Ecommerce News Recap: October Roundup
As an Amazon seller, it’s crucial to stay updated on the ever-changing world of ecommerce. Keeping up with the latest news and developments can directly impact on your business. Our Ecommerce News Roundup provides a convenient and comprehensive source for all the important information that could affect your operations in 2023. Let’s look at the top stories from October!
🎃 Get More Control of Automated Handling Time with Feature Updates!
Amazon made improvements to the automated handling time feature for seller-fulfilled orders. These updates will help protect you from order surges and will show more accurate delivery promises, which can result in increased sales.
Automated handling time is a feature that sets a more accurate handling time per SKU based on your past performance to make the delivery date on your offers more attractive to customers.
The following improvements have been introduced for automated handling time:
- Same-day handling time: Automated handling time will now apply a same-day handling time to SKUs that you ship on the day that you receive an order, which will show more accurate delivery promises.
- Override for order-handling capacity: Automated handling time will set your order-handling capacity based on your past performance, but you now have the option to manually override it if your operations improve.
- Option to revert to previous handling time: If you decide to switch off automated handling time, it will revert your SKU-specific handling time to what it was before you enabled this feature. Now you can try the feature without losing your pre-configured values.
To enable this feature, go to Automated handling time.
To learn more, go to Introduction to automated handling time.
Automated handling time – Optimize your handling time by leveraging your performance data
Automated handling time automates the management of your handling times based on your historical handling time. It looks at how you’ve performed recently and adjusts your default handling time, SKU-level handling times, and order handling capacity accordingly.
🕷️ Changes to Amazon Product Visibility Policy
Amazon has updated its program policy for product visibility to explain how Amazon highlighted products that customers may be interested in based on factors such as related products and customer reviews. These changes will enter effect on October 11, 2023.
For more information, go to How products are given visibility in the Amazon store.
Highlighted products
Badges: Badges highlight product information to help customers find items they might like (Like Best seller’s badge, Amazon’s Choice, Lightning deal or deal of the day)
Other product highlights: Amazon will show customers product, it thinks they will be interested in, based on a customer’s search, browsing or purchase history or other offers on the page.
😱 Manage funds and Pay Vendors Directly in Seller Central
Amazon Seller Wallet allows you to hold your US store proceeds, convert USD to 20+ different currencies, and transfer desired amounts to your bank accounts. Now, you can send USD payments to vendors with a US or Hong Kong bank account, directly from your Seller Wallet.
The ability to pay your vendors directly means you no longer need to transfer funds to your bank before making payments to your business partners.
If you sell globally, you’ll also save on currency conversion fees and avoid losses when you use USD proceeds to cover USD-based business expenses. Once you set up your vendors’ bank account, you can pay them easily with your US store proceeds. From there, you can keep track of all the payments you’ve made in one place.
Enroll today.for more information, go to Seller Wallet.
👻 Drive Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales with Brand Tailored Promotions
Run Brand Tailored Promotions during Black Friday and Cyber Monday to take advantage of increased site traffic.
Brand Tailored Promotions allows brands to create exclusive promotional codes ranging from 10% to 50% for your brand followers, prospective customers, and past-purchase customers. With Brand Tailored Promotions, you can:
- Leverage high-traffic events to gain new customers who click on your brand’s products or add your product to their cart.
- Convert prospective customers, such as “Brand cart abandoners” and “Potential new customers,” into buyers by offering them discounts on your brand catalog.
- Re-engage past-purchase customers and prospective customer segments with promotions to keep your brand top of mind.
Eligible customers (audiences) are refreshed weekly, so recently acquired customers can be re-engaged with future promotions.
Your eligible customers can view your promotion on the search, detail, and promotion shopping pages. Each eligible customer can redeem the promotion on a single unit. To activate your audiences, each segment must have a minimum of 1,000 customers.
To learn more, go to the Brand Tailored Promotions help page or watch the overview video.
To find out how Luminara used Brand Tailored Promotions to acquire new customers for their candles, watch the Accelerate brand video.
🧛 Returns window to be extended for 2023 holidays
Similar to previous years, Amazon standard returns window will be temporarily extended in anticipation of customers shopping early for the holidays.
Our 2023 Extended Holiday Returns policy requires that items purchased between November 1, 2023, and December 31, 2023, are returnable through January 31, 2024, except for Apple brand products, which can be returned through January 15, 2024.
This policy applies to seller-fulfilled, FBA, and Amazon retail orders.
Although the returns window for most orders will be extended, returns eligibility for all orders will remain the same.
For more information check Return and Refunds.
🙀 Reminder: November FBA capacity limits
As previously announced, FBA capacity limits will be temporarily reduced in November to accommodate Amazon increased focus on delivery operations. On average, capacity limits for November provide enough storage for five months of inventory.
In November and December, Amazon will focus on processing customer orders. This temporary shift may cause receiving delays but will ensure faster delivery speed and maximize your sales potential during the holiday season.
To ensure that you remain within your November capacity limits, Amazon recommends that you send any inventory intended for 2024 events, such as Lunar New Year, after December 31, 2023.
If you need more capacity after the holiday season, you can use Amazon Warehousing and Distribution to store your additional inventory and automatically replenish fulfillment centers.
View your capacity limits and capacity usage in the Capacity Monitor at the bottom of the FBA dashboard and you can request a limit increase with Capacity Manager if you need additional capacity.
For more information, go to FBA capacity limits.
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