Mistakes. Nobody likes to make ‘em, but they’re an unavoidable part of doing business. That being said, RepricerExpress has come across this list of 10 Amazon seller mistakes you should make your 10 commandments and avoid at all costs. There are easier and more forgiving ways of discovering new methods to employ.
Mistake 1: Not Having Clear Returns Policies
As much as you’d love every buyer to be totally satisfied with their purchase, you’ll inevitably run across people who want to send the item back, for whatever reason. And little sucks more than feeling like you’re stuck with your purchase, so clearly outline your returns policy so buyers can make as informed decision as possible.
Related: 6 Steps to Take When Dealing with Amazon Returns
Mistake 2: Skimping out on Quality Listings
Your product listings are the first point of contact your buyers will make with you, so why would you ever give that part less than your best? One awesome way of maximising your time while creating great listings is to start off with a template for each item or category, then mass-producing it while changing the images, image URLs and description.
Mistake 3: Ignoring Policy Changes and Updates
Whenever Amazon sends you a notification of a policy or metric change, you’d be wise to thoroughly read over it and see what you have to change. The consequences of this can include having your account suspended — or even terminated — so take the few minutes necessary to keep updated on these things and implement the changes.
Mistake 4: Not Keeping Your Promises
You’re only as good as your word, which is especially important considering you don’t have the opportunity for non-verbal communication with your buyers because everything’s done online. Don’t offer promises you can’t keep; of the promises you do make, treat them with the utmost importance so buyers know they can always count on you.
Mistake 5: Confusing Negative Feedback with Inaccurate Feedback
Feedback has to do with one of two areas: you or the product. If a buyer leaves negative feedback about your performance, that’s one thing (but still one thing you should be contacting them about to try and remedy that in the future). But if it’s about the product, you can get this feedback removed because it doesn’t actually reflect on you as the seller. Same thing goes when the feedback has to do with FBA, as that’s on them, not you.
Related reading: How to Remove Negative Feedback on Amazon
Mistake 6: Super Long Wait Times for Buyers
No matter if it’s queries, purchases, returns or anything else, taking your sweet time when getting back to a customer can lead to the death knell for you. It’s your business to respond to consumers as promptly as possible, so do so in order to keep your metrics high in your Contact Response Time (CRT). And if you take weekends off from your business, make sure someone’s there to answer emails during that time.
Mistake 7: Not Taking Advantage of All Marketplace Services
Thinking you can go at everything alone is one of the biggest Amazon seller mistakes you can make. There are so many tools at your disposal, you should be reaching out and using them as often as possible. It can be as simple as using FBA to handle your order fulfilment for you, or implementing Amazon Prime to latch onto a bigger pool of buyers.
Mistake 8: Letting Updates go by the Wayside
We talked a bit about the policy changes and metric updates Amazon sends out, but you should also pay attention the general updates Amazon sends out, too. This one isn’t really an optional one the way ignoring updates on your iPhone apps is, but rather an essential process to keep current on so you keep your listings online and current. If you don’t, something as innocuous as having a product in the now-incorrect category could lead to some major embarrassment.
Mistake 9: Keeping Things TOO Local
It’s great to sell to your own country or continent, as it means you thoroughly understand what the buyers in that region want and how to market to them. But ignoring the international market means you’re losing out on a much bigger audience — and a potentially much bigger source of revenue.
Mistake 10: Getting Complacent in Your Performance
If the sales are coming in like they always used to, it can be easy to think you’re on the right track and don’t need to change. But differences can often take some time to appear, so keep analysing what you’re doing and keep on top of things. The fabulous thing about metrics is you can keep track of a number of different areas, and in a variety of time-frames, too, so falling behind should never become an excuse.
Final Thoughts
One of the best ways you can further your learning and growth is by recognising your mistakes and avoiding them in the future. And by identifying all the potential pitfalls, you can keep track of the things you shouldn’t be doing and start focusing on what you should be doing. Want to hear an unofficial 11th mistake sellers make? Not using RepricerExpress to aggressively price their products to stay ahead of the competition. And a 12th mistake is not starting your 15-day free trial right now.
