Selling on Amazon.com can be a great opportunity for an online business, but there’re some things sellers should know before they jump in. Read our guide and enhance your chances of success!
You sell,
we ship your orders
we ship your orders
Amazon reintroduces European fulfillment network (EFN) in the UK
Starting March 2022 Amazon will reintroduce the European fulfillment network which will allow UK sellers with Amazon Europe stores accounts, who are also registered by Fulfillment by Amazon
Selling on Amazon in the European Union
With the help of Accomazzi.net, an Italian IT Agency focused on e-commerce and advertising, we are presenting you with a simple guide on how to create an account on SellerCentral and start selling your products on Amazon EU marketplaces.
If you have already decided to start selling on Amazon as a seller and you already understand which logistic is the best solution for you, then you can start selling on Amazon EU marketplaces.
The first step is to go on https://sell.amazon.co.uk/ (in English) or on one of the other European country sites (.it for Italian, .de for German, .fr for French, .pl for Polish, etc.) and to create a professional account, which has a cost of 39 euros/month (excluded VAT). The account will enable you to enter SellerCentral, your backoffice on Amazon.
Remember that, apart from the monthly cost, Amazon charges a referral fee for each item sold. The amount depends on the product category. Most referral fees are between 8% and 15%.
The second step is to add your product(s) on Amazon. The procedure is extremely simple if the product is already on sale on the marketplace: just type in your price and stock availability. From SellerCentral, click the Catalogue menu and then the Add Products item. There you will find the search engine, so search the Amazon database for products and add them to your inventory.
If your product(s) are not yet on Amazon, then you will have to select Inventory -> Add Products via Upload and follow the instruction there. Basically, you will have to fill in an Excel spreadsheet with data and info; then upload it.
After having uploaded your inventory, using the function Inventory -> manage Inventory you can update your prices and quantities. Remember in “Settings” to set up your Shipping Settings and your VAT settings.
After that, you can start to advertise your products. To do so, just go to Advertising -> Campaign Manager. Then choose Sponsored Products. In the panel, you will decide which product(s) to advertise. You will decide the campaign duration and budget and just choose Automatic targeting. That’s it. Amazon will do everything for you.
Sounds easy, right? Listing your products and advertising them will be a piece of cake.
Well, yes and no. There are a lot of little details and a lot of possible mistakes that can ruin your “way to success” on Amazon.
We at Accomazzi.net have been certified as a Service and Software Partner by Amazon and we can help you in many ways; in fact, we have been helping tens of (mainly Italian) companies to sell on Amazon since 2015. From single industrious shopkeepers to important companies moving millions of merchandises each month. We can help your staff to thrive in the Amazon ecosystem — marketing, sales and cataloguing.
We will train your employees on how sales work on Amazon, share with them the knowledge gained in the field by our experts, and prepare them to properly manage all the situations that can occur. Moreover, we can help you in preparing your catalogue (item names and descriptions) and help you in uploading it on Amazon.
But there’s more… what about automating it all? Our integrated software solution, Sar-At™, can manage stocks and prices, fetching data from your internal company database and automatically adding new insertions on both Amazon and eBay, whenever a new item is released or added to your internal inventory. Or remove out-of-stock items. It can also obtain sale data from Amazon and forward it to your IT systems, if needed.
If you are a reseller, Sar-At can automatically handle prices for you, checking multiple times per day if a competitor is trying to undersell you, and in that case lower your price (within limits, of course). Or, even better, raise it when there’s no strong competition, in order to maximize your profits.
Finally, we can manage your advertising campaigns both for individual products and to generate more visibility for your brand. We can help you in the process of store creation and to add A+ content to your items.
Intrigued? Let’s have a chat, or an email exchange, and discuss how we can help your business. You can find us at [email protected]
Why do you need a professional freight forwarder for?
There are so many reasons why a Freight Forwarder is needed when shipping goods from suppliers in China to Amazon in Europe:
- DEALING WITH SHIPPING LINE OR AIRLINE. First and foremost, if it was so easy dealing directly with a shipping line or airline to book freight, Freight Forwarders would not exist.
- SHIPPING RATES. The buying power of a Freight Forwarder is much greater than the average importer, so the rates we get are much better. Sometimes 50-100% better depending on the route.
- CONSOLIDATION. Shipping lines do not offer consolidation services. This is something that Forwarders developed and operate, by consolidating clients cargo in one place, to create enough ‘pay load’ to fill a container. The proportion of costs are spread across each cbm/ton and a sell rate is created which included the freight from port to port, and the added service features either side.
- SERVICE. A good forwarder will learn your business, spot trends and recommend alternative efficiency improvements to maximise your profits. Sometimes shipping less more frequently, is better than shipping bulk less often. Quick example is cash flow vs storage costs.
- CUSTOMS & EXCISE. A Forwarder declares your import or export to the customs for a small fee, pays out the due funds and re-invoices you at net cost! Shipping lines and Airlines do not do this.
- DELIVERY. How do you want your expensive investment of goods delivered? Protected, wrapped, to FBA Spec and no doubt sitting neatly on secure pallets? Then again, you need a Freight Forwarder to ensure this happens. We may even throw in some photos before it heads off to ‘Amazon World’ too!
Feed the Amazon Algorithm and Your Brand will be Rewarded
Amazon marketplace experts Daven Brodess and David Brodess of DTC Retail share essential tips to maximize sales on your Amazon site.
Amazon is by far America’s biggest online marketplace. It’s roughly 5x the size of eBay and 30x the size of Walmart.com, Esty and Wish combined. But tales of rouge sellers, excessive fees, and a capricious, all-powerful Amazon algorithm abound online and in corporate marketing departments, causing many brands to be wary of selling on Amazon. That said, we all know that “show-rooming” (the practice of checking Amazon pricing and reviews while in a retail store) exists and that the social proof provided by good reviews on Amazon can be a superpower for category-leading products.
Amazon’s leading role in America’s e-commerce ecosystem is undeniable. How does a brand utilize the Amazon platform to perform its magic so that it benefits rather than irritates? So that it supports brand voice and objectives? So that it supports multi-channel distribution? Today we discuss five key drivers of success on Amazon in practical ways that can be benchmarked against your current practices or utilized when you launch new products or brands.
Conversion is King
People often wonder why their products aren’t “showing up” higher in search results, what it takes to get on “page 1”, or why competitor products are being advertised against their own products so prevalently. The answer is usually driven by Amazon thinking that these other products are a better fit for shoppers. At its core, Amazon’s goal is to sell more products and build its customer base. For this reason, the platform and algorithms that drive search and discoverability of products are—above all—built for volume and sales. In practice, this means that Amazon tends to highlight products that have high conversion rates, a track record of historical sales, and good reviews.
While every financial advisor will be quick to remind you that “past performance is not indicative of future results”, on Amazon it’s a big part of it. The “trick” is to convince Amazon that your products will convert better and are more worthy of a page view than a competitor’s product. To do this necessitates having strong detail page content that effectively communicates key product and brand messages, an overall offer—including price and shipping speeds—that is competitive relative to the competition on Amazon, and a history of reviews and social proof that provide backing to the veracity of all the above. Small improvements matter and tend to be exponential, such that an item converting at 15 percent will get a multiple of more sales than the same item converting at 10 percent.
All of this begs the question: how do you do this?
Write Human-Focused Content
Getting the right keywords associated with a product through copy and catalog data is important as this provides signals and tells the Amazon index what a product is and what it’s about, thus increasing discoverability and traffic. But, a word of caution, some sellers take this to the extreme by agonizing and cramming in every possible keyword and keyphrase that is related to their product into their copy with hopes of impressing the Amazon algorithm. It’s important to keep in mind that the ultimate consumer of the copy on your page is a human and that keyword stuffing and the like can make copy difficult to read, increase bounce rates, and erode brand trust by looking unprofessional.
The best and highest converting product copy tends to focus on product benefits and selling points, and is structured so shoppers can easily scan and understand the information they need to make a purchase decision, while also including a collection of keywords for the Amazon machine. Put yourself in the customer’s shoes and make sure your titles, bullets, product descriptions, and images address common questions and friction points. If your detail page gives customers the information they need, the product will convert better, and you’ll have happier customers since they know what they are getting—that also means less customer service issues and better reviews. That’s good algo food.
Prime Is A Must (Usually)
Everyone knows that shoppers like low prices and fast delivery, so don’t bring a knife to a gun fight and try to get away with “seller fulfilling” the leading items for your brand. Over 50 percent of sales on Amazon go to Prime shoppers, of which there are 95 million in the U.S. And Prime members spend 3x more than non-Prime members. Using Amazon’s FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) ensures you automatically get all your items available for fast, free shipping to all of those customers.
Because Amazon knows for sure that they can fulfill FBA orders on-time and cheaply, it sends your pages more traffic. FBA will usually increase conversion over Seller Fulfillment (even Seller fulfilled Prime) by 2 to 4x, and FBA is usually cheaper than Seller Fulfillment once all costs are included. So, 1) more traffic, to 2) higher spending consumers, who 3) convert better, and have a 4) better, more predictable customer experience, at 5) lower cost. Sounds like a no-brainer.
What kind of items may not be a good fit for Amazon FBA?
- Large, slow-moving items; they may be subject to storage fees.
- Items with special shipping requirements or handling instructions, like HAZMAT items.
- Long-tail items that may sell few each year.
- Items that do not ship in one carton.
- Made-to-order or one-of-a-kind items.
Keep the Channel Clean
Why are there other offers for your brand’s products? Well, you probably sell your products into a multi-channel environment. Customers buy them from your website, from TV offers, from live shopping, and from retailers across the country. You may use distributors or re-sellers in some of those channels.
As an open marketplace, Amazon allows (virtually) anyone (company or person) to list any product no matter where they may have gotten it and Amazon doesn’t recognize “authorized distribution agreements” or “MAP” prices. So those policies and enforcements must be handled by you. There are tools, such as Amazon’s Brand Registry program, that are pretty effective for removing sellers or offers that are infringing registered trademarks (selling other items by using your TM in their listing), or sellers that are misrepresenting “used” or “refurbished” items as “new”, but Amazon won’t help you to remove other sellers of your product that bought them in other channels.
Given this, winning Amazon’s “Buy Box” (Amazon’s term for the first offer on display for any given item) is a critical component of driving and capturing sales on the platform. Over 98 percent of sales for a given product flow to the seller and offer that is in the Buy Box, and many advertising and promotional levers only trigger when the Buy Box is being won. While there is no published algorithm on who will get the Buy Box for a product, the formula is based on price, shipping speed, and seller performance metrics. Consequently, having good channel control is imperative for brands that are selling on Amazon since without it, the Buy Box, and thus marketing programs, and ultimately sales, will suffer. The most successful brands typically have Buy Box rates at or above 98 percent as this is a result of efficient channel sales policies.
Three critical questions that brand owners need to answer to ensure that they have the highest Buy Box winning rate are:
- Should we stop selling products to online re-sellers who then re-sell on Amazon?
- Are we setting wholesale pricing and promotions so that they don’t encourage bulk orders which can be broken down and sold on Amazon?
- Are we willing to discontinue selling to distributors whose accounts break MAP or sell on Amazon?
The answers to these questions are brand specific, but the key is to make sure you are thinking about them methodically.
Stay in Stock
Out of stock = zero sales. But going out of stock also infuriates the Amazon algorithm. Products and brands that experience out of stock positions on a regular basis are penalized by showing up lower in search results and getting less traffic. That compounds over time to reduce sales growth even if reviews and conversion rates are good.
Too many brands try to run too tight on inventory in order to save on Amazon FBA storage fees. We find that many times this is a “penny wise, pound foolish” mentality. Think about it this way: if you run out of stock on one of your better selling items for even just a few days over the course of an entire year, you can easily lose all the “savings” you made in storage fees.
We have three inventory “rules” to live by:
- Keep about six weeks of sales worth of inventory of each product on hand at Amazon at all times.
- Plan in advance: know your holidays and seasonal events and make sure there’s plenty of inventory in place so that you can take advantage of special opportunities as they arise.
- Expect the unexpected! There will ALWAYS be trucking delays, warehouse issues, missed pickups, and Amazon receiving issues. Don’t require perfection for your business to operate.
Inventory planning and management may be the most boring subject in this article, but it’s probably the most important.
Bonus: Stay Current with Amazon Updates and Changes
Amazon is a high-competition marketplace where market dynamics shift quickly. Amazon continually releases updates to their policies and rolls out new advertising and marketing levers. It’s critical to pay attention to these changes and updates to ensure that your brand is positioned strongly to take advantage of new opportunities, and so you don’t get caught flat-footed. Prudent sellers pay attention and keep informed by reading Amazon announcements and emails, and by consistently engaging with the broader ecommerce and marketing community.
About the author: Daven Brodess, Co-founder & Managing Partner of DTC Retail, LLC, works with brands to navigate the e-commerce landscape (with a special emphasis on Amazon in the USA and around the world), make better decisions, and grow sales and profit through consultation, manufacturers representation, and active campaign management. Prior to DTC Retail, he worked 5 years at Amazon across a variety of marketing, category management, and supply chain roles. A graduate of The University of Notre Dame with a B.A. in Economics, Daven earned his MBA at the University of Western Australia. Contact Daven at: [email protected].
David Brodess, Co-founder & Partner of DTC Retail, LLC., has 30+ years experience starting, growing and leading direct-to-consumer businesses in the USA, Europe and Asia. David works with DTC Retail’s clients to make data-driven decisions that spur growth and increase ROI on Amazon, other e-commerce and traditional retail channels. David has an A.B. in Economics from Princeton and an MBA from NYU. Contact David at: [email protected].
DTC Retail brings years of experience in manufacturing and retailing products through Amazon, HSN, QVC, Facebook, Branded Websites, and more. Having grown brands from inception to category leaders at +$1 billion in sales and customers all around the globe, we understand the retail landscape and can help you succeed. Learn more at: www.DTCRetail.com.