The Most Successful E-Commerce Solutions to Start Selling on Amazon

Amazon, the world’s leading online seller, sees almost 197 million global visitors every month. It can be said that curiosity brings buyers to Amazon because they can not refrain themselves from exploring lightning deals and discounts. On top of this, sale days like the Great Indian Festival Sale, Prime Day, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are a magnet for buyers looking for attractive offers. 

The user experience of buyers on Amazon is something that is incomparable. Fulfilling the visitors’ ultimate motive of happy buying, Amazon has managed to scale up significantly. Its global reach now spans across 18 marketplaces in 200+ countries and territories. With over 300 million buyers worldwide, Amazon has built a reputation for being the biggest online seller, outperforming every other such platform. 

It is well understood now that Amazon is the most popular online store among online buyers worldwide. This is a great opportunity for domestic sellers to reach across national boundaries to hit the international markets, and a lot of them are leveraging it. Indigenous manufacturers, brick and mortar stores, top brands, and several other businesses, which sum up to a total of 6.2 million sellers at present, are using Amazon to expand their reach to their potential buyers. So, it’s time for you to partner with this giant platform to gain the much-aspired popularity for your product domestically as well as internationally. A few other reasons why you should consider selling on Amazon are:

• You do not need a lot of money upfront to sell on Amazon, as you need to start your own business. You can get started with a small amount of cash in hand. All you need to have is the stock of inventory ready.
• What adds to an ever-increasing number of buyers on Amazon is its Prime membership. In fact, Amazon Prime members are the best buyers owing to the shipping benefits, exclusive deals, and special prices they get.
• You do not need to build your own website and spend a huge sum on SEO, SEM, and a whole lot of other things to gain visibility. Just start by creating a product page on Amazon, make use of Amazon advertising and your job is done.
• Payments are secured on Amazon. It directly deposits money into your bank account every seven days, even for cash on delivery orders.
• Amazon takes care of the fulfillment of your order. From delivery to return, Amazon is responsible for everything.
• Amazon is the biggest online sales channel in the world. If you are associated with Amazon, you tend to build a good reputation. Your product is deemed authentic and trusted.
• Amazon lets you make money faster than your own business. Your products start selling within days of reaching Amazon warehouses.
• Amazon offers super-fast delivery. Your product will reach your customer within 2-3 days. When customers do not have to wait long to receive the product, the number of orders keeps on increasing.

Now that you are aware of the fact that the scope of growth and increased profitability is very high while selling on Amazon, you should not wait to become a registered seller here. This blog gives you a complete guide to e-commerce solutions for selling on Amazon. So, let us go step by step and walk through everything you need to know to become a seller on Amazon.

Some products are open to all sellers, while some need Amazon’s approval. The infographics below will introduce you to both categories.

Once you are sure about the product you want to launch on Amazon, you want the product to succeed. You aim for higher sales and greater profits. So, here are 3 tips to help you with this: 

1. Define your target audience

A very effective way of approaching your target audience on Amazon is to define a buyer persona. It involves creating a fictional person that resembles your potential customers. You build this fictitious identity by elaborating on data comprising of gender, demographic details, interests, challenges, behavior, buying patterns, and goals. Once you have all this information in hand, it becomes easy for you to develop the marketing strategy and content that you need to pursue your target audience. This technique can help you hit the bull’s eye. One way to understand your buyer’s personality is to go through the reviews they have posted for similar products.

2. Market research

When you buy something as small as a hand blender, you research a lot. You try to find out the best sellers, features offered, compare prices, and attachments that come along. When buying something as small as a hand blender is such a well-thought-out decision, then you, as a seller, need to be very calculative. It is something way more advanced and involves a lot of thinking, planning, and strategizing. Therefore, you must conduct thorough market research to start. It gives you a fair idea of the competition level in the market, along with helping you establish an understanding of the competitors’ policies and tactics. 

3. Set the right price

The right price leads to larger sales and higher profits, a truth every seller is familiar with. Therefore, adopting a competitive pricing plan is important. Defining buyer persona and market research can help you decide the price that will take you above equilibrium. Once you know how much your competition is charging and the amount your target audience is willing to pay, you will be able to decide the appropriate price for your product. 

Selling on Amazon: The complete guide

Before you register and start selling on Amazon, you need to choose a plan. Here are two plans you can choose from:

1. Amazon Individual Seller

The owner of a very small business can sign up for Amazon Individual Seller. It is beneficial if the seller plans to sell more than 40 items a month. The plan costs $0.99 per sale, along with a few transaction costs. The owner using this plan does not need advanced selling tools and programs.

2. Amazon Professional plan

If the seller’s motive is to sell 40 individual items each month, he needs to sign up for this plan. The subscription cost of this plan is $39.99 per month, along with some transaction fees per item, no matter how many items have been sold in a month. A subscriber of the Amazon Professional Seller Plan gets access to the Amazon API Gateway, a service that manages traffic, authorizes end users, and monitors performance.

Documents and details that should be kept handy before you register:

1. Active mobile number
2. GST number (not needed if you are selling a category that exempted from GST)
3. PAN details
4. Active bank account
5. Email ID

Once you have all these details and documents ready, it is time for you to register and launch your business. Here are the steps that you have to follow to register:

1. Go to Amazon seller central to begin the registration.
2. Click on Start selling
3. It will lead you to Amazon Seller Central log in page, where you have to click Create a new account if you do not have an account already.
4. After this, enter your legal company name, mobile number, email ID and create a password.
5. You will get an OTP to verify your mobile number. Complete the verification process by providing OTP.
6. Enter your tax details, including GST and PAN number.
7. Click on Product to sell on the dashboard and choose Start listing. 
8. Enter the product name or barcode number to search for it on the existing catalog. If you are unable to find the product, create a new listing by selecting I’m adding a product not sold on Amazon.
9. In the end, click Save and finish, go to the dashboard to add the remaining details, and upload your digital signature. 
10. Finish the process by clicking Launch your business.

The documents, details, and process are used to create an account on Seller Central of Amazon.in.

Fees of selling on amazon

Amazon selling fee you pay depends on your selling plan, type of product, and shipping plan.

Subscription Fee

It depends on whether you choose Individual Seller Plan ($0.99 per sale) or Professional Seller Plan ($39.99 per month). 

Selling Fee

It includes Referral fee (percentage of sales made and vary from category to category) and variable closing fees (applies only to media categories) 

Shipping fees

If you are shipping your product by yourself, Amazon applies some shipping rates. These rates vary depending on the product category and shipping service selected by the buyer.

FBA Fee

FBA Fee is Fulfillment by Amazon Fee, which is the sum of the fee for order fulfillment, storage, and optional services.

Know what you can do on Seller Central

Once you have created your seller central account, your activities are not restricted to just selling your product. It is a comprehensive platform that can be used for multiple purposes. Below listed are few things that you can do on seller central:

• List all your products and update them using the Inventory tab.
• Updating titles, bullet points, product description, and images
• Tracking inventory and making updates as and when required.
• Track daily sales of your products.
• Monitor your performance using consumer metric tools.
• Access custom business reports and bookmarks the templates you use frequently.
• Raise tickets and contact Selling Partner Support for help.  

Listing your product on Amazon

This is the next step to creating your seller central account. You can list your product against an existing product when there are other sellers of similar products on Amazon. Otherwise, you can create an entirely new listing if you are the only seller or a new seller. Either way, the process of listing will vary depending on the selling plan. A Professional Seller allows you to list large batches of products using bulk upload or inventory management. This option is not available for individual sellers. With this plan, you can list only one product at a time. Regardless of the listing procedure, your product should have a Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) such as a UPC, an ISBN, or an EAN, as Amazon uses these IDs to find the products you are selling from a never-ending list of categories it sells. 

What do you need if you are listing a new product?

• UPC/EAN code

UPC/EAN is a unique 12-13 digits code assigned to numerous listings done by different sellers for the same product. A single product detail listing is created against this unique number.

• SKU

SKU means Stock Keeping Unit. It is an 8-12 characters alphanumeric code assigned to a product to increase the ease and efficiency of managing inventory for a business. 

• Product Title

A product title should be unique, crisp, concise, yet explanatory. It should have a maximum of 200 characters. 

• Product Images

Product images are a creative way to represent your product on Amazon. Use it efficiently to create attractive visuals for products displaying their salient features and benefits. Product images should be 1500×1500 pixels. The FOP and BOP of a pack should have a plain white background and cover at least 80% of the image area.

• Bullet Points

Bullet points are short, descriptive sentences that highlight the key features and benefits of a product. One bullet point should not exceed 250 characters.

• Product Description

Consider it as a detailed explanation of your product. Here you can talk about the brand, features, usage, storage, benefits, precautions, etc., in detail.

• Search Terms and Keywords

Incorporating the right search terms and keywords are extremely important to move your product higher on Amazon search result pages.

• Variations Mapping

Some products vary in color, scent, size, and flavor. Such products should have their variations listed under the parent product so that their variants are prominently visible.

• Buy Box

A Buy box appears on the right side of the product display page with Add to cart and Buy now buttons. You have to win a buy box, which largely depends on factors like your performance, sales history, feedback, shipping time, shipping methods, and many more.

• Offers, Coupons, and Discounts

Offer attractive deals, coupons, and discounts to the product to enhance its visibility and increase sales.

• A+ Content

A+ content descriptively represents band info, features of the product, benefits, and variation. Be as creative as you can in the A+ content as here you can artistically express the information that a buyer is looking for in detail. 

Product title, description, bullet points, variations, buy box and offers, and discounts are displayed on a product display page. The product display page is of immense importance as this is the place where customers get all the information that they need about the product. Therefore, optimizing a product display page is necessary by giving relevant product information, visually appealing and self-explanatory product images, and using high-ranking search terms and keywords. It is suggested to conduct thorough market research and study the competitors before starting creating the product display page content. All this research and study trickle down to being resourceful and imaginative enough to collate relevant keywords and optimize the product display page content. Take it as one of the critical Amazon business strategies as it can work wonders. 

Things to remember: If the product you are listing is already being sold on Amazon, you do not need a UPC/EAN code. All you need to do is optimize the product display page information and give attractive offers and discounts to differentiate your product from the competitors.

Delivering your product: Choosing the right method

1. Fulfillment by Merchant (FBM)

Choosing self-shipping means you are responsible entirely for storing and shipping the product. Under the Fulfillment by Merchant method, the customer pays shipping fees (depending on the product category and shipping service selected by the customer) to Amazon, which Amazon passes on to you in the form of shipping credit. The major advantage of FBM is that you have complete control over your business and are saved from paying excessive Amazon fees. However, there are a few downsides associated as well. Firstly, it has become extremely difficult for you to earn an Amazon Prime Shipper badge with FBM, driving away prime customers. Secondly, you have to fight harder to win the box. 

With these two disadvantages, you are already losing your potential customers. Hence, the lower sales and profits. You should select Fulfillment by Amazon as the benefits that this shipping method brings along can get you higher profits, sales, and business growth. So let us discuss what Fulfillment by Amazon means.

2. Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA)

Opting for FBA can make the fulfillment process extremely easy for you. All you have to do is to send your products to Amazon fulfillment centers and the rest is taken care of by Amazon. Amazon manages packaging, shipping, returns and refunds, everything, and you can leverage it to provide faster deliveries, increase your customer base, earn positive reviews, and get prime membership.

Given the benefits of FBA, numerous sellers on Amazon are choosing this method of shipping. To cater to their fulfillment needs, Amazon has built more than 175 fulfillment centers around the world with more than 150 million square feet of storage space. Such widespread is the use of FBA that you can blindly leave your product fulfillment process to Amazon. You sit back and relax while your product reaches your customer quickly.

How FBA works?

Step 1: Ship your inventory to Amazon. It will be scanned and made available for sale.
Step 2: With each order, Amazon packages and ships the product directly to the customer.
Step 3: Amazon collects payment from the customer and pays you available funds every two weeks.
Step 4: Amazon’s customer service team handles questions, returns, and refunds.

Now that you have a step-by-step guide to selling on Amazon, you can start with it. Combine it with Amazon’s product marketing tools and witness a dramatic increase in your sales within a short period of time. Log in to Amazon Advertising and utilize it to your advantage. Develop an efficient ad campaign comprising of sponsored products, sponsored displays, and an Amazon store to boost your sales.

How Paxcom Can Help Grow Your Sales On Amazon?

Paxcom has been servicing numerous clients and helping them successfully market their brands on Amazon and other e-commerce platforms. Our team of e-commerce analysts timely monitor the brand’s performance to come up with effective solutions for further growth and improvement. We cater to market leaders, but we have helped our clients build their brands from scratch. Our team efforts have made several emerging brands appear at the top of the Amazon search results page and significantly helped established clients grow their sales margins.