Amazon Seller Support Blog (Amazon.co.uk)

Best Practices for Listing on Amazon – The Purge and Replace Option

Understanding Purge and Replace
When you upload a product feed you can use the ‘Purge and Replace’ flag to replace your current inventory with the inventory in the feed. This means that all your listings which are not in the feed will be removed from Amazon. If you upload an empty feed with the ‘Purge and Replace’ option, you will delete all your listings from your Seller Account.

Avoid using the Purge and Replace Option
In general, it is not recommended to use the Purge and Replace option to manage your inventory.  You may currently be using it to perform the following tasks:

Disable out of stock offers
If you have a large inventory, you may feel tempted to upload regularly an inventory feed containing only the products in stock with the purge and replace option. This process to disable out of stock offers is not recommended, since it is error-prone and the processing time of a feed with the purge and replace option can take up to several hours. If you run out of stock on some items, please use the Price and Quantity update feed to set the stock levels to 0. This is a more efficient process which also saves you the additional effort of re-listing your products later.

Synchronize your Product Database with your Amazon Seller Account
You can use the purge and replace option to keep your products sold on Amazon synchronized with your own product database. However, this is not recommended. If you have an error in your feed or you upload the wrong feed, you may potentially erase your entire inventory on Amazon. This would entail a loss in sales until you have re-listed your products.

We recommend that you explicitly delete products from your Seller Account, and only if you know that you are never going to sell it again. If you are just temporarily out of stock, please do not delete the product but set the quantity to 0.

When to use the Purge and Replace option
There are some good cases in which you can use the purge and replace option.

Delete your entire Inventory to start from scratch
If for some reason you want to purge your entire inventory to start from scratch, you can upload an empty feed with just the headers using the purge and replace option. This will remove all your listings with the exception of those you created manually using the web interface. The latter have to be manually deleted.

Use different SKUs to reference your products
If you decide to change your SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) naming convention to reference your products, you can use the purge and replace option UNLESS

1. There is overlap between your old and new set of SKUs, where any new SKU references a different product than the old one.
2. You are using the ‘Fulfillment by Amazon’ (FBA) program. It is not possible to use a different SKU for a product fulfilled by Amazon. If you are in this case, you can create new SKUs for all your products not fulfilled by Amazon and then delete all old SKUs.

Alex.

Stay on target - monitor your Customer Metrics closely

Amazon.co.uk has established a set of performance targets for sellers to follow so that buyers can shop confidently, with a sense of safety and security about their third-party transactions.

 

• Your Customer Metrics indicate how you are doing with respect to these performance targets. During the festive season, it’s important that you monitor the Customer Metrics Scorecard frequently so you can spot and resolve operational problems promptly. Excessive order defect rates (negative feedback, A-to-z Guarantee claims and chargebacks) can cause account suspensions and even account closures.
•  Check your feedback and A-to-z Guarantee claim pages daily, and proactively resolve any issues.

 

Learn more about Customer Metrics, improving feedback ratings and resolving A-to-z Guarantee claims.

The Basics of Selling on Amazon.co.uk

Did you know that Seller Central has a wide range of reports that show you your most-browsed and purchased items in addition to the functionality to create multiple promotions. However, all of this is irrelevant if you do not get the basics right first.

There are three key areas you should consider before doing anything else.
1. The quality of your product detail pages.
2. Your store settings.
3. The overall customer experience you provide.

Let us begin with your product detail pages. Customers are searching for products not sellers, therefore it is essential that you make the right impression on your product page otherwise you will not keep the customer’s attention. Are your images on a clear white background and is the title in the correct format? If yes, you should now set up keywords/search terms for your products. It is important that you also browse node your product correctly (for example don’t just put your MP3 player into Electronics, choose the browse node for Portable Audio Devices). This is vital for two reasons, a) your search terms will not work if the product is not browse noded. b) Customers use the browse-tree guide to view the range of products available. You should also ensure that the description and/or bullet points are complete to the point that the customer can find out everything they want about the product without having to go elsewhere. Additional images also help – did you know that Amazon allow you to provide 9 images per product? Now your detail page is built you should ensure that you are competitively priced (the Low Price Indicator in Seller Central allows you to compare your prices against other sellers. However, please note that this doesn’t include shipping charges).

Now you can look at your Store settings. You should review your Shipping Charges – you can charge for shipping according to weight, number of items or have price banded shipping. Have you considered free shipping to bring you in line with Amazon? Better still you can look at our FBA program that gives sellers access to Amazon’s vast fulfilment network at very competitive prices. This can be a particular advantage when you first start selling on Amazon and do not have the benefit of having built up your feedback profile. Finally adding your company logo can help your listing to stand out on the Offer Listing Page.

The final and most important thing you need to consider in order to become a successful seller on Amazon long-term is the overall experience you provide to customers. First of all how quickly can you ship? Customers expect everything to be in stock and you need to ensure that you can ship as soon as possible. Are you able to offer a next day delivery shipping option as well as standard shipping? If you do all this you are helping to ensure you are making the right first impression on the customer. However, as with any sales channel be it online or offline, the after sales service you provide is vital. Do you have a customer services email address and how quickly do you respond? Ideally you should ensure that there are no outstanding queries left in this inbox at the end of the working day. It is also important that you handle customer refunds as speedily and efficiently as you would a new order as this can help to turn an unhappy customer in to one who would return to shop with you again.

Video Tutorial - Shipping Options Basics

Learn the basics of the shipping service and the options to set your shipping regions.

This tutorial will teach you how to: 

• Choose how the shipping cost will be calculated.
• Decide where to ship the orders to.
• Decide what service levels will be offered for the domestic shipping region.