Amazon has built a phenomenal worldwide reputation on being the go-to marketplace for online shopping, which is why it’s usually the first stop for buyers and for sellers alike. While selling on Amazon can see you have immense success, it can also see you running into many problems when it comes to rules, regulations, and account suspensions. Sometimes, account suspensions can happen even if you believe you are doing everything right.
When Might Your Selling Privileges Be Removed?
It’s important to understand the reasons which might see your Amazon selling account suspended. These include:
Selling a restricted product
Not performing as well as Amazon deems necessary
Any violation of Amazon’s policies and rules
Naturally, an account suspension poses huge risks and problems for sellers. It’s not only a mild inconvenience but a serious hit for income, as well as having the ability to tarnish any seller reputation.
Suspension, Denial, or Ban?
The suspension is open-ended, meaning you need to work to get your Amazon account reinstated. It means you have the opportunity to appeal the suspension.
A denial comes next. If you’ve appealed but to no avail, this will be denied. However, you do have the option to re-submit a revised appeal.
A complete ban means that your appeals have not been a success, and Amazon will not consider the matter any further.
To avoid the latter and to work to get your Amazon account reinstated, you need to take the important steps to start selling again.
How to Start Selling on Amazon Again and Avoid Suspension
Contact a Reinstatement Expert
By using an Amazon seller consultant who has vast experience in appealing Amazon seller accounts, you’re ensuring that your appeals are the best they can be, with the highest chance of success. If you’re not sure how to appeal yourself, or maybe you’ve tried and been denied once already, then seeking professional advice for reinstatement can really help you.
Be Professional
Being suspended is, of course, infuriating. Maybe you don’t agree with anything Amazon has said about the matter, and you want to tell them so. However, complaining to Amazon about their policies or feedback will get you nowhere. Ensure that you remain professional with all contact regarding a suspension, and be clear and concise when appealing.
Improve Your Customer Relations
Being a successful seller means having satisfied customers. Do everything you can to keep your customers happy and prevent any problems or complaints. Ensure that you’re responding to all notifications, messages, and queries, and also make sure that all your listings are completely transparent so that there is no miscommunication with your items which would result in customers complaining.
Keep on Top of Amazon Reports
These reports provide key information for you to keep on top of things. They will highlight any issues or negative feedback, allowing you to address problems as soon as possible. If any returns are made, reports will indicate that for you, too, in which case you can look into why some of your items are being returned (and prevent it from happening in future).
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It’s easier than ever to start an eCommerce store. Just sign up for a hosting account, and your store will be ready in a few minutes. Unfortunately, it isn’t as easy to get customers.
You’re competing with at least 12 million other online stores on the internet. The good news is you can make use of website analytics to make better choices for your business.
The question is, why are analytics important for eCommerce websites? Keep reading to learn the answer to your question.
Uncover Your Traffic Sources
It isn’t too difficult to figure out where you’re getting traffic from if you only run advertising on one platform. It’s much more difficult if you’re getting search engine and social media traffic.
Analytics software will show you exactly where your traffic comes from. You’ll be able to gauge which websites are showing the best results from your efforts, so you know where to focus your energy.
Group Audience Segments
Not all customer demographics will respond to your products in the same way. People of different ages, sexes, and geographical locations will react differently to your content. Your tracking software can help you figure out which demographics take what action.
This data will help you optimize your website and advertising campaigns. When you create messaging specifically for different demographics, you can speak more to what they want in a product.
Split-Test Pages
You should never be satisfied with your website design. There’s always a test you can do to improve your conversion rate. Unfortunately, this is hard to do without any kind of tracking software.
A heatmap is a tracking script that informs you of what actions your visitors take on individual pages. You can see where they look and where they hover their mouse. Use this information to test small changes to your website to figure out which versions produce the best results.
Track Ad Campaigns
It isn’t enough to get click-throughs on your ads. If you have no method to track what visitors do on your website, you won’t be able to figure out what marketing campaigns are successful.
ECommerce analytics software provides you the ability to set up goal pages. Set a dollar amount for these pages, and you’ll be able to figure out how much money your ad campaigns generate while your campaigns are live.
Learn What Visitors Search For
Your search bar isn’t only there to give your visitors an easy way to find items. It’s also there to help you understand the type of products your visitors are searching for.
Using a tool like Knowi will help you gain insight into the search trends on your website. You’ll be able to see reports detailing search terms and use them to figure out what popular items are and what trends are happening in your industry.
Why Are Analytics Important? Now You Know
Now that you can answer the question, “why are analytics important to online stores?” you’re ready to get started. Sign up for an analytics software package today so you can start tracking the people on your website. The more information you have, the better business decisions you’re going to make.
Do you want more tips for running an eCommerce store? Read our latest articles to discover our newest tips.
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Want to make your own business without the stress of an office or employees? Why not start selling through Amazon?
In fact, there are already 8.7 million sellers on the Amazon marketplace worldwide.
By establishing an Amazon FBA business, you can reach customers around the world. Then, you can market your business, attract buyers, and start generating sales.
Not sure how to establish your new Amazon FBA business? With this selling on Amazon for dummies guide, you can give your new business a strong start.
Read on to learn how to sell stuff on Amazon!
Draft a Business Plan
Before you actually start selling, it helps to have a plan. Drafting a business plan will help you chart the path ahead. It also gives you a chance to recognize any obstacles that might stand in your way.
Before reading this selling on Amazon for dummies guide, sit down and consider your business. A strong business plan starts off with a mission statement. What are you trying to accomplish?
What promise are you making to your customers?
Next, you’ll need to determine which products you sell. You’ll also need to develop a marketing, sales, and financial plan.
Once you know what you want to sell, try to gain an understanding of the current marketplace. A market analysis will help you recognize the latest trends. What are consumers looking for right now?
Don’t forget to research your competitors, too. Which strategies are they using to reach customers? Are those strategies working, or falling flat?
Try to use a SWOT analysis to determine your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Recognizing these factors can help you sell through Amazon successfully! Otherwise, your weaknesses and threats might slow you down.
Define Your Target Audience
In order to reach your target audience, you need to determine who your customers are. If you’re focusing on a broad target market, try segmenting your audience into buyer personas. You can define your buyer personas based on demographics such as age, gender, location, or household income.
What products are your ideal customers already buying? What interests and hobbies do they have?
Learning more about your audience will help you appeal to their interests. Once you understand your audience, you can develop a marketing strategy to spark their interest. A strong marketing strategy will help you boost sales and retain long-term customers.
It can also help to determine how COVID-19 is affecting sales. How are your customers shopping on Amazon? What trends could help benefit your business plan?
Know Your Niche
There are millions of products you can choose to sell online. When establishing your Amazon FBA business, don’t split your focus. Instead, try to build your business around a niche in the marketplace.
Choosing a niche will help you create a more focused marketing plan. It will also help you reach a smaller target audience. Dedicating your time to a smaller target audience will make it easier for you to appeal to customers who need your product.
You can also use personalized messaging to connect with these consumers.
Meanwhile, having a niche will help you stand out from the hundreds of competitors selling similar products.
First, make sure the niche product you choose is profitable. You might need to research the latest market trends for your niche. You can use tools such as Google Trends to determine how often people search for the product you’re considering.
If the search volume is low, consider choosing a different product.
Don’t forget to choose a product you’re interested in. Otherwise, you might not feel passionate about selling through Amazon or helping those customers.
Once you decide on a product, learn as much as you can about it. Don’t forget to look at competitors for your niche.
Which consumers are already using that product? What unique value can you offer consumers that your competitors can’t? Highlight that value proposition in your marketing to stand out from the crowd!
Find Suppliers
Now that you have a product, you can start selling it! First, you’ll need to find an online product supplier. Head over to one of the B2B platforms to find a supplier who has your product.
You might need to compare a few different options to find a supplier you want to work with. Once you have a few options, contact each one. Ask for a sample of the product to compare quality and costs.
How much is the minimum and maximum for each order? Is the price within your budget?
Once you find your supplier, you can place your first order!
Place Your Order
You don’t have to place a giant order the first time. Instead, place a smaller order and give yourself the chance to test the market.
Your first few orders give you chances to gather feedback. You can add a note with these purchases to encourage shoppers to share their thoughts. Then, use their comments to make improvements to your business.
Ask people to post their reviews, too. Five-star reviews will show potential customers you have a high-quality product.
Take the time to manage your inventory regularly. If you don’t track your sales, you could run out of stock sooner than expected.
Build A Buzz
For your shop to succeed, you need to get people to want to shop with your store. The best way to do this is to market yourself online, using various SEO and marketing techniques. One great way to get interest is to run discounts and deals, as this adds extra value and builds excitement and hype that can get people to talk about your store.
Something that you must do is market alongside holidays, especially Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Black Friday. Black Friday is especially important for businesses to earmark, as this is where the appetite for online goods swells, so learning about black Friday marketing ideas can help you get the edge during this competitive period.
When you build a buzz and get your store known, you can expect a steady stream of revenue.
Register Your Account
Before you start selling, you’ll need to register your Amazon FBA business.
You can become an individual seller or pro seller. Once you’re set-up, create your product listings.
About 23% of consumers look to Amazon for inspiration. To inspire them to shop, make sure your product images are high-quality.
Make Adjustments
As you gather feedback from your customers, make sure to adjust your selling strategy accordingly. Using this selling on Amazon for dummies guide is only the first start. Improving your marketing strategy and adding new products to your store over time will help you expand your business.
You can also use this guide to learn how to win on Amazon!
Selling on Amazon for Dummies: The Top Tips for Sweet Success
Remember, this article to selling on Amazon for dummies is only the beginning. These tips can set you on the path to success. Then, keep expanding your business plan to generate more sales and regular customers!
Looking for more ways to establish your new business? Explore our latest guides for entrepreneurs today!
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The chances are that in the last few months, thanks to the pandemic, you’ve probably heard a whole lot about virtual businesses. You may have heard how these kinds of non-physical businesses have helped the people behind them to survive the first wave of the pandemic, and offer a fantastic business opportunity. You may even be thinking about starting a remote business of your own, and taking a leap of faith into an industry that you’ve been wanting to join for a while.
You might be excited at the prospect of launching a virtual business, but that doesn’t mean that you can simply dive straight in and launch one instantly. You need to be smart about this – the fact is that launching a business means taking the time to really think the idea and concepts through. The fact is that before you dive in and start setting up a business, you need to take the time to understand what’s involved in running a business virtually and what it takes to see success.
What is a virtual business in its entirety? Simply put, it’s a business that is run without a dedicated physical office space – usually, the business is run from home or from a co-working space. Remote businesses are always a popular option as they offer far lower overheads than physical businesses and thus, are a great way for small businesses to begin trading.
That being said, it’s important to understand that just because the cost of launching a virtual business is lower, that doesn’t mean that it’s as simple as you might think. The fact is that there’s a lot that you need to consider when it comes to starting any business, however a virtual one comes with a lot of ins and outs that you need to think about.
Wondering what these are? Have a read of the tips and advice below, and implement them in how you approach your virtual business.
Organise your budget
There’s a common misconception that when it comes to launching a virtual venture that you don’t need a budget. However, this isn’t true – in order to launch a business, you need to have a carefully throughout budget in place. Even if you’re thinking of running the business entirely from home – instead of from a co-working space – you will need a budget to work with. The fact is that there are certain costs that every business needs to cover.
For instance, you will need a high spec computer or laptop or both. You will need to pay for a website domain and the design – which we will discuss in more detail below. You will need to think about insurance costs. You will need to cover the cost of communication tools that you – and your team members, if you have any – will need to use. The cost of launching a virtual business will be lower than launching a physical one but it still comes with costs and requires a budget, and it’s important to remember that.
Get your website designed
If you’re someone who is confident on their computer, then you may feel like you want to try and design your own website to cut costs and reduce overheads. However, what it’s important to bear in mind here is that for a virtual business, the website is, in essence, the business – it’s the first place the potential customers will go and it will act as your business’s virtual HQ. So you need to really consider whether you’re in the right position to create your own website or whether you should outsource the task.
Should you decide to hire an expert to create your website for you, make sure that you take the time beforehand to consider what you want your website to be like. Spend some time looking at competitor sites and list the pros and cons that each one offers, and consider what you could do to enhance your website and its design further.
Ensure that you have adequate support IT place
One mistake that you don’t want to make when it comes to launching your virtual business, it’s failing to have adequate IT support in place from the get-go. You might know a little about IT but the fact is that when you’re running a business you need to make sure that you have professional help on hand as and when you need it.
The thing is, you cannot afford for your website or software to go down for long periods of time, because downtime like this can be seriously detrimental to your business’s success. That’s why investing in IT support through a well-known and experienced company is so important, ensuring that whatever happens, you have all of the help and support that you need and can get any issues fixed in a fast and efficient way.
Focus on marketing
It’s also vital that you take marketing seriously regarding your business. A lot of new business owners make the mistake of thinking that marketing isn’t required for their business’s success, however the fact is that this couldn’t be further from the truth. If no one knows about your business, how can it be a success?
If you want to give your new venture the very best chance of achieving success, it’s vital that you make marketing a priority from the get-go. Set aside a monthly marketing budget, outsource the task to an expert, and put an overarching marketing strategy in place that’s designed to drive traffic to your website and help to convert leads. Make sure that you source a marketer that knows what they’re doing and has the ability to create huge growth for your business’s audience.
The fact is that launching a virtual business is easier than launching a physical one in many ways, as there’s a lot less that you need to do. However, that being said, making a success out of a virtual business can be far harder than making a success out of a traditional business.
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Amazon is the world’s ‘all-you-can eat’ buffet of products and any seller or marketer’s throne for kingdom-hood. With millions of transactions every day, an Amazon listing is ‘your voice’ to the world. A powerful product listing copy that converts is crucial to being an A-List Seller. And to put a halt to your depleting sales numbers.
In the world of online business, particularly Ecommerce and a large online platform like Amazon, your product listing page is highly dependent on a calculated and well implemented Amazon Product Keyword Strategy.
Below we will look at 4 of these crucial strategies.
1. Know Your Competition’s Market
Knowledge is power! Being aware of the “market landscape” and knowing who your competitors are and what they are offering, is a powerful weapon!
Knowing your competitors inside out can in turn help you create your products, services and marketing in a way that is stronger and far more powerful than what’s out there currently.
Constantly keeping an eye on your competition will provide you a wealth of knowledge and an ocean of information that gives you an effective ‘vantage point’ to make your products or services more ‘appealing’ and visible to the same audience that you and your competition are competing for.
You’ll be able to tailor your Keyword Strategy according to what your competitors are doing and not doing.
Now, let’s come to the tactics. What should you know about your competitors? Here are a few areas you can analyze and stay abreast with:
The back end, front end or merchant keyword strategies your competition is employing for their product launches and campaigns
The products or services they provide and how they market them to customers
Their brand and design values
Whether they innovate – business methods as well as products
2. Research Relevant Keywords
Keyword research is an important part of your Amazon product launch. Investing the time to properly assess the most important keywords in your niche can maximize your revenue potential. It can also position your product to be the highest asked item for valuable search queries.
But it’s a science and an art!
Have you have seen Amazon product listings with the super-long, keyword-stuffed, one-size-fits-all, uber-optimized product title, you may wonder what human would read such a title and be convinced to purchase the product. This is a valid question. Humans don’t naturally like long sentences.
Sellers who know this use these long titles so that their product shows up in more searched. They’ve done keyword research to identify the exact search terms they want to target. By incorporating variations into their title, description, bullet points, FAQs, and even images, they are improving their chances of being seen by potential customers.
Here are 3 ways you can do solid Keyword Research for your next product launch on Amazon:
Google Keyword Planner
Google’s Keyword Planner is a free tool that shows you estimated search volumes for any word or phrase. It can also help you find other related phrases.
Keyword Scout
While Keyword Planner and Site Explorer are great, simplistic methods for finding keywords, Keyword Scout is also effective.
It is an Amazon keyword tool that uses real Amazon PPC data to discover powerful keyword opportunities.
Hiring an Ecommerce Specialist
This 3rd approach in Keyword Research is the most rewarding, hassle-free, cost-effective, time-freeing and results oriented. Hiring a qualified Ecommerce Specialist frees you from the time, hassle and effort of Keyword Research, while giving you an edge over your competitors with a solid, skilled, experienced and expert Ecommerce Specialist that will do all the work for you.
3. Prioritize the top Keywords
Give strong priority to the keywords with the highest most relevance and potent search potential, based on all your research. Make sure these keywords are placed first in the product listing’s Title, as well sprinkled nicely throughout each of the 5 bullet point descriptions.
This will result in your product ranking higher on Amazon and on Google while being algorithm friendly. More powerful and prioritize keywords automatically mean more brand visibility and higher product sales.
4. Adding Keywords in Title
Just as with Google title tags are very important, but instead of 60 characters you get 195 with Amazon. Also, unlike Google, the longer and more detailed the title, the better. With Amazon it doesn’t have to be compelling or grab a viewer’s attention; it just must give off enough information for someone to make a purchasing decision.
For this reason, using all the 195-character limit is encouraged. If you look around Amazon, you’ll notice that the products with long, keyword-rich titles outrank those that are simple and clean. Below is an example that shows just that:
Now, it can be hard to get used to this after coming from optimization for Google, but it’s an important step. According to an Amazon help page, you should follow a formula to help create your titles.
For example, the style for many products may be: Brand + Model Number + Model Name + Product Type, Color
One example of using this formula for a title would be: KitchenAid KSM150PSER Artisan 5-Quart Mixer, Empire Red
Again, it’s not the prettiest title and it’s very different than something you would use on Google, but this is how it works on Amazon!
You only must have your keyword appear once in your title (that’s right, keywords in your description are less important), so again, that’s why you see some of the companies above using several different keywords all in one title.
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