Selling on Amazon: Tips to Maximize Your Sales

 Amazon is the world’s largest internet retailer. It’s no doubt then that if you have an ecommerce store, you’re considering selling on Amazon.There is no marketplace which is better than Amazon. They’ve dwarfed their competitors in terms of total sales volumes. However, like all popular online platforms, Amazon too is crowded. To make yourself visible among the large number of sellers (often selling the same product), it is important to understand how Amazon works.Understanding what does and doesn’t work on Amazon will give you the tips and techniques needed to get you the necessary visibility, and of course, sales.

1. Enroll for Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA) Program

Fulfilled by Amazon is a program in which Amazon stocks the products that you want to sell and then ships them to the customer when they order.Just to make it clear from the off – the Amazon FBA Fees are higher than that in the merchant fulfilled option. But, FBA includes the extra plus of Amazon fully handling returns and refunds, together with order associated communications and client services.  Additionally, packaging price is covered under the charges.

This mainly has been since clients trust Amazon to deliver the goods on time.  Amazon has spent decades building trust with their clients, getting famous for great price and quality products which are delivered fast.  FBA enables you to find a part of that brand picture. While you might still be unsure about those extra fees, do consider that these higher fees could be offset by a greater sales volume.

The size and quantity of goods which you market can influence the prices you pay for storage of your merchandise.  That is why for smaller products which have a higher conversion rate, FBA may be a no-brainer, but for bulky products which could frequently sit in a warehouse for weeks at a time, it might not be the ideal strategy.

2. Win the ‘Buy Box’

The buy box on Amazon’s product detail page is the box where the purchase process is started by the customer when he adds that product to the shopping basket.

If multiple sellers have the same product, they’re eligible to compete in the Buy Box. Having the lowest price isn’t going to win it for you however, here are some of the factors that go towards winning the box:

• Competitively priced (including the delivery costs too!)
• Availability of the product – having a low inventory will not cut it
• Multiple Shipping Options
• Seller Performance Metrics – including customer feedback and chargebacks
• Delivery Experience – how long will it take to deliver, the lead-time-to-ship and whether you’re participating in FBA
• Your time and experience on the Amazon selling platform

There are repricing tools available in the market which automatically optimize your product’s price by checking the levels at which your competitors are pricing their products.

3. Write Awesome Product Descriptions

When a likely customer lands on your product’s page, you need to make sure that all of your product’s important features are listed in a well-crafted and appealing manner. There are many aspects that go into writing truly awesome product descriptions, but key things that I would remember are:

• How does this product help your customer?
• Is it clear what your product is?
• Is your description true to your brand voice?

4. Prompt Customer Communications

Promptly answering customer requests and queries is an important aspect of every business, not just when selling on Amazon.

If it comes to customer support, Amazon excel, which explains the reason they're still top customer satisfaction polls.  They are famous for being a really customer-focused company, which explains why they require the work of consumer support fairly badly.Amazon has found that those with responses within those 24 hours get 50% less negative feedback, so you can see why they’re encouraging you to provide quick responses.

Additionally, there are some hints that a very low contact reaction time may also cause the reduction of selling privileges, potential suspension and possibly influence your chances at winning the purchase box.To facilitate this procedure, Amazon does supply the facility to forward client questions for your email account.  This is a useful feature which lets you communicate with your clients even if you're not on Amazon.

5. Handle Customer Reviews like a Professional

Always remember that what your customers think of your product will decide its future. If no one likes it, you ain’t going to sell it! The quicker you resolve issues that your customer may have faced with your product, the less likely they will be to give negative feedback.

When you're assured of your product's quality, do go right ahead and solicit testimonials.  And most importantly, do react immediately to reports that are negative.  Everyone loves a happy end, and appropriate treatment of negative reviews in future and current deliveries may fine tune your deliveries, and also make sure you get far better reviews ahead.  This can then have a positive effect on your earnings and also gain your brand image.

6. Advertise Your Product on Amazon

Whether to get a brand new product, or an present product sales drive, Amazon Sponsored Products is only the perfect support.  Amazon Sponsored Products are Amazon's response to Google Adwords because of their stage and is among the strongest tools for raising discoverability.

Using this tool can work particularly well for new products, offers and seasonal promotions, and there a bunch of other  Amazon marketing services available on Amazon too.

Moving farther, using Sponsored Products may have a positive impact (although not direct) in your organic rank from the search results.  Your search rank on Amazon is influenced by the amount of conversions you've got, which means if your earnings growth through Sponsored Products, you can see higher positions.

7.Offer Discounts on Your Products

Giving away reduction originally and getting a opportunity to include on the Amazon homepage beneath New & Noteworthy and Hot Deals classes, can force you to direct the sales from the product class where you're selling.A side benefit of more views of your product details page, is that customers might also take a look at your related products which are displayed on the page. This can lead to additional sales.

8. SEO is Not Just for Google

Google’s not the only search engine out there. In fact Google’s Executive Chairman, Eric Schmidt, considers Amazon their biggest search competitor.When you think about it, it makes sense – outside of Google and all the other usual suspects, Amazon is essentially a huge search engine for products.

Using targeted key words in the item's name, which includes a limit of 200 characters, can enhance the search engine optimization positions for Amazon's search engine optimization.  Amazon recommends using key words that highlight manufacturer, description, color, size, content, product lineup and quantity/size from the item name field for the item to appear higher in search results.  We talked to specialist Nathan Grimm on what you want to think about when optimizing the research existence of your Amazon products.

9. Optimize Your Product Images

Checking off the following points to make sure your images are at their best:

• 4 to 5 high quality photos per product
• Possible image formats: TIFF, JPEG, GIF, or PNG
• Filename of images must include the product identifier, followed by the image’s file extension. (Example: B00O5HRY5S.png)
• Images cannot contain watermarks, and should be free of text
• Plain white background – even if the product has a shadow (either real or added with editing software) over a white background
• Product should take up 80% of image, and should always be the main focus
• Include pictures of your product out of the manufacturer’s box, surpassing the experience customers would have if they went to a brick and mortar store to shop for the product
• Recommended size 1000 x 1000 pixels for sufficient detail—the zoom feature is enabled on images this size or larger. Amazon claims that the zoom feature enhances sales, and amazon may even suppress products that do not have zoom-enabled images.

10. Efficient Inventory Management

We’ve briefly covered this already when discussing the buy box, but sales ranks in Amazon are based on the quantity of the sale and its recency.If a product’s inventory runs out, then the product starts falling in the search rankings which in turn drastically affects the sales of the product. The key is to not run out of inventory otherwise the sales rank of the product is bound to drop.

Selling on Amazon can be a lucrative business for both new and experienced sellers. By following these 10 tips, you can maximise your sales and grow your business.