How to Plan Amazon Sales Post Holidays

While you would have had plenty of sales during the holiday season, it’s likely that your inventory is still stocked up and you start wondering how to do Amazon sales post holidays? So when the holiday season is over, you should be prepared with post holiday sales too.

What comprises the Post Holiday sales

Restoring/Re-evaluating Pre-Holiday Offers

The prices that were lowered for the holiday season must be restored or re-evaluated else you might end up losing much money despite less competition, as it’s likely that the competitors would also bring back the higher prices to products that can be sold easily.

Heavy discounts for perishable goods

You might have faced the situation where the sales during the holiday seasons was not as much as you expected leaving you with a large stocks pending to be sold. While goods like clothes and electronics would not be much of a liability, the perishable goods need to be sold as fast as possible if the self life is short. Heavy discounts would help here as you would want to still make a lower profit rather than having to trash them.

Offers to further purge inventory luring customers

You may not have to provide discount on general products a lot by providing incentive to the customer in a different way. Instead of going a bit harsh on the profit by high discount, you might want to provide a monetarily equivalent perishable good or items whose sales value you foresee declining.

Showing similar sets of products together in a bundle, best terming them accessories or related purchase essentials would help more sales and create a good amazon strategic plan.

Offer personalized discounts to recent customers

With the data available to you through the holiday sales, you know the interest or the likelihood of the customer going for a similar purchase. A customer who purchased laptop alone, is likely to purchase a laptop bag, more so if offered a discount. Targeting these customers to further get the stocks moving would be greatly helpful.

Love for deals never decreases

While the holiday season maybe over, it’s certainly not disappointing to the customers to find that certain offer still exists or new offers have been brought in. As there are several cases where people see the purchases made by their friends or relatives and would want to go for the same, only if the offer would still apply. An extended offer would be to the rejoice of the customer in such cases.

12 Rules for Successful Selling on Amazon

Visibility

The sales success at Amazon stands and falls with the position of the search results. Regardless of the choice of the right products, which arouse the desire and therefore also demand, it is therefore particularly important that you are found.

Sell ​​your products because you offer at a competitive price, your items slide up through a sale in the internal Amazon statistics ranking and gain positions on the search results pages. Therefore, it can be a strategy to offer a product at first cheap, and as soon as the sales history of the product has risen and slipped up in the search results, you increase the price. If your product is very competitive, this is not always the case as you will lose money. Now you are spoiled for choice, either you live with the bad margin, lock the article for sale on Amazon, or convince yourself with a better rating profile, which is a central purchasing argument for many customers. At the same time a good review is a basic requirement that the cart field to win for themselves, because this is your selling massively increased. This is not always the price!

Besides the price carries the quality of product information decided to position and thus for commercial success on Amazon. Take the time and enrich your products with comprehensive product information. Especially the product title, the correct indication of the brand, the selection of the right category and especially the use of search terms are important success criteria.

In addition to these factors, there are still so-called soft factors, which are also necessary for a good position. This includes the processing time of an item and the factor sales by XY, ” FBA “. This includes the storage of your items in the warehouse of Amazon and the subsequent direct dispatch to the customer. Amazon will always place these products at the forefront, so if it is worthwhile for you, think about whether you are storing some of the products directly at Amazon.

Optimize search terms & categories

Straight search terms are often used by many dealers as annoying and often neglected. Here are terms a very central success factor for the visibility of your products in the search results from Amazon and contributes to amazon conversion rate.

Think carefully about what your target group might look for and work with synonyms and combinations of search words, because the majority of search queries consist of 2 or more search terms.

Optimize product descriptions and images

The product presentation is, in addition to the price, a central sales argument, so that the customer decides for your product. Especially at Amazon, where each dealer is subject to the same conditions, high-quality product images and product descriptions are particularly important. So take the time and submit a detailed product description in your articles and enrich the products with high quality product pictures.

As always problematic are products, where already another dealer under the same EAN number (GTIN) has stored faulty or qualitatively bad product information in the Amazon catalog. This product information is now cemented in the Amazon catalog. In the first moment, you will only find the right product information and your own product images in your own Amazon dealer shop. In some cases, Amazon automatically exchanges the information you provide through your product image and text.

If this is not the case, and you are not satisfied with the information provided by your competitor or Amazon, please contact Amazon and ask for an exchange. The product team from Amazon will look at the product and rework as appropriate according to the case. Even if it does not always work out, make use of it and communicate with Amazon.

Win the shopping cart!

If you are not the only seller of a product, then it is absolutely decided whether you win the shopping cart. You can see how often you get the shopping cart in the reports under the tab “Details Sales and Traffic”. In the “Shopping Cart Percentage” column, you can see how often you win the shopping cart field.

If this value falls down, this has a direct effect on the number of orders placed. The reasons can be different, often it is related to the price.

But not always is the price of the reason for a low value in the cart field, because the number of positive reviews and compliance with the Amazon guidelines will have a direct impact on whether you cart the Field or not.

Pay attention to your reviews!

The number of positive reviews, referred to as Amazon feedback, is, as with eBay, important for sales success. With a bad rating profile, they will not only have a hard time tracking the shopping cart field, but customers will also shirk their items and rather buy from the more expensive supplier who delivers reliably.

It is important to note that the neutral rating has a negative impact on your rating profile, with 3 out of 5 possible points, since Amazon gives an average score based on a rating scale of 5 stars. Therefore, you should ensure that you receive only 4 or 5 evaluation points. Besides visible for user rating scale are in Seller Central yet reviewed statistics on the basis of 100%. Please make sure you are over 97%, if possible better.

Against the backdrop, which, unlike eBay, only one out of seven buyers makes a rating, each customer rating can have a huge impact on your rating statistics. Just dissatisfied customers who have to wait a long time for their delivery tends to give a negative rating faster than eBay, since the customers of goods shipped directly through Amazon are used to a very fast delivery.

If there is a delayed delivery, inform the seller in good time, explain the reason for the delay and inform the customer of a new delivery date. This open communication is often a miracle, but make sure you stick to your word.

Your most important goal should be that you are better than your competitors, because you increase the likelihood that you will not only win the shopping cart field, but the customers decide for your product.

Do not violate Amazon policies

Amazon’s internal customer statistics are of paramount importance as they are crucial to whether or not you can permanently sell as an Amazon retailer. If your traffic light often shows yellow or even red, then this can lead to the temporary exclusion on time, in the worst case even to the complete exclusion on the Amazon Marketplace. We do not need to explain what this means to you as a dealer.

All criteria in this field are very narrow. The rate of the order defects, for example, if a negative feedback or an A-to-Z guarantee claim for a purchase order is only 1%. Also the rate of late deliveries gives little scope with a guideline of 4%. Please make sure that you have a reasonable processing time in your articles, because nothing is worse if you specify 2 days here, only to wipe out your competitor and win the shopping cart, but you can only deliver it after 2 weeks and thereby collect negative reviews. Therefore, make a particular degree to the compliance with the guidelines Amazon

Respond to every request as soon as possible (<24 hours)

Since last year, there is the field contact reaction time at Amazon. Amazon expects you to answer customer notifications in 9 out of 10 cases within 24 hours. This also applies expressly at the weekend! Keep an eye on this key figure and consider an appropriate strategy in case your customers frequently send messages to you at the weekend. Doing nothing is the wrong way.

Create your own EAN Barcode / GTIN number

If you are from Europe, without EAN numbers (also GTIN) is not possible at Amazon to sell items on the marketplace, unless you produce yourself and can prove this.

Irrespective of this, there is the possibility to develop a certain advantage and, for example, to list different products, which already have their own EAN number as a set article under a new offer in the Amazon catalog. This is done by assigning your own EAN number to this set offer. You can purchase your own item numbers from various suppliers.

But do not exaggerate it with products which are already stored by Amazon in the catalog, which does not look like Amazon, because this is the already exuberant Amazon catalog unnecessarily bloated.

Avoid A-Z guarantees

A-to-Z guarantee are always critical issues, because too many of these cases and very quickly it is off with the sales activities on Amazon. Amazon would like to avoid the bad quality goods and make them not find their way into the Amazon catalog. So, if you permanently sell products with poor quality on Amazon, it will be very difficult with success.

Deliver on time

The punctual delivery of an item is extremely important on Amazon, since Amazon customers are used to fast deliveries. If the delivery is too late, Amazon customers very quickly tend to give a negative rating or open an AZ case. This not only has a negative impact on your customer’s visible rating profile, but also on your Amazon account profile, which your customers do not see.

If you confirm a delivery here, you should also be sure that the delivery will be shipped within the next 24 hours. Otherwise, playing with the fire when you confirm a delivery to not negatively affect the Amazon marketplace statistics/metrics. At this point, you must remember that every buyer receives an e-mail, which has been handed over to the shipping service provider as soon as you confirm the delivery.

Therefore, if you send the goods 4 days after the receipt of the shipping confirmation, as you wait for the delivery delivery, you can imagine yourself as a buyer reacts to it.

Keep the number of canceled orders low

On Amazon, the principle is: If you simply do not sell anything that you can not deliver within 30 days, you do not have to fear this statistic.

If you sell items that you are purchasing from a vendor or are sent by a drop shipping partner on your behalf, then increase the number of processing days for this item. Amazon gives you up to 30 days, then orders are automatically canceled.

In addition, you reduce the risk of negative customer reviews, because an Amazon customer will not be pleased if you know about it as well as of yellow or red customer statistics in the Amazon Seller Central customer account.

Be safe from the law!

Amazon is a very popular platform for warnings and there are numerous judgments of courts throughout your country. For this reason we recommend the legal advice by a specialized Internet law specialist lawyer, because a warning can be costly and your sales activities quickly put an end at Amazon and needs to be considered in your amazon business strategy.

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