Building Your Amazon Business – Part 1

Introduction

This series of blog posts will cover some of the key elements when it comes to building your Amazon business. Whether you are an Amazon startup or an established seller on the Vendor or Seller channels, this series will help you better understand the steps to take and maintain in order to operate successfully in the Amazon ecosystem. These posts assume that you are a brand owner or license holder as opposed to a third-party product reseller although many of the issues discussed apply to all Amazon sellers.

Part 1 – Establishing Your Presence on Amazon

For Amazon newbies as well as established sellers, this first series of items should be reviewed or revisited as part of your ongoing store oversight and management.

There may be other considerations you will need to focus on but this set of blog posts is intended to concentrate on the areas that our experience shows as most crucial to your Amazon success.  

Store Design & Build

Before you can start selling on Amazon, you’ll need to create an account with Vendor Central or Seller Central depending upon which channel you are using (you can visit Amazon to learn more about the differences between these two channels but you will likely be selling through the Seller portal). While the actual look and design of the store is important, mapping the customer journey is paramount to your success as it allows customers to quickly find what they are looking for. Any design elements that impede the path to conversion, no matter how nice they may be, are working against the user experience. It’s also extremely important that your store design follow Amazon best practices and is optimized for mobile and tablets so that customers can easily find what they’re looking for on their mobile device. Amazon offers a number of recommendations for optimal image size as part of the onboarding process.

Brand Registry & Approval

If your brand is trademarked, you will definitely want to subscribe to Brand Registry. There are numerous benefits in doing so including brand protection, an increase in product sales, better reporting options, and more. Plus, it provides credibility for your brand on Amazon by letting customers know that whenever they make a purchase from your company on Amazon, they’re getting authentic products from an approved seller.  

Warehouse Capabilities

To be able to sell via Vendor Central or Seller Central, you’ll need to have a warehouse facility where products can be stored and shipped out when needed. As a seller, you can use the Amazon platform to market and sell your products as well as manage inventory and fulfill orders on behalf of customers. You can choose to use FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon) or sell your products directly from your own warehouse.

FBM or FBA

Once you have a clear understanding of your logistical capabilities, you will be able to decide if you want to fulfill your orders via FBM (Fulfilled by Merchant) or FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon). FBA offers a number of advantages such as prime listings and Amazon managed customer service. FBM is better suited to operations that have a complete internal structure which can ensure on time deliveries and a fully managed back end of the Amazon platform. Keep in mind that FBM logistics involve much more than simply fulfilling and shipping orders and generally require a strong understanding of the Amazon back end. You’ll also want to do a cost analysis to determine which option is best for you. Amazon provides tools to do this and you can also run your own spreadsheet numbers. 

Coming Up Next

In our next post, we’ll look at creating product detail pages that ensure optimal customer experience and follow Amazon best practices.