Ecommerce News Roundup: September Recap
As September comes to a close and October begins, BQool is here to keep you informed with the latest Amazon news. A lot has happened in September, so sellers should stay alert!
Buy with Prime Announces Shopify app, Reviews, Cart, and 24/7 Live Chat
Launched last year, Buy with Prime allows you to offer a Prime shopping experience of fast, free delivery, seamless checkout, and easy returns on your own ecommerce site, and use your Amazon inventory to fulfill Buy with Prime orders. Buy with Prime is shown to increase customer conversion by an average of 25%* with 1–2-day shipping and transparent delivery times.
At Amazon Accelerate, Amazon shared updates on Buy with Prime features to help you acquire new shoppers and convert them into customers.
Buy with Prime app for Shopify
The new app natively integrates with Shopify’s checkout and admin, allowing you to manage orders, listing updates, promotions, performance analytics and returns all in the one place. The Buy with Prime app for Shopify is now available in pre-release. Reserve your spot by registering for early access at Shopify interest list.
Reviews from Amazon
Increase customer confidence by displaying trusted Amazon.com reviews on the product pages of your own site at no additional cost. For more information, go to Reviews from Amazon.
Buy with Prime cart
You can now offer Buy with Prime cart, in addition to the single purchase option launched last year. Shoppers can purchase multiple products in one transaction, helping you boost average order value and optimize fulfillment costs. To find out more, go to 6 best practices to boost cart building.
Buy with Prime Assist
With Buy with Prime Assist, shoppers now receive 24/7 live chat support – even on holidays – at no additional cost. Our customer service team can answer post-order inquiries on Buy with Prime orders, and direct any questions about your brand to your customer service email. Learn more about Buy with Prime Assist.
For more information, read the announcement or go to Buy with Prime.
Accelerate wraps up with Sustainability Initiatives and Purpose-Driven Businesses
Amazon Accelerate wraps up initiatives to help you minimize packaging waste by shipping your products with less packaging, help your customers discover your more-sustainable products with certifications, and measure your sustainability efforts. Amazon also honored three small businesses for their work in their local communities.
Ships in Product Packaging Announced (Brand seller can provide their own Package Box to Amazon buyers)
Launching in 2024 to all sellers using FBA, this program involves working with us to redesign your packaging so that your products can ship in their own branded product packaging, without any added Amazon packaging. The program can reduce expenses with lower FBA fees, cost-effective packaging, and reduced transportation costs due to more compact products. Amazon will share more information on Ships in Product Packaging in the coming months.
New Climate Pledge Friendly certifications
Amazon added three new certifications to qualify for a Climate Pledge Friendly badge:
- SCS Recycled Content Standard, a third-party certification recognizing electronics with high utilization of recycled content.
- International Sustainability & Carbon Certification Plus, a third-party certification that recognizes bio-based materials and proof that a product can be renewed or regenerated rather than disposed of.
- Plant-Based Fiber Blended, an Amazon developed certification recognizing more-sustainable plant-based materials in textiles.
For more information on our Climate Pledge Friendly program, including a list of all certifications, go to Enroll products in our Climate Pledge Friendly program.
Customer analytics, View in Your Room and Fit Insights announced at Accelerate
At Day 2 of Amazon Accelerate, Amazon announced new tools and features to provide insights and grow your business in Amazon’s store.
Here are some highlights from the Day 2 morning session:
Customer Loyalty Analytics Dashboard (Brand)
Amazon Customer Loyalty Analytics Dashboard provides an easy-to-view snapshot of customer behavior and historical trends. Analyze purchase patterns and tailor your products, discounts, and communications to the right shoppers, so you can make the most of your marketing efforts and increase your overall customer lifetime value. Customer Loyalty Analytics is coming soon to registered brands in the US.
Read the announcement to learn more.
Identify Opportunities to Sell Products That are in High Demand in the EU, the UK, and Japan
Marketplace Product Guidance provides weekly customer insights and FBA selection recommendations. Based on the guidance, decide which products and what inventory levels you want to offer in the US, the EU, the UK, and Japan.
Marketplace Product Guidance uses machine learning to generate predictive recommendations based on the opportunity that your products may have across different stores. You can also use category insights to analyze and target the preferences of your buyers.
The tool offers the following types of product recommendations:
- Global product demand uses machine learning to analyze more than 600 data points and recommend stores where you have the best potential for expansion.
- Category insights allows you to analyze category trends, including metrics for selection and competition across stores. You can tailor your product offerings in accordance with the preferences of your buyers.
What is demand?
Amazon identifies the demand of the product considering 300+ demand factors e.g. unit sold potential, glance views, search to purchase ratio etc.
What is the Popularity of the Product?
Amazon identifies Popularity of the product considering factors e.g. unit sold, glance views etc.
Set Competitive Prices with New Similar Product Dashboard
The new Similar Product dashboard allows you to identify, compare, and track prices of products similar to your listing on Amazon in one place.
With the new dashboard, you can compare the prices of up to five similar products and adjust your pricing strategy right from your Manage Inventory page on Seller Central.
How Many Similar Products can I add?
You (amazon seller) can add up to five similar products per offer in the Similar Products Details view. Once you’ve added similar products, you can remove or replace them with other products.
Why do some offers have no median or minimum similar price?
Median and minimum similar prices are calculated based on the similar products that you’re comparing against. If no similar products have been added, there won’t be any prices to compare against. Once you add similar products, you’ll be able to view the minimum and median prices for those products.
Where can I view and track the prices of similar products that I configured for my offer?
In Manage Inventory, under the Price and shipping cost column, click View more. You’ll have an option to view the similar products configured for your offer, and you can add, replace, or delete similar products.
Generative AI Listing Capabilities Announced at Amazon Accelerate
At Day 1 of Amazon Accelerate, Amazon announced new set of generative artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities that will make it faster and easier for you to list new products as well as enrich existing listings.
AI-generated listing content for new listings
Amazon has made new generative AI capabilities available to you to reduce the work it takes to create compelling product titles, bullet points and descriptions.
The new capabilities use large language models (LLMs) – a type of machine learning model specifically trained on insights and metrics that can recognize, summarize, translate, predict, and generate text and other content – to build more comprehensive product descriptions.
When you create a new single-product listing, you only need to provide a brief description of the product in a few words or sentences, and Amazon generates high-quality content for your review. You can refine it if you want to, or directly submit the automatically generated content to the Amazon catalog.
These AI listing capabilities are now available to all US sellers. To get started, go to Add Products and create a new listing.
Amazon Shipping, Veeqo Credits, and Emerald notifications announced at Accelerate Day 1
Emerald: Get third-party app notifications within Seller Central
Amazon global pilot program, Emerald, makes it easier for you to manage and act on key business updates from your third-party apps by integrating app notifications directly into Seller Central. Emerald notifications are available for more than a dozen third-party applications, with more to be added in the months ahead.
To find out more, read the announcement or go to the Selling Partner Appstore.
It’s not too late to register now and join Amazon virtually for Day 2 of Amazon Accelerate.
Today, Amazon also announced a new program, currently code-named Emerald. Rather than having to go to multiple websites or apps, Emerald aims to simplify sellers’ experience with third party apps by integrating elements of their experiences directly in Seller Central. The first feature is notifications, allowing sellers to receive third-party app alerts directly within their Seller Central Homepage, enabling sellers to access, organize and act on critical updates without having to navigate multiple places. The initial Emerald notifications experience is now live globally with more than a dozen apps addressing various seller needs that have made their notifications available directly within Seller Central. To learn more about apps that have Emerald notifications and are live today, visit the Selling Partner Appstore. As Amazon continues to incorporate more apps and features into the Selling Partner Appstore, sellers can expect more capabilities that harness both Amazon’s innovations and third-party developer creativity that together make it easier for sellers to manage their business and accelerate their growth.
Customer analytics, View in Your Room and Fit Insights announced at Accelerate
At Day 2 of Amazon Accelerate, Amazon announced new tools and features to provide insights and grow your business in Amazon’s store.
Amazon Customer Loyalty Analytics Dashboard provides an easy-to-view snapshot of customer behavior and historical trends. Analyze purchase patterns and tailor your products, discounts, and communications to the right shoppers, so you can make the most of your marketing efforts and increase your overall customer lifetime value. Customer Loyalty Analytics is coming soon to registered brands in the US.
Customer Sentiment Insights (new feature)
With the newly improved Customer Sentiment Insights tool, you’ll be able to access comprehensive analytics on customer preferences with the click of a button. New feature enhancements will provide more information on customer sentiment, not only from reviews, but also customer returns. Analyze trend changes over time and benchmark customer sentiment for all ASINs against top performing sellers in a category, so you can understand customer needs and strengthen your brand positioning. These insights will be available later this year in the US, UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain, with Japan soon to follow.
Read the announcement, or go to Review Insights for more information.
Visualize products on tables and countertops
Amazon continually improve our product discovery experience to make it easier for customers to find products and make confident purchase decisions. Our View in Your Room feature uses augmented reality to help customers visualize how your product would look in their space. In addition to items placed on the floor, the feature is now available for items that fit on your tabletop on iOS and Android devices. The new experience is available for more than 200 tabletop product types, such as lamps and home décor.
To learn more, go to View in Your Room.
Fit Insights
Fit Insights helps brands to better understand the size and fit of their apparel and shoe products, improve their product offering, and reduce returns. Fit Insights uses machine learning, including large language models, to analyze returns data, size charts, and customer feedback on fit, fabric, and style, to recommend updates to a brand’s size chart and product listings. Fit Insights will be available to US apparel and shoe brands and their authorized resellers starting this October.
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