequate product information
- Launching PPC campaigns without a strategy
- Stock mismanagement
- Not considering tax liabilities
- False customer reviews
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Amazon and Amazon Marketplace different?
Yes, they are. Amazon is an online e-commerce platform that sells products to its consumers. Amazon Marketplace is a site that lets other businesses sell their products. Amazon.com will have a list of products that Amazon has to offer. At the same time, the Amazon Marketplace has a list of products that Amazon has and other products of retailers associated with the marketplace. Amazon Marketplace takes a certain percentage from the seller and buyer for every sale, while Amazon does not have middlemen and receives its full share.
What are marketplace facilitator laws?
Marketplace facilitator laws are for sellers. On behalf of you, your marketplace will collect and remit sales taxes based on the regulations set by the state.
Which country uses Amazon the most? According to statista, the US has the biggest marketplace for Amazon and tops the list with 314 billion net sales. Next to the US, Germany is ranked second with 37.3 billion dollars.
