Common Mistakes on Amazon

You’ve already been introduced to Amazon and how to succeed on the platform, but there are also many traps and mistakes you need to avoid. Some mistakes may happen easily but can create dramatic effects. Simple issues like failing to structure product pages correctly can have disproportionately large consequences for future sales. And often, it’s impossible to fix these without negative side effects. If you want to avoid becoming one of the many sellers who never succeed on Amazon, it's crucial to first have a clear understanding of the major and common mistakes sellers make. This is exactly what I will cover in this section.

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Lack of Understanding of Amazon's System

Everything on Amazon is interconnected. For example, good ads lead to increased sales, which improve rankings, and in turn, generate even more sales. This kind of interaction between different parts of the platform is something many people overlook. It's also the biggest reason why Amazon ventures fail.

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Without an understanding of these connections, it’s difficult to create a successful strategy, and almost impossible to figure out what the next step should be. As an Amazon consultant, I’ve often had meetings with clients to suggest budget increases for ads or a greater focus on creating high-quality images. Of course, sometimes the budget just isn’t there. But more often, when a client says no, it’s because they don’t understand the connections between the different elements of Amazon’s system. Once I explain how everything is linked, it’s rare for clients to say no. But if you’re doing this internally, you and your team need to have this understanding yourselves. And if you’re using an agency, having this knowledge will improve both the speed of the project and the results.

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Half-Hearted Efforts

Many of the clients who come to SellWave for help selling on Amazon have high expectations, but they aren’t ready to invest what’s necessary to actually reach those goals. Many expect big profits from day one and can’t understand why their products aren’t flying off the shelves. When they’re informed that they need to work on SEO, images, ad optimization, and strategy to succeed, they often can’t grasp why. Instead, they tend to adopt a "let’s throw it up and see what happens" approach, but that’s a strategy doomed to fail.

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In the past, it was easy to list products on Amazon and quickly see sales take off, but that’s no longer the case. For most brands and products, hard work is required to actually generate sales. This applies to both unknown companies and big giants.

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You must understand that Amazon has millions of products, and to sell something, your product needs to be shown by Amazon and chosen by the customer. That competition is no walk in the park, especially during a launch when product pages lack reviews and Amazon’s system has no data to suggest that your product is something customers want. That’s when you need to invest.

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Selling on Amazon can be likened to starting your own e-commerce site. With your own site, you need a good and clear presentation of products, and you need to actively work to bring customers to the site. Whether through SEO, influencers, or advertising. If you just build a website, nothing will happen. Customers won’t suddenly flood in out of nowhere. Amazon works exactly the same way.

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Lack of Understanding Within the Team

If you’re part of a team, it’s crucial that the team understands the Amazon initiative. Too often, decision-makers or other team members in key roles lack understanding of Amazon. This results in critical tasks being missed and important strategic decisions being made based on incorrect assumptions. So, make sure those you work with understand Amazon and the importance of the various aspects it entails.

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I  advise you to have clear updates where an Amazon manager highlights the results and the correlation between the actions you’ve taken and those you plan to take.

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Inadequate Advertising

As you know, Amazon is a major search engine. To succeed in sales, you need to get the search engine's algorithms to choose your product to display. I will go over how to work with SEO on Amazon, and while it’s an extremely important part, it’s also unpredictable. You can never fully control what Amazon’s algorithm chooses to display. You can do your best, but all the power lies with Amazon. However, there is another tool you can use that gives you more control—advertising.

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Amazon’s ads are a tool you can actually control, and as long as you’re willing to pay for the ads, your products will be shown. It’s the only tool you can use on Amazon to deliberately increase the visibility of your products. But, of course, there’s a downside—the cost.

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Since ads are such an important tool and because they carry a potentially high cost, the significance of well-executed ads is enormous. You need a clear and well-organized structure for your ads. Optimizations need to be made regularly (preferably weekly or even daily), and larger analyses of results also need to be done occasionally. You need to understand how important this is to make the right decisions about execution and budgets.

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A Chair Without All Its Legs

Have you ever sat on a chair missing a leg? Hopefully not. But unfortunately, many sellers do the equivalent on Amazon. They work hard and well on some aspects but completely miss one of the legs. Maybe SEO, ads, and product quality are top-notch, but with poor images, it will always be hard to succeed. Or maybe it's the SEO that’s lagging behind? If so, ad conversion will be good, but there will never be enough organic traffic, making it difficult to achieve good profits with only paid traffic.

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All the chair legs are needed. It’s important to be honest with yourself and objectively analyze your and your company’s products and knowledge. Are the images good enough? Have you worked properly on SEO, or was it something you threw together in an hour? Be honest and make sure to work on the legs that are wobbly.

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Unfounded Confidence

Many ask me why their sales are so low, even though they’re “doing everything right and have an offer that all customers should jump at.” If that’s your situation, you’ve probably missed something. Either you’re definitely not doing everything right, or the product isn’t something customers want.

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Look at your products. What makes them unique? Why would a customer buy your product instead of a competitor’s? And if there’s a clear answer to that, is it being communicated to the customer through the product page?

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There can be many potential reasons for a customer to choose your company’s products: brand, quality, product page, etc. Price is also a crucial factor. Often, it’s a bad idea to compete on price, at least as the primary competitive factor. A low price means margins quickly shrink. Doing the math, it doesn’t take long to realize it will soon become a losing venture, especially if more and more competitors start to compete in the same way, which often happens. Your products must simply have other primary competitive advantages. If they don’t, then an unwavering confidence is undoubtedly unfounded.

These were some of the most common mistakes that are absolutely most important for you to try to avoid for successful selling on Amazon. For further reading, JungleScout has also made a list of common mistakes sellers make on Amazon.