Amazon accounted for 33.7% of all eCommerce sales for a total of USD 232 billion in net sales in 2018. As an eCommerce site owner, you’re probably already selling on Amazon. And if you’re not, the thought has probably occurred to you more than once.
If it hasn’t, you should start thinking about it.
People go to Amazon to spend their money. If you don’t meet your customers where they are , you’re already losing out to your competitors.
But selling on Amazon is also not for everyone. Start thinking about these 5 things before you sell on Amazon.
Selling on Amazon: Consider These 5 Things First
1. Branding
Amazon is a marketplace. That means anyone can start selling products, including yours. So, even if you don’t want to sell on Amazon, you must make sure you police Amazon for when other people start selling your products.
Why?
Because even if it’s not your organization selling on Amazon, if your brand gets misrepresented there, it affects your brand negatively.
So, make sure that your brand and your products are properly represented on Amazon.
2. Distribution
Remember, the key to succeeding in online retail is to meet your customers wherever they are. And the one place where your customers are is Amazon.
There are four options you can take:
- Do nothing — most common approach brands take pretending they can ignore Amazon
- Exclusive/authorized 3rd party sellers
- Sell wholesale to Amazon (via Vendor Central)
- Sell direct to consumer (via Seller Central)
It’s important to think through these options when planning to distribute your products on Amazon.
3. Pricing
Another important thing you need to think about is pricing:
- Do you have a minimum advertised price (MAP) policy?
- Do you have an online reseller policy stating the price preferences for your brand?
It’s also important to note that you should think about how you can enforce these policies especially if you’re not selling directly on Amazon.
Oftentimes, you may find your products sold on Amazon at a much lower price than what you sell on your own channels. This is especially true if you keep ignoring or not policing Amazon for your brand and products.
4. Product Availability
Availability of stocks is an issue you should also address when selling on Amazon. As absurd as that may seem, going out of stock is a common problem when selling on Amazon. The main reason this happens is brands often underestimate the reach of Amazon.
Stock-outs give your competitors an opportunity to get the sale. And as you may also already know, Amazon is its own search engine — meaning it has keywords and rankings just like Google. So, when you go out of stock, it loses its position over time.
5. Catalog Selection
The final consideration for brands is around new product listings, quality, and enforcements of company policies like the ones mentioned above.
While many online retailers may not pay attention to regulatory or safety issues, your brand is still the one who can be harmed should there be customer complaints or bad PR due to the action of other sellers of your products.
Conclusion and Next Steps
Selling on Amazon is one of the things you should consider because it’s the place where people go to spend their money.
As an online retailer, these five things are important to address today. Don’t let others make the decision for you. You should be the ones dictating the terms in which your brand plays in the market.
