How to Sell on Amazon: A Beginner's Guide
Starting to sell on Amazon is not easy, especially if you have never dealt with their platform before. Questions like "Should we be on Amazon?" and "How do we register on Amazon?" quickly arise, followed by questions like "How do we drive sales?", "How does the logistics work?" and "How should we advertise?".
In this guide, I will try to cover all of this so that you and your company can understand how to sell on Amazon and how to do it successfully. It will be a long guide because there are many things to cover. But also because this really should function as a guide that you can come back to again and again (so don't forget this page! – or download the PDF below).
Contents
- Intro
- 0 - Decision About Amazon – "Should we sell on Amazon?"
- 1 - Products – "Are our products ready for Amazon?"
- 2 - Registration – Registering on Amazon
- 3 - Logistics – How should we handle logistics?
- 4 - Product Pages – Amazon SEO and conversion
- 5 - Branding and Brand Store – Registering our brand and building a brand store
- 6 - Advertising – Setting up ads that drive sales
- 7 - Launch – How to successfully launch on Amazon
- 8 - Now What? – Continued work to succeed!
- Summary - What have we covered?
- Extra – Checklist to get started
Intro – Don't Do Things Halfway
Amazon is a huge platform and the competition is tough. In this guide, I will try to cover the major parts, the parts that will actually make a big difference and form the foundation of whether you succeed or fail on Amazon.
Of course, the product you sell is always the most important. But I would also argue that it is extremely difficult for all brands except the very largest (e.g., Apple, Oreo, Adidas) to succeed on Amazon without meticulous work on strategy, SEO, conversion optimization, and advertising. And even the largest brands would benefit from better work on these points.
As I said, I will try to cover as much as I can in this guide, but I want to give a warning right now – don't do things halfway!
Don't Do Things Halfway!
I and SellWave have helped many companies on Amazon, large and small, and a common thought among most is something like, "We put our products on Amazon and see if it works, if it works, we can invest more in SEO and advertising."
But that's not how Amazon works – almost no search engines work that way. You would never say, "We’ll throw up a website, and if it works and generates profit, we can work on SEO and advertising." It doesn’t work that way; no one would find your website on Google, and the same applies to Amazon.
So my advice to you is this – commit or don't commit at all. Decide if Amazon is a good platform for you and then make a wholehearted effort. If you have a limited budget, make a wholehearted effort on part of your product range. I also encourage someone (or several people) at your company to take main responsibility for Amazon, learn how it works, and be responsible for strategy development.
Decision About Amazon – "Should we sell on Amazon?"
Before we even get into the actual guide, you should ask yourself – should we sell on Amazon? Amazon is the world’s largest product search engine (they surpassed Google in 2019), and their revenue has grown by about 30% per year. They account for 50% of U.S. e-commerce and are taking an increasing share of the same market in Europe and Asia every year. By selling on Amazon, you get a piece of that pie, but it’s not always the right choice.
Some categories do not do as well on Amazon, and some companies choose to actively stay away from Amazon because it does not match their brand. Amazon is working hard to make their platform more brand-oriented and has allowed brands to build "Brand Stores" on Amazon for some time now. But some brands (especially companies in the clothing industry) still choose to turn their back on Amazon.
Amazon Has Multiple Marketplaces
Amazon has several different websites/marketplaces that customers can shop on, and these are focused on different countries and regions. For example, Amazon.com has the USA as its main market, Amazon.de for Germany, and Amazon.jp for Japan.
Today, there are 16 different marketplaces, and it is not certain that you should sell on all of them, especially not at the beginning. Amazon.com is the largest market by far, but it is not certain that you should sell there. Some categories/products do better in other countries, and there are, of course, geographical advantages to selling on the European markets (Germany, UK, France, Netherlands, Spain, Italy).
Make a Decision About Amazon
To make a good decision about Amazon, you should be aware of two things:
- Every day you wait to enter Amazon, it becomes harder and harder. Competitors collect reviews and data every day, and breaking in a few years from now may require enormous resources and investments compared to now.
This is also true if you want to sell in a new market (e.g., when Amazon.se opens). International competitors can go live here with the push of a button, bringing all the data and reviews they have on other markets.
- You should be well informed about the volumes within your category, how the different markets (USA, Germany, etc.) differ in your niche, and what the competition looks like. Much of this data can be obtained with tools like Jungle Scout, but you can also have a professional market analysis done.
Products – "Are Our Products Ready for Amazon?"
If you have decided to enter Amazon, you should look at your product range and ask if it fits Amazon. There is certainly a market for almost all types of products, but perhaps you should repackage some of your products into kits or offer individual products in pairs only on Amazon. It all depends on your category, niche, and competition.
Again, it’s good to have done a thorough market analysis to make informed decisions about this.
Don't have any products yet?
I know from experience that many who read the information on SellWave do not have any products live yet, maybe not even a company. That scenario is not something I will cover here; I assume you/your company is established and want to enter Amazon with your range. Of course, you can still use this guide, but product development is not something I will go into.
Registration – Registering on Amazon
Once you have made a decision about Amazon and reviewed your product range, it’s time to register. The easiest way is to go to sell.amazon.com and register in the region where you want to sell.
Registration, unfortunately, can take a very long time and be extremely complicated. It might seem strange, since it should be in Amazon’s interest to make it easy, but that’s the situation in 2020.
You will first go through a fairly short registration process but then also be asked for a lot of documents to prove your identity and legitimacy. This requires patience and careful adherence to Amazon's requirements – we at SellWave also offer support during registration.
Logistics – "How Should We Handle Logistics?"
When selling on Amazon as a company, you have two options for logistics – either you take responsibility for shipping the products you sell to the end customer yourself, or you use Amazon's logistics solution where they ship the products.
You can also combine these solutions and choose to ship some products yourself and let Amazon handle others.
Amazon FBA – Amazon's Logistics Solution
Amazon's logistics solution is called FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) and is a major reason why Amazon has been able to offer their customers excellent support and delivery times. This solution is often a cheaper option for you as a company and also increases conversion because Amazon can then offer their customers faster and cheaper (usually free) shipping.
FBA works like this: you send the products to Amazon, which registers and stores them. When an order comes in, they deliver the product to the end consumer. They also handle returns and the first line of support (returns, delivery, etc.).
Amazon FBM – Your Own Logistics Solution
The logistics solution where you handle delivery to the end customer yourself is called FBM (Fulfillment by Merchant) by Amazon. This is also sometimes referred to as Seller Fulfilled. To use your own logistics solution, Amazon requires that you can deliver to certain specific areas and within certain time frames. Exactly which areas and time frames depend on the marketplace you are selling on. Selling via FBM also requires you to handle returns, and there are quite high demands from Amazon in this regard.
Which is Best – FBA or FBM?
When choosing between the different logistics solutions, you should of course look at your products' margins and the costs of the different options. But, you should also look at the advantages they offer.
Using Amazon's logistics solution is undoubtedly best for conversion as it provides customers with unbeatable delivery times and prices. Additionally, consumers trust Amazon and know what the return process looks like. You can read more about FBA and FBM here: FBA vs FBM.
Product Pages – Amazon SEO and Conversion
Once registration is complete and you have decided on a logistics solution (or at least started looking into it), it's time to set up the product pages. Product pages are EXTREMELY IMPORTANT! They significantly impact conversion rates and are also crucial for SEO.
Conversion on Amazon
The product page presents the product using images, text, and possibly videos – and the product page also includes reviews from previous customers. Without a good product page, most bestsellers would never sell near the quantities they do today.
SEO on Amazon
As mentioned, the product page is also crucial for SEO, and SEO is super important. When you search for, for example, "Omega 3" on Amazon, their search engine returns over 40,000 results – and the only way to appear before all those competitors in the search results is to work on SEO.
Amazon's SEO is heavily influenced by sales, but it is also affected by keywords that are optimally integrated into the product page.
To optimize your SEO, you need to actively work on increasing conversion and sales, but also on keywords. You should conduct analyses to determine which keywords customers are actually searching for and in what volumes – then actively work to incorporate these into the product page. In texts, image captions, and the field Amazon calls Search Terms (keywords that are not visible to the customer but are linked to your product).
Creating Optimized Product Pages
Every product page should have:
- Title
- Images (the more, the better)
- Product Description
- 5 Bullet Points (5 benefits/features of the product)
The texts and images should of course emphasize why a customer should buy the product and should also address many of the common questions the customer has. Questions the customer wants answered before they can consider buying the product. It’s about good old-fashioned copywriting. You should also update the product pages from time to time and adapt them to what your customers are actually searching for, emphasizing the parts that actually convert.
The images should preferably show the product from different angles and when it is being used – here is more information about product images and the rules that apply.
Finally, you should also work with your texts and image captions to optimize SEO. Conduct a thorough keyword analysis for Amazon, ensure you actually know what customers on Amazon are searching for (not on Google or similar), and incorporate those keywords into your texts.
We at SellWave offer to optimize the product pages for you in all different languages.
Branding and Brand Store
For this part of the text to be relevant to you and your company, you need to have a registered trademark. If you do not, it might be worth considering registering it – why?
Because with a registered trademark, you can also register your brand on Amazon (Amazon Brand Registry) and this offers significant advantages. Among other things, you can use different types of ads and you can add more images and videos to the product pages – the product description, which is otherwise just plain text, can then be made into a branded presentation.
Example of how the product description can look without trademark registration:
Example of how the product description can look with trademark registration:
Brand Store – What is it?
A Brand Store is like your own little website within Amazon. Here you can present your company and your product range in your way. You can add information pages and campaign pages, but you can also keep it simple and just showcase all your products.
Here are some examples:
How to Do a Brand Registry?
If you have already completed your registration on Amazon, you can do a Brand Registry directly through your account – if not, you can do a Brand Registry here: Amazon Brand Registry.
Advertising – Setting Up Ads that Drive Sales
Amazon has its own advertising platform that works very similarly to Google’s. Sellers bid a certain amount per click, and the highest bidder wins the ad and is displayed to customers (this is a very simplified version). It is an auction platform where the highest bidder gets the clicks.
Advertising on Amazon can be extremely effective, but for the same reason, there are many competitors who are aggressive with their advertising. This means that advertising can become very expensive for those who do not know how to do it properly.
This would be too long of a text if I were to go through exactly how advertising works and what you should/shouldn't do; that will have to be in another guide. So I will instead try to summarize how it works and how you should use it. Of course, SellWave can also help with this, and I would argue that this is a field where we really stand out from our competitors.
Advertising – How Does it Work?
As mentioned, Amazon uses an auction model where advertisers/sellers bid to be shown to customers. Bids are placed on the different keywords customers are searching for, allowing you to place different bids depending on what the customer is searching for.
For example, you might sell blue shoes. Customers can search for all sorts of keywords you would like the shoes to appear for – such as “shoes,” “summer shoes,” “shoes for girls aged 12,” “blue shoes.”
The likelihood of a customer converting depends a lot on what they are looking for and thus searching for. Therefore, you should also adjust your ad bids accordingly. If the customer searches for “shoes,” you might only be willing to pay 1 SEK per click, but if a customer searches for “blue shoes,” you might be willing to pay 5 SEK per click.
You can also adjust how exact you want to be in the keywords you want to appear for – maybe you want to appear for all possible searches that contain the word “shoes,” or maybe you only want to appear for the exact keyword “shoes” – or maybe you want to be shown for both of these options but are willing to pay different amounts for the clicks. This can be adjusted using match types.
As mentioned… this is very briefly described, and we have only covered a minimal part of the topic of advertising.
Advertising – Should You Use It?
The short answer is YES! Amazon ads convert very well, and customers are on Amazon to shop, not to search for information. The ads can therefore become a big cash cow in themselves, but they also affect SEO.
SEO, as mentioned above, is extremely important, and the ads can actually help with this. Amazon's SEO is highly influenced by sales and conversion, and the ads allow for improvement in both these areas.
It's not hard to understand that more ads affect total sales – which thus positively impacts SEO. When it comes to conversion, the connection is not as obvious. Ads give us ways to measure which searches actually convert and allow you as an advertiser to invest more in these words. This leads to an overall improvement in the product page conversion rate and thus also improves SEO. The information on which keywords convert can also be used to optimize the product page texts.
When Should You Use Ads?
My answer is “Always!”. But, especially when launching a new product. At the beginning of a product launch, it is almost impossible for that product to be visible on its own in the search results, and that is not surprising. Amazon has no data that this product sells or converts well, so why show that product when there are other products that Amazon knows sell? When the product starts selling through ads, you can see it slowly but surely starting to appear higher and higher in the organic search results.
Investing heavily in ads at the beginning can also be a good way to get the first reviews quickly.
Therefore, we strongly recommend always using ads, but especially during launches. Make sure you have set up ads before or shortly after the products go live.
Launch – Launching on Amazon
Launching on Amazon doesn’t have to mean a big event – the launch can be done quietly or with campaigns to your existing customer base/followers if you really want the sales to get off to a strong start.
But regardless of how you launch, you must first be registered, have a clear strategy and goals. Your logistics solution must be in place, and all the work with product pages and SEO should be done. When it comes to advertising and brand registration, this should also be done but can also be resolved afterward. However, I strongly recommend not waiting too long with advertising – this should be started as soon as possible to not lose momentum.
Once you are live, much of the hard work should be done, and going forward, the work is primarily about customer support and optimizing advertising. Strategy and SEO may also need to be reviewed from time to time.
Now What?
After the launch, as mentioned in the previous section, active work on several fronts is required to maximize sales and profit.
Support & Customer Contact
What needs to be reviewed and managed most often is the seller account. Any messages from customers need to be answered, and if you have chosen to handle logistics yourself, you also need to arrange returns when those requests come in.
Customers can also leave reviews and ask questions on the product pages, and it is very good if you can respond to these as quickly and well as possible.
Advertising
Advertising should also be managed actively and often. At SellWave, we manage our customers' ads daily to achieve maximum results. If you handle the ads yourself, it may be difficult to manage and optimize ads as often, but we strongly recommend doing it at least once a week – especially at the start.
Strategy and Goals
Of course, you should also review your strategy and results regularly. Are you on track to reach the goals you want? And if not, is there something you can do differently? Try something new? Invest more?
You should not analyze the strategy too often, especially not at the start. It takes time before you get a return on your SEO and advertising, but if the trend is going in the wrong direction, you might want to see if it is due to shortcomings in your strategy or execution.
Other Aspects
There are other things you should work on as well. For example, SEO and conversion should be reviewed regularly, and you may also want to review your logistics solution from time to time. However, these parts usually do not need to be inspected and adjusted as often as the above areas, assuming you did thorough work before the launch.
The same goes for product images, Brand Store, etc. It’s good to review them periodically, but certainly not every week or month.
Summary
Hopefully, you now have a good understanding of what needs to be done to get started and sell successfully on Amazon. We may not have gone into detail, but you should now have a good overview of Amazon and know where you and your company should start and which points you need to check to succeed.
If you appreciate the guide and think it provided you with good information, SellWave and I would be extremely grateful if you would share it. On social media or with a colleague who would also appreciate the guide. Thank you!
Below is a checklist so that you and your team can easily check off the points related to Amazon that you need to address.
Extra – Checklist for Selling on Amazon
Now you should have a good grasp of the basics of selling on Amazon. Here is a checklist so that you (or your entire company) can easily check off the things you are aware of or have already solved.
[ ] We know our market size, opportunities, and competition on Amazon.
[ ] A decision to sell on Amazon has been made (and on which of Amazon's platforms).
[ ] Someone at the company is diving into strategy for Amazon.
[ ] Registration on Amazon is completed for the marketplaces we want to sell on.
[ ] We have determined which parts of our product range we want to sell on Amazon.
[ ] We have a plan for how we will work with our product pages for SEO and conversion.
[ ] The logistics solution we will use (FBA or FBM) is established, and we are aware of the pros and cons.
[ ] We have a clear plan for how we will work with ads on Amazon.
[ ] Launch on Amazon is done, and our product pages are now live.
[ ] There is a clear strategy for how we will work with advertising, strategy, and support after the launch.
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