How to Successfully Sell on Amazon

Selling on Amazon is not always a walk in the park. I have personally been selling on Amazon for several years, and at SellWave, we have helped both large and small companies in many different industries sell on Amazon. So, I know exactly what challenges you and your business face.

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Some parts can be difficult to understand, and some parts can be harder to implement. I will now give you the basics of how everything works so that you have the foundation to later learn more and more about the different aspects.

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1. Register a Seller Account

Before any sales can be made on Amazon, an account registration on Amazon's seller platform is required. There are two options here - Seller Central or Vendor Central, and these involve significant differences.

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Seller Central vs. Vendor Central

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Seller Central - What is it?

Seller Central is the most common way to sell. Anyone can register, you own the entire business against the end customer, and you use Amazon as a marketplace to reach new customers.

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With Seller Central, you can either have a professional account or a basic account. The professional account provides access to all of Amazon's various functions and benefits, while the basic account limits access to functions, and you can sell a maximum of 40 products per month. You can switch from the basic model to the professional model, or vice versa, at any time.

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You can register for Amazon Sweden (covering all countries in Europe) here - register on Amazon. It requires some documents and information to be submitted, but the process is relatively quick.

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Vendor Central - What is it?

Vendor Central is not open to everyone but requires an invitation for your company. The setup is also different from Seller Central. Instead of owning the entire business against the end customer, you sell the products to Amazon, which then sells them to the end customer.

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Despite this, you must register all products and product pages, as well as pay for and manage advertising.

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Important - With Vendor Central, you lose control over the price to the end customer since Amazon owns the product when they resell it.

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2. Products and Product Pages

On Amazon, each product belongs to a product page. Sometimes there is only one product per product page, while on other product pages there are several product variations. Product variations can, for example, consist of colors, features, sizes, and models.

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Every single product, whether it is a standalone product on a product page or a product variation, must have a title and an image. However, for a product page to be considered "good," it should have both a title, bullet points, product description, and several images.

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SEO and Conversion

To succeed on Amazon, it is important to work with both Amazon SEO and conversion. Of course, the product itself is the most important, but presenting it correctly and ensuring that Amazon's search engine actually displays the product is crucial.

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Reviews on Product Pages

Customers can leave reviews on all products they purchase, and this is an essential part of the customer experience. The more reviews and the better they are, the more a future potential customer can trust the product's quality and functionality.

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3. Logistics for Sellers on Amazon

When selling on Amazon, you have two choices when it comes to handling logistics:

1. You and your company manage everything on your own with your own warehouse management, shipping, returns handling, and support. You receive orders via Amazon, but the rest is handled by you or partners to your company (e.g., 3PL companies). Amazon calls this Fulfillment by Merchant, abbreviated FBM.
2. The alternative is to let Amazon handle the logistics for you. This is something many sellers on Amazon have found great success with as it allows for excellent shipping terms to the end customer (Amazon is great at this), which increases conversion, and it also allows you to scale this part of your business quickly. You don't have to think about warehouses, packing staff, etc. Amazon handles it. Of course, this service costs money, but Amazon offers good prices, and you can save money by not having to do everything yourself or with internal resources. Amazon calls this setup Fulfillment by Amazon, abbreviated FBA.

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I will write more about this in future posts, but if I quickly give my advice on the choice between FBA and FBM, I would say FBA. Let Amazon handle it - it's easier and, above all, increases conversion.

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4. Advertising on Amazon (PPC)

Amazon has its own advertising platform that allows sellers to advertise directly on Amazon, as well as on Amazon's various network of platforms. By advertising on Amazon, you can drive sales to increase profits. But you can also run aggressive ads to quickly get more product reviews, collect data, and climb the best-seller lists.

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I will definitely write much more about this in future posts, but briefly, ads are extremely important on Amazon and a great tool for you as a seller to influence traffic and results on the platform. Ads on Amazon are built on a Pay Per Click (PPC) platform where you pay for each click you get through the ads. You pay for each click, but nothing if no one clicks.

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There are several different ad types, and they all have different setups and settings. You can, for example, showcase individual products (sponsored products) or the brand along with a selection of products (sponsored brand). I and the team at SellWave can help you succeed with Amazon ads.

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5. How to Work with Branding on Amazon?

In addition to the texts and images on each product page, Amazon offers other ways to work with branding. These include ads and videos for greater reach, as well as tools to build the brand's image, status, and style.

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This is only possible for companies that register their brand through what Amazon calls the Amazon Brand Registry. After the registration is complete, you can do three things that you otherwise cannot:

1. Use Amazon's Sponsored Brand ads to highlight the brand and a selection of products in the advertising.
2. Build a brand store. This is like a mini-site within Amazon where you can showcase products, images, videos, and guides in a way that highlights your company's brand and products. Some examples of different brand stores are Apple, Levis, Adidas, and Ewedoos.
3. Add images, related products, and other modules to the product description. Normally, product descriptions can only consist of plain text. Here are some examples of such descriptions (scroll down on the product page to see the product description): Daniel Wellington, Samsonite, Blue, and JBL. This increases both conversion and the perceived value of the brand.

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Registering the brand and actively working to implement these elements is, as you can see, of great value and should always be properly managed by brands that want to succeed on Amazon.

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Summary - How to Sell on Amazon

This was an undetailed overview of some of the most essential aspects of selling on Amazon. I hope the text has provided you with the foundation it was intended to give. If you have read through everything, you should now have enough knowledge to delve deeper into the various aspects.

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Don't forget to check out the SellWave blog for future posts and feel free to share this post if you found it helpful. I would be extremely grateful. Good luck!