Amazon Seller Support Blog (Amazon.co.uk)

Fulfilment by Amazon Tips and Tricks

Self-Service Removal

An efficient way to remove products from Amazon’s FC and avoid higher storage fees in the last quarter of the year.

You can use our self-service removals feature to have your unsellable and slow-moving inventory returned to you and avoid higher storage fees from October through December 2009. Simply use the new Create Removal Order tool in your seller account. From the Inventory Amazon Fulfils pages, you can select the items you want returned and choose “Create Removal Order” from the Apply to # Selected Item(s) pull-down menu. For more information, go to FBA Help 6.4 Create Removal Orders. Refer to the UK Fulfilment Fees for removal pricing. Removals will be charged for Pick & Pack only.

Managing Inventory

Keep a close eye on your FBA inventory in Q4 and optimize your sales
Monitoring your inventory levels, selling faster, and avoiding unnecessary aging of items make sound business sense. These are particularly important in the fourth quarter when items you keep in the fulfilment centre are ones you ideally want to sell and replenish quickly in the peak holiday season to maximize your annual turnover. There are two tools available in your FBA seller account that will enable you to increase visibility and control over your inventory and enable you to do just this.

New Inventory Age Report: This report lists your inventory by age in incremental 30-day groups to enable you to identify how quickly your items are selling. Improved visibility can help you determine appropriate steps for managing older inventory, such as adjusting the sales price, creating promotions, or even removing the items from storage to make room for the ones that will bring you the greatest return. You can access the report in your seller account under Reports > Fulfilment. The report can be viewed online or downloaded in CSV format. For more information on the Inventory Age Report go to FBA Help 8.3 FBA Report Details > Inventory Age.

Replenishment Alerts: Use replenishment alerts in your FBA seller account to quickly identify low inventory during peak periods, so you can send more and optimize your sales at the busiest time of the year.

Optimize your Sales at year end with help from Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA)

The key to Amazon’s continued success is its focus on the customer experience. This core principle defines how we do business, and we are pleased to be able to support our merchants in providing the same high-quality experience to our customers through Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA).

The concept of FBA is simple: Amazon stores your inventory at an Amazon fulfilment centre, then picks, packs and delivers for you upon receipt of a customer order for your products.

By sending your fast selling products to an Amazon fulfilment centre, you and our customers will enjoy these benefits:
• Amazon Prime and free Super Saver Delivery. FBA offers are also ranked on product detail pages assuming no cost for shipping, potentially increasing the visibility of your offer to customers.
• Amazon’s 24/7 customer service, which scales at year end. Amazon will also handle your returns.
• Amazon gift-wrap service, including personalised gift messages.
• Amazon delivery promise and fast-track shipping options. This means that we will advertise to customers the latest time they can place an order for overnight delivery—an important factor when customers are comparison shopping or want to ensure an order will arrive in time for Christmas.
• Amazon Christmas delivery deadlines, which allow customers to order many products right up to 23rd December and still have items delivered for Christmas.

Additionally, replenishment alerts in your FBA Seller Account help you ensure that you don’t run out of FBA inventory during peak periods.
With our Multi-Channel Fulfilment programme you can now submit requests to Amazon to fulfil orders that originate anywhere other than on Amazon.co.uk. These orders are fulfilled directly from your inventory in Amazon’s fulfilment centre with an option for standard or express delivery, giving you flexibility to decide what makes best business sense when fulfilling certain orders.

You can take advantage of our Q4 rebate programme and save up to £ 1500 when you sign up for Fulfillment by Amazon.

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.