Did your Amazon sales in 2022 meet expectations? Whether you are satisfied with it or otherwise, truth be known that you have the chance to boost it this 2023.
Brief Summary:
If you made quite a profit last year, celebrate and pat yourself on the back. But if you barely made it out alive, do not be disheartened.
Keep in mind that Amazon is still the largest e-commerce platform in the world. Its enormous customer base allows you to redeem whatever losses you suffered from last year.
Apart from optimizing Amazon listing, there are other essential aspects of improving sales performance. Here are the things that you need to know.
How Amazon Measures Sales Performance?
If you are wondering how to get organic sales on Amazon, you must first learn its metrics. Because Amazon is a customer-focused company, it measures the success of its sellers through their ability to deliver optimal customer service.
Therefore, learning what these five metrics are and how you can use them to help you increase Amazon sales rank is imperative.
- Order Defect Rate (ODR) - Your ODR tells your performance in delivering an accurate report of your stock’s condition and how well you handle customers’ complaints before they get out of hand.
Amazon defines defect in three different ways: a negative review of your product, a customer’s litany of claims, and getting a credit card charge-back. The platform’s system calculates ODR by dividing the number of defect orders you got by the total number of orders you have received within a specified period.
- How to Keep Your ODR from Spiking - Focus on attending to your customers’ needs all the time. Whenever an issue crops up, resolve it immediately. Not only does being attentive and prompt to reduce negative feedback. But it also helps increase the traffic of your product listing, hence improving sales.
- Pre-Fulfillment Cancellation Rate (PFCR) - To know your PFCR, Amazon determines the percentage of canceled orders you received before shipping goods. At best, your PFCR needs to be lower than 2.5%. Getting a higher PFCR means that you have failed to meet Amazon’s target.
- How to Keep Your PFCR from Spiking - Be meticulous in managing your stocks. Always update your record. It should show the number of units you have at your disposal, as well as the number of units comprising the inventory you have sent to Amazon. With this, keep track of the platform’s updates, which occur every time a customer buys your products.
- Late Dispatch Rate (LDR) - To know your LDR, Amazon checks the percentage of orders that you failed to dispatch on time. Getting an LDR of 4% or higher means that you did not meet the marketplace’s target. As a rule, an order is late when the shipping details are confirmed after three or more days.
- How to Keep Your LDR from Spiking - To avoid late dispatches, you need to ship customers’ orders as soon as they have confirmed them. If not, see to it that you have everything on record and will attend to shipping ASAP. With this, you need to update the information on your seller account. Failure to do so causes your LDR to go up.
- Policy Violations - For every violation you make, Amazon will send you a notification. That is why you need to check your Performance Notifications regularly. To find the warnings, go to the performance section at Seller Central.
- What You Need to Know About Notifications - Checking your notifications is a must. This way, you get to be informed on time, especially if issues are requiring your immediate attention.
If you see a green tick, it means you have read all notifications. A yellow tick, on the other hand, indicates that you have not read any of them. Do not bypass a big red cross. It is an indication that Amazon is closely monitoring your seller account.
- Buyer-Seller Contact Response Time (CRT) - Amazon recommends that sellers should respond to customers within 24 hours. That is why you need to check your messages regularly. Doing so enables you to reply at the earliest possible time. Delayed responses frustrate customers. When this happens, you fail to deliver high-quality customer service that the platform requires.
- How to Avoid Negatively Impacting Your CRT Metric - Set aside a daily schedule for reading and responding to messages only. Stick to it at all costs. If you do not make this task a part of your daily work activities, you could miss out on essential messages necessitating an immediate response.
How to Boost Product Sales on Amazon: Seven Tactical Ways
Selling more products on Amazon requires a tactical approach that marries strategic techniques with close monitoring and quick response. Here are seven strategic practices that will help deliver optimal results.
- Optimize your listings regularly - No need to search far and wide using keywords like how to improve my amazon listing to find effective ways to optimize your pages on Amazon properly. Below is a checklist detailing the crucial aspects of optimizing your listings. They should not only be capable of persuading your target buyers but also compliant with algorithms of Amazon SEO.
- Keywords are relevant.
- Brand name, product features, materials used, and other essential product information should be included.
- Eye-catching, professionally captured images that conform to Amazon’s guidelines are in place.
- High-quality images highlight the value points of the product.
- Optimize the pages for both Amazon and Google.
It helps to obtain a Category Listing Report whose access you can request from Seller Support. The report will present your listing in a flat-file. In this format, spotting gaps and errors become easier.
- Leverage several channels in marketing your products - It is a given that marketing on Amazon puts your products directly before your intended buyers. But to fully maximize the advantages of your marketing campaign, include other channels outside the platform. It also helps if you have a dedicated website for your brand. In a nutshell, here is a list of widely known channels where you can market your products.
- Amazon
- Your online store
- Your website
- eBay
- Etsy
- PPC advertisements
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Instagram
- Affiliate marketing websites
- Guest posts on different types of blogs
- Encourage favorable reviews from customers - Your customers’ positive reviews are real testimonials. They work well in convincing potential buyers to make a purchase. In the process, they succeed in elevating your page's ranking. Hence, they influence your Best Seller Ranking (BSR). More importantly; they provide valuable insight that you can use in further enhancing your product and service to improve your customers’ experience in the future.
- Take advantage of Amazon’s Sponsored Advertising solutions - Promoting your product on Amazon, positions your brand directly in front of potential buyers. To leverage their PPC advertising benefits, employ a variety of strategies. With proper use, advertising on the marketplace assists in boosting conversion in various areas of the sales funnel.
- Pay attention to your performance via established metrics - Amazon closely monitors the sellers’ performance. For this reason, it has developed a variety of metrics that gauge each seller’s capacity to deliver top-notch customer service. They are as follows:
- Order Defect Rate (ODR)
- Pre-Fulfillment Cancellation Rate (PFCR)
- Late Dispatch Rate (LDR)
- Policy Violations
- Buyer-Seller Contact Response Time (CRT)
- Keep a well-stocked inventory - A well-stocked inventory increases the organic ranking of your pages on Amazon. If you were to manage it alone, you might find yourself overwhelmed. You may be left with little time to focus on other equally important aspects of running your business. To make the process smooth, you can take advantage of specially programmed software or rely on the proficiency of qualified personnel who can manage your inventory on your behalf.
- Dominate the competition and be highly eligible for Buy Box - Surviving the highly competitive environment of the marketplace means learning what your competitors are up to. When you are familiar with their strategies, you will have a better chance to design tactics that could edge them out. Help increase your brand’s influence by being highly qualified to win the Buy Box.
Sales Performance Helpers: Apps and Tools
Because monitoring your performance is critical to increasing sales, performing the measures suggested previously puts your business at an advantage. While scrutinizing details, you may find it more convenient to use advanced apps designed to make these processes more efficient.
- CASHCOWPRO - This comprehensive analytics and performance tracking app benefits sellers with an FBA account.
- Forecastly - The app alerts you when your stocks are running low. Along with this advantage, it presents reliable suggestions regarding the quantity or units you need to replenish your inventory and the most suitable time for ordering them.
- Shopkeeper - If you want to know what fees apply to which in a given situation, check out the dashboard of this app. It consolidates and presents all pertinent data so that you can access them quickly and easily.
- SellerLegend - If you want to gain a deeper understanding of your FBA performance, rely on this app. It has power suite tools that you can use for this purpose.
Why Finding the Right Avenues Matter
Increasing your revenue is not just about selling your products in any Amazon upcoming sale 2023. Learning and understanding the aspects detailed herein go a long way in helping you create an effective plan of action for targeting higher sales in the future.
Doing so also increases your customers’ satisfaction. Overall, the combination of strategic measures, modern technological innovations, and diligent monitoring improves the quality of service you provide.