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Quick Insights Into Inventory Management for Amazon

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Are you an Amazon seller? If yes, these are some of the most popular marketing factors that you probably gave importance to in order to ensure the growth and success of your business – Amazon Rankings – Product listing Optimization – Ad Campaigns.   Every Amazon Seller wants their products to be ranked on the top of the Amazon search results page to increase the product’s visibility and boost sales. While many factors do help achieve this higher rank, inventory management is one of the more important factors that play a crucial role in the success of your business. Effective implementation of inventory management helps rank your products at the top of all other search results and helps raise your revenue. What is Inventory Management and Why is It Important for Amazon Sellers? Inventory management is all about monitoring the product’s weight, size, quantity, and supply, and keeping track of the stocked goods from time to time based on the demand. It’s not just stocking and tracking the goods but building an efficient strategy focused on customer satisfaction and optimum level of inventory that helps in the growth of your business. Maintain the optimum level of inventory – Save the Costs Ensure that your inventory is not too high or too low. Too high an inventory may result in dead or spoiled stock and unnecessary costs on the rent of occupied space. Too low an inventory may result in late delivery to the customer which may lead to bad reviews affecting your sales. Inventory Management – Customer Satisfaction Today, customer expectations are soaring. You can build the trust of customers with the timely delivery of your products. Amazon users have become accustomed to a one or two-day delivery and to meet their expectations, you need to make sure that the products are ready for shipment and reach the customers on time. Timely deliveries also lead to positive feedback and increased ratings of sellers, boosting sales in the bargain.  Advantages of Inventory Management Improves Amazon Search Rank Increase Customer Satisfaction Boost sales Saves money How Inventory Management impacts Amazon’s Search Rank? Amazon’s algorithm relies on several factors to rank a product listing on the search results page. Two important factors related to inventory management that affect Amazon’s Search Rank are: Product Availability Typically, if your products are out of stock for a long time, they do not show up in the Amazon Search Results. Users do not wait for your products if they are out of stock. They just go to other players in the market, unless of course, your product is exceptionally unique and better.  Similarly, if your products are frequently found out of stock, your listing likely gets knocked down in the Amazon rankings, even when your products are available. Positive customer experience is necessary to avoid losing sales, your product’s organic ranking, and your Ads visibility. Reviews and Ratings Every review on your product, whether positive or negative, counts in a product’s ranking. Product availability has a direct impact on reviews and rankings. Continuous feedback on a product from customers is vital for an Amazon seller, as it boosts search results. Moreover, fresh reviews that specify the benefits of the products attract more customers and increase conversion rates.  No inventory implies no new product reviews from the buyers which in turn implies no sales, thus directly affecting the product’s visibility in the Amazon search results. How to effectively manage Inventory? Effective inventory management is the key to ensuring the smooth running of your business. Keeping track of stock is no easy task. You need to be mindful of inventory management, as it can make or break your business. Here are 6 tips for effective inventory management Plan and Prioritize Prioritize your inventory based on the demand for the products. This helps you understand what products need to be ordered or manufactured more frequently to fulfil customers’ needs and wants.  Analytics can help you plan your business and inventory more efficiently. You can plan for seasonal sales fluctuations, forecast the demand for products, identify trends, monitor costs, estimate profits, and concentrate on shipments and products that require immediate attention. Avoid Dead and Spoiled Stock Deadstock is the inventory that doesn’t get sold and has been stored in the warehouse for an extended period. Spoiled stock is the stock that may have reached the expiry date or defective products that do not meet the intended specifications of the customers. A huge quantity of either dead or spoiled stock harms your business in more ways than one. Invades valuable warehouse space which could have been used to store high-demand and revenue-generating products. Drop in the sales of a product. Unnecessary wastage of money on storage and maintenance of products that are not profitable anymore. Therefore, maintaining a steady level of inventory on Amazon is a crucial piece of a business’s profitability. Keep an eye on your inventory turnover rate Inventory turnover is the number of products you sell in a given period. How fast the inventory sold is the Inventory Turnover rate. A high inventory turnover rate indicates strong sales which suggests you promptly replenish the products of high demand and keep track of the stock. Inventory turnover rate is important to estimate the amount of stock you need to order so as to maintain optimum stock levels. Use Inventory Management Software It’s a common fact that most Amazon sellers to date, use documents or spreadsheets to keep track of their inventory. Though this could work for small businesses with small inventories, it is time-consuming with a high margin of error and inefficient in the long run. Inventory management software automates different aspects of inventory management with more accuracy and efficiency. It allows you to manage shipments and returns and interact with customers easier than ever. It also helps keep track of inventory levels in real-time so you can map trends to determine required inventory levels for your products over different periods, which is key to making sound purchasing decisions. Make

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Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) – The Metrics Every Amazon Seller Should Know

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Are you successful as an Amazon Seller? Did your sales rise? Have you accomplished your objectives and goals? These are questions you might face that make you question yourself. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) help answer all these questions. What are KPIs? Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are the quantifiable measures that help you track and assess the performance progress of your business. Simply put, they are just like a progress report that helps you identify the pressure points of your business and gives useful insights to analyze best practices and effective strategies to foster your business growth. KPIs provide an actionable plan to achieve your overall business objectives and goals like driving customer traffic to your Amazon product listing page, improving the ranking of your products, and boosting your sales. Why Should You Track the Performance of Your Business? Imagine you have put a lot of effort to establish your store on Amazon and spent a lot on PPC campaigns to market your products. If you are unable to accomplish your targets, what’s the use of putting in a lot of time, effort, and money? You might face a situation when all things are going well, but you end up losing the game. For example, you may be happy with a greater number of shoppers visiting your Amazon product listing page, but if they don’t buy your product, all your efforts are in vain. Tracking essential KPIs helps you analyze the progress of your business strategies in every aspect like customer service, sales, ratings, reviews, repeat purchase rate, shopping cart abandonment rate, and conversion rate. This can help you decide on the right path to take to accomplish your targets and goals. What Makes an Effective KPI? There are many KPIs that help Amazon sellers improve productivity and lower process costs. But it takes time and effort to identify the essential KPIs for your store, gather data, and review the results. With appropriate metrics in place, you can recognize the root cause of the challenges you might face.  Here are the four characteristics that help you choose the right KPI:     Simple and easy to understand     Accurate     Access to real-time results     Actionable 5 Simple and Essential KPIs to Track Your Amazon Store’s Progress Monitoring the progress of an e-commerce store is essential for the growth and success of Amazon sellers. But it is also important that you identify the right KPIs that measure your business growth. Here are five simple and essential KPIs that help Amazon sellers measure the progress of their business, evaluate what strategy works and what doesn’t, and constantly refine, and develop their marketing approach. Product Ratings and Reviews Have you ever bought a Mac or an iPhone without viewing its ratings and reviews? You wouldn’t. Every shopper before purchasing a product inquires about the quality of the product because customers trust each other more than they trust brands. In today’s digital world, as 80% of shoppers opt to purchase online, it’s quite common for an Amazon shopper to compare the ratings and reviews of a product before purchasing it. This makes product ratings and reviews, the most important KPI for Amazon sellers to build the brand and increase sales. Regular auditing of your product’s ratings and reviews helps you to know what your potential customers are thinking about your product’s quality, what are their needs and other valuable information, which you could use to focus on increasing customer satisfaction. Generally, products with no reviews give shoppers a perception that they are the first to buy a product and may not show much interest to purchase. Also, terrible reviews and fewer ratings badly impact your product’s organic rankings and ultimately affect your sales. Total Pageviews Pageviews are the number of visits to your Amazon Product listing page. The total number of page visits gives the Amazon algorithm an idea about the popularity and demand of your product among shoppers. It is a simple and effective metric that demonstrates how efficient your current organic and paid marketing campaigns are to lead customers to your Amazon product detail page. A higher number of page visits means more traffic to your product listing page on Amazon which indicates good SEO practices. In general, more clicks to view your listing means more conversions. More conversions directly translate to higher search and product rankings. More visits but limited conversions to sales probably indicate a problem with your product listing that needs to be focused on. Conversion Rate Not all visitors to your product listing page buy your product. They may click on your Ad to view your product or just add it to the shopping cart.  The conversion rate is the percentage of visitors that buy your products in a specific period. It measures the effectiveness of your business strategy in converting a potential visitor to a buying customer.  Monitoring the conversion rate in every stage of the marketing and selling process allows you to:  Understand how your sales funnel is performing  Identify multiple pressure points  Evaluate which marketing strategies are giving the greatest return on investment (ROI). Many tools like Google Analytics help you to know the conversion rate of your website. Amazon has tools, especially for PPC, which you can use to get your conversion rate report.  The end goal of any marketing strategy is to increase revenue. Conversion rate is one of the important metrics you cannot lose sight of to achieve the estimated revenue. Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate Many visitors add your products to the shopping cart but exit the shopping cart without completing the purchase. This might be due to reasons such as unexpected shipping costs, not being able to find a coupon code, and the non-availability of express shipping. The shopping cart abandonment rate is when a prospective customer begins a check-out process for an online order but drops out of the process before the transaction is completed. It can be calculated by dividing the total number of completed

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How to Process Purchase Order (PO) in Vendor Central

Leave a Comment / Amazon, Amazon Tools, Amazon VA, Technology, vendor central /

A purchase order is an official document that a buyer offers a seller in which the buyer commits to pay a nominal fee for specific products that need to be delivered. On Amazon vendor central, a purchase order is identified using a unique number that pertains to the number of items, SKU, and other product details. On vendor central, PO or purchase orders are sent from Amazon to a vendor, usually when there is a peak in demand for a particular product. Orders: Here, vendors provide information regarding the shipment and have to click on the “receive purchases orders” tab on vendor central. Items: Here, vendors need the product information on the product and can upload images, edit pricing, and other such details. Merchandising: Here, vendors can access features like Amazon Vine and A+ Premium content. Vendors can also market their product listings. Payment: Here, vendors need to keep track of invoices and remittances. Processing the Purchase Order Form An Amazon vendor can either be a manufacturer or a supplier who delivers products to Amazon directly. Amazon vendors can also be third-party merchants wherein they can deliver products to Amazon’s warehouses on behalf of the supplier. Amazon vendors won’t receive purchase orders immediately after setting up a product especially since the ordering process is automated by Amazon. Before deciding whether to order a product or not, Amazon’s system will look at the sales history as well as the current market demand for that specific product. If the sales performance is low, PO will be minimum and once this increases or becomes a high-demand product, the purchase orders will grow larger subsequently. Sometimes there might be a situation where a vendor may not possess enough stock to fulfil a purchase order so in such a case there are two options: either you can cancel the PO or you can place it on backorder till your product supply is fulfilled. In order to make sure you don’t receive a heavy PO, while you have limited or no stock, always remember to mark those items temporarily or permanently unavailable. As a vendor, you cannot issue too many backorders since there’s a certain percentage set by Amazon, and in case you do this, you’ll be issued a chargeback for the non-delivery of items. Amazon vendor central relies heavily on EDI for its purchase order, advance shipping notice (ASN), and other shipping & packaging data for appropriate data filing. Is It Important? EDI (electronic data interchange) is a technical exchange of data between the vendor and Amazon that is electronically transfigured, and it relates to processing the purchase orders and invoices one receives on vendor central. EDI documents consist of the following documents: Purchase Order, PO Confirmation Receipt, Advance Ship Notice, Invoice and 128 Label. You can either hire Amazon Human resources to manage your purchase orders on vendor central, or you can integrate EDI using reliable network services. Whether you’re a first/ second or third-party seller, it is important to streamline certain processes for quick shipment & delivery to Amazon fulfilment centres. Your business should include the ability to transmit or receive necessary EDI-compliant documents from Amazon vendor central. Amazon Chargebacks for Vendor Central For Vendor central customers, Amazon places chargebacks on items that have not been processed properly, once the POD is generated. It is important you understand how chargeback works, to avoid loss of time and money, especially once the PO is received. Each Amazon chargeback is unique and there are two categories for this: Shipping and Packaging Issue of Purchase Order Purchase order issue is one of the most common Amazon chargebacks, which involves the failure to confirm PO forms in time, shipping extra/ lesser units, or violating Amazon guidelines by delaying the shipment. Issue of Receiving If the designated shipments that arrive at Amazon’s fulfilment centres violate certain guidelines, such as missing labels or barcode issues, it is an issue of receiving the shipment, and a chargeback is issued. Issue of Packaging If the items are not properly packaged, especially items that are delicate, or are made of glass or any other breakable material, then this calls for Amazon chargeback. Issue of Advanced Ship Notice (ASN) Vendors are supposed to send the ASN correctly from Vendor Central or through EDI while shipping items to Amazon’s fulfilment centre. If there is any error with the ASN, it can incur an Amazon chargeback. Issue of Transportation If there is any failure in setting up routing requests for the products, or any specified shipping and delivery fee policies occur, then it can also result in an Amazon chargeback, especially if the vendor hasn’t paid additional fees for the delivery. PO Processing On vendor central, the process of making the PO and generating an order confirmation slip from/ as a supplier is a necessary step once you receive the PO from Amazon on your account. In order to do this, you need to do the following: 1. On your Vendor Central account, find the “Order” tab and select 2. Next, click on the “Purchase Order” tab and wait for the PO to open 3. Click on “Confirm New PO” and extract this file onto a Microsoft excel sheet 4. To confirm new PO: Go to Orders > Purchase Orders, in the Action items section, select “Confirm New Po”. 5. Select the check box in the left column for each purchase order you want to confirm and open the selected PO. 6. Before you confirm your purchase orders, you can make changes to the availability in the fields table. 7. Once confirmed and downloaded, click “Submit”. Availability Acknowledgement Code on Amazon The availability acknowledgement code you select impacts Amazon’s buying decision. In some cases, if you are unable to process certain items due to stock unavailability, Amazon will add this to the next PO, and reorder again. Orders will be suspended for 30 days unless you don’t change the status or until you restock. Selecting the “Permanently Unavailable” status indicates that you will not

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Amazon’s Vendor Purge – Is It Really Bad News?

Leave a Comment / Amazon, LifeStyle /

In a huge strategy shift, Amazon is reportedly going to purge small vendors, reserving Vendor central only for biggies like P&G, Sony, Lego, and other massive names. This news on the vendor purge came as a rude shock to many suppliers when Bloomberg first wrote about it last month. Much has been said and discussed since then and we have now arrived at a point where it is almost finalised and everyone is waiting for the official news to roll over. Why is Amazon doing this to vendors? “Third-party sellers are kicking our first-party butt. Badly,” – Jeff Bezos wrote in his Annual shareholder letter. This is not just a statement but a thoroughly researched statistical analysis put in simple layman’s language. Ask me how? In 2018, nearly 58% of Amazon’s total sales came from third-party sellers. In the present year, this is estimated to go even higher. This made Amazon think about pushing small vendors below $10M in annual sales to the seller central platform. Seller central is more profitable for Amazon It is hard to believe but Amazon is not making as much as we would like to hear from the Vendor central. Amazon has to hire more vendor managers and spend more on the logistics – for the fulfilment and shipping of first-party products. The cost will go further once Amazon implements its One-Day shipping program. Seller Central on the other hand is relatively easy in terms of logistics and Amazon gets a share of every single sale that is made. Small Vendors are posing a risk With the increase in competition, there is a rapid increase in counterfeit/ unauthorized products as well. With so many small vendors, Amazon is finding it difficult to properly vet, inspect, and dismiss the products that do not meet the quality standards. This directly or indirectly impacts the business model and affects customer satisfaction. Amazon had stopped issuing POs to thousands of such small vendors a few weeks back and kept them on hold until they reviewed their products. The third Party is less demanding This might sound surprising, but the third-party sellers are smarter – they put in extra effort and are self-sufficient with their own pricing, forecasting, marketing, and shipping. They strive to drive more traffic to the marketplace and provide exemplary customer service. Ultimately, Amazon gets a cut out of every sale by simply lending their marketplace and growing along with the millions of other sellers. Vendor Central, on the other hand, is a lot of work. They need to demand forecast, negotiate, buy, manage inventory, take care of logistics, and provide customer support. Amazon is simply unable to allocate that kind of human resources. Also, Amazon sells products at loss, in an attempt to win the “Buy Box” at times. There are tons of vendor manager posts unfilled since 2018 and that explains why first-party businesses growing double digits every quarter is long gone. So what’s going to happen to the small vendors? I would say it is a welcome move for vendors as seller central is in its best shape now than ever before. If you are a vendor, do not feel threatened by the sudden policy change. The transition to seller central is going to be rewarding. Far superior reporting Control over pricing Inventory control No chargebacks If you are a Private Label seller and have got Brand Registry done, you have access to Enhanced Brand Content, which is pretty much similar to A+ content in Vendor central, and you can also create your storefront page. In addition, there is a new Brand Analytics tool which is very similar to the Retail Analytics dashboard in vendor central but with limited metrics. Coming to campaigns, in seller central, you have sponsored products and sponsored brand ads. While product display ads are still not on the third-party platform, there is not much your missing out on as you can make the most out of these two. With Amazon’s new selling plan, you can reach customers in 10 countries for just $39.99 per month. Isn’t that good news? How to prepare yourself for the transition? Set up a seller central account Consider the FBA program to enjoy Prime benefits Work out on product profitability and re-price accordingly Optimize your listings as there is going to be more competition now Redefine your marketing strategy Take Away Never put all the eggs in one basket. If you haven’t explored other marketplaces, it is high time you stop relying only on Amazon. Walmart, ETSY, eBay, and Opensky are great marketplaces where you can list your products and expand your business. If you need any professional help for your Amazon store management, get in touch with us. BIE is a Vancouver, British Columbia-based agency providing human resources to manage all things Amazon. BOOK A FREE CONSULTING CALL

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Amazon Retail Analytics – ARA Basic Vs Premium For Vendors

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Amazon Retail Analytics is a powerful tool provided by Amazon for its Vendor Central account sellers. Every vendor gets access to the ARA basic version once they set up an account and this package includes sales and inventory reports, catalog reports, and operational reports. The ARA Premium version comes at an additional cost and provides a lot more features to help sellers analyze their business more efficiently. Let’s see the difference between the ARA Basic and Premium versions in this blog. Amazon Retail Analytics Basic ARA Basic access is given to all vendors and it is, without a shadow of a doubt, the most powerful tool to understand metrics and reports. Currently, ARA Basic provides the following reports: Sales Diagnostics Traffic Diagnostics Operational Diagnostics Forecast and Inventory Planning Inventory Health All these reports can be filtered based on the brand, category, subcategory, product group, and replenishment code to include more details on the report. As the name suggests, the reports on sales & operations are basic, and the data history is limited, although it is free. ARA Premium ARA Premium is found under Reports -> Amazon Retail Analytics Premium. It comes at a cost of 30K per year subscription. It is more robust compared to the basic package and it provides a multitude of reports and data. ARA Premium provides access to the following and a few more: Reports on sales & operations Reports on traffic Reports on consumer behavior Data availability Customer reviews Scheduled email reports Real-time sale There are also different metrics available in ARA Premium. For example, In Sales Diagnostics, there is an additional metric called “Ship Revenue”. In ARA Basic, “Ship Cost”, is the only metric available. The other stand-out feature in the Premium package is the Search terms. Here, you get access to Amazon’s top 100 search terms. ARA Premium provides the vendor with a strong understanding of revenue and also provides insights, helping him understand where revenue is generated, what the competition is, what the customer behavior is, and most importantly, it provides ASIN level performance metrics. Simply put, it provides more actionable data and sorting options to help detailed analysis. Buying the Premium package is totally up to the seller and the stage at which he is in his Amazon journey. The Purpose of ARA Reports – How Do We Benefit From Them? By leveraging data from ARA reports, vendors can refine marketing efforts within Amazon and across other channels as well as drive traffic back to Amazon. As a seller, it helps you analyze the following in order to come up with actionable strategies. Traffic & conversion Content & visibility Availability Consumer behavior Returns Price, Lost Buy Box Competition The biggest challenge is analyzing a huge volume of data, interpreting it, and utilizing it, to make the necessary changes in the business model.

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Outsource Your Amazon Vendor Central Account – Manage It Effectively

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Your brand has been doing well and you got that prestigious invite from Amazon to become their Vendor. After giving it much thought, you decided to join the Vendor Central bandwagon but are clueless on how to maintain the account? You are not alone. Vendor Central is a goldmine, but you should know how to play it wisely. Let us see how you can outsource your Vendor central account to manage it effectively. Let’s admit it, Vendor Central is ChallengingManaging Vendor Central is a challenge for both small and big vendors. Even well established and top brands face difficulties in handling their vendor accounts. Although Amazon takes care of most of the things, like sales, shipping, pricing, customer services, and returns, there is a lot that goes into the maintenance of account health. You have a lot to do to keep track of the operational performance of your brand, optimizing your product pages, building an Amazon storefront, dealing with the brand hijackers, answering customer queries, and managing reviews. It could get a bit overwhelming if one has to do all these and focus on manufacturing as well. If you could outsource it to a trained virtual assistant, you can reap more and focus on growing a solid brand recognition. At Big Internet Ecommerce, we take care of end-to-end processes right from preparing the Pre-commitment sheet and setting up the ASIN. We help you get started and also perform these routine daily and weekly tasks to maintain account health. Daily Tasks1. Check for new orders2. Check for pending/ incomplete shipments3. Check for Product Submissions – To keep track of the approval status of new products4. Check Vendor Operational Performance5. Check for new chargebacks6. Check the status of existing disputes7. Check the case log8. Check for any coupon recommendations Weekly Tasks1. Check for the sales and returns number as well the status of inventory2. Check confirmed purchase orders and see if the submitted and confirmed numbers match with the Units Received number.3. Check for any issues with the invoices4. Check for vendor returns5. Check product pages Monthly Tasks1. Generate Demand forecast report and Catalog reports (Long ago ordered/ Never shipped or ordered) bi-weekly and monthly respectively to analyze and understand the sales pattern and to prepare inventory.2. Check out competitors listing on monthly basis and update keywords in the product page based on PPC results for better ranking. With Amazon changing strategies and rules every now and then, it is no wonder that even big brand owners and channel managers are losing stability and go out of track at some point. BIE has helped numerous sellers and vendors manage their store and maximize their revenue and reach on Amazon. If you need any professional help with your Amazon store management, get in touch with us.BIE is a Vancouver, British Columbia based agency providing human resources to manage all things Amazon.

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