If you are considering the Fulfillment By Amazon program then check out Randy Smythe’s Guide to FBA. As a media seller that has been using FBA for a while, he’s providing one of the best hands-on guides available online and is recommended reading before you jump in.
Speaking of Fulfillment By Amazon, Amazon agreed last week to add a warehouse location in Whitestown, Indiana, with a workforce of possibly over 3,000 full-time and part-time resources. I have added this site to my Amazon Fulfillment Google Map which I hope is still somewhat accurate (hmm, still no significant warehouse in the Southeast …).
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Take advantage of an opportunity to tell Amazon what you think about selling on this channel with a focus on the process and tools rather then let’s say what categories should be open, or that Amazon should launch a marketplace in Australia (which they should). The below questionnaire collects some basic profile data and you will be contacted for the meat + potatoes of the survey. Read more
Good-bye Amazon Alliance team. Hello Seller Performance.
Filed Under Amazon Announcements | 1 Comment
Important announcement from Amazon for online retailers new to this marketplace or interested in sharing in some of that phenomenal growth. The Amazon Alliance team has changed its email address from alliance@amazon.com to seller-performance@amazon.com - which is a welcome change. Read more
New Amazon Listing Loader
Filed Under Amazon Announcements, Amazon Features | 2 Comments
Amazon has introduced a new simpler means to load products to Amazon that already exist in Amazon’s catalog using its ASIN IDs or UPCs. The Listing Loader is essentially a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet on steroids that helps you not only validate your Amazon data but also load it to Amazon with the push of a button (via MS Excel macros). Read more
econsultancy reports that over the weekend Amazon UK adopted the new UI introduced by Amazon on its US site in late 2007, leaving Amazon France, Germany, Canada, Japan and yes, also China on the old design. The upgrade appears to be somewhat spotty, I have run into several pages that still show the old design.
I am a big fan of the new shopping experience and it’s great to see it now also available one of Amazon’s fastest growing sites.
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Amazon announced today that it would update its order numbering to accommodate increasing sales volume (I believe this excludes Amazon Seller Central and is therefore mostly applicable to media sellers): Read more
Great Amazon purchase
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I need to give a shout-out to Calumet Photo for a great Amazon shopping experience. I had been looking to buy the Nikon VR II 18-200 lens for a while and decided to pull the trigger for an upcoming trip. I shopped first eBay to see how much respected sellers (since I don’t want to give $700 to just anybody) were charging, then went to Amazon to compare prices, seller ratings and fulfillment latencies. Read more
More Amazon widgets
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In more “make it easier to find products on Amazon all over the web” news, ReadWriteWeb had an interesting article last week around visualization and more importantly, visual shopping. The section on Amazon listed a few tools that give you an indication what is possible to give consumers better (well, at least more fun) ways to find what they’re looking for on Amazon: Read more
Techcrunch sighted on Monday that Amazon had launched two Facebook apps to tie the Amazon experience into social networking. Or really features that would introduce some much-needed social networking features to Amazon: the ability to easily friends’ wish for, what they are adding (or removing) from that list, their birthdays, what they are reviewing or discussion. And much more. With over 78M worldwide users chances that your internet-enabled friends are already registered at Amazon are high. Chances that my extended family is on Facebook are pretty much zero (fortunately). Read more
Amazon introduces easy seller phone support
Filed Under Amazon Announcements, Amazon Features | 1 Comment
Today Amazon announced that it has added phone support to its Technical Support feature for Seller Central merchants. Simply click at the bottom of any page on “Get technical support”, pick the area of interest (let’s say “General Policies …”) and then select at the bottom of the page “By Phone”. A pop-up invites you to specify your country, call-back number and when you would like to be called.
Note that this feature is only available Monday - Friday: 7am - 6pm and Saturday, Sunday: 7:30am - 4:30pm PST.
Here’s the announcement: Read more