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Dear Amazon Seller,

This newsletter will cover the following topics

1) Post-Christmas Customer Returns

2) Post-Christmas Business Analysis

3) Checkout by Amazon. How Can I activate it?

 

1) Post-Christmas Customer Returns

After the Christmas season in particular, there are various reasons why you would be more likely to receive customer returns. For example, the package has been lost, the package arrived after Christmas, the buyer changed his mind and no longer wants the item etc. To provide a good customer experience, you should ensure that you respect the Marketplace Returns and Refunds policies. Please be friendly and professional at all times and show an understanding attitude to your customers. These rules of thumb should help you deal with your customer returns efficiently and successfully.

Respond to customer requests quickly

In order to maintain excellent performance statistics, we recommend that you handle your customer enquiries in as short a timeframe as possible, ideally within 24 hours.
 

Make quick refunds where necessary

If you receive returns from your customers, please take their requests seriously, and make the necessary reimbursements as quickly as possible. From experience, we know that fast communication and a generous approach to customers can lead to higher customer feedback ratings and reduce potential A-Z claims.

Please note:

You can only refund the customer if the order was confirmed as shipped in your account.
Once you have refunded the customer, you cannot revoke it.
Amazon.co.uk will retain the lesser of either Five British Pounds (GBP) (£5) or twenty percent (20%) of the applicable, original Referral Fee (if the Amazon Site is the UK Amazon Site) when crediting your account for non-media items.

Monitor your customer feedback:

Many successful sellers monitor their customer feedback very closely. If you receive negative feedback from customers, the best practice is for you to research the root cause behind each negative rating, address the customer's problems to resolve the conflict, and make improvements to your processes and policies. This helps prevent misunderstandings and may convince some buyers to change their mind and remove their bad rating. Therefore we recommend that you monitor your feedback and try to resolve any customer misunderstandings. 

 

Go to ‘Manage Orders’ and click on the name of the buyer in the ‘Contact Buyer’ column to send a message

For more information on customer feedback, please follow this link.

 

Identify products with high customer returns:

In order to increase your sales and reduce customer returns, you should familiarise yourself with the nature and trend of the returns. One way to check is under the reports/payments/transactions refunds menu, where you can see the item details. For FBA orders, you can use the reports/Amazon Fulfilment Reports/Returns menu. Once you have gone through your customer returns, you should ask yourself the following questions: What were the products with the highest customer returns and why? Can you prevent these issues from happening again? Should you continue to range these products?

Attend the webinar for more information on customer returns

On 17th January we will be hosting a webinar on the subject of customer returns. If you are interested, please register here: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/183124449

 

 2) Post-Christmas Business Analysis

The New Year provides a very good opportunity to clean up your inventory after the Christmas sales season. When you are reviewing your performance, be sure to visit the various business reports in Seller Central which can give you a high and low level analysis. You will be able to identify any slow-movers and key sellers:
 

Overstock and slow-movers

The ‘Detail Page Sales and Traffic’ section in Business Report highlights your best-selling and least popular items:
 
You can also compare units sold with current stock quantity:
•    Export the Detail Page Sales and Traffic report for a specific period. For example, 1 month
•    Download an Inventory File by going to Inventory / Download inventory file and see your stock levels by item
•    Identify those items with high stock levels and low sales history (slow movers)
 
The example above shows an item which the seller sold 91 units of in one month and has 2,096 units of in stock. With sales at this current run rate the seller has 23 months of cover (2,096 divided by 91) before he runs out of stock.

Identify seasonal lines

Using the ‘Detail Page Sales and Traffic’ Business Report you are able to identify your seasonal items. If you pull a report that covers a very long period, you may be able to identify  which of your products have seasonal sales peaks. For example, ski gear in winter, jewellery around St. Valentine’s day etc.

Sell through your overstock seasonal lines

Once you have identified the relevant lines, there are several ways you can sell it through:
You could set up a promotion to make them more visible and attractive to your customers. Please follow this link to learn how to setup promotions.

Attend the webinar on this topic

On 24th January we will be hosting a webinar in which we will discuss post-Christmas sales analysis and give guidance on setting up promotions. Register here: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/680270600

3) Checkout by Amazon. How can I activate it?

Checkout by Amazon is a complete checkout and payments service for e-commerce retailers. You can enable millions of Amazon customers to use payment and delivery information in their Amazon accounts to buy safely and conveniently, without leaving your website.

Offer your customers an additional checkout and payment option on your site.  These are the customer and seller benefits;

Benefits 

•    Fast & convenient checkout

Millions of Amazon customers can complete purchases without having to re-enter their delivery or payment information. With Checkout by Amazon, customers stay on your website throughout the purchase experience.

•    Lower costs and reduced bad debt

There are no start-up charges, monthly charges, or hidden fees when using Amazon Payments. Amazon's proven fraud detection capabilities, chargeback controls, and risk management processes reduce bad debt and lower your costs.

•    Greater control

Choose from two checkout flows based on your business needs to provide customers a seamless purchase experience. Standard Checkout allows customers to review all their order details and complete the order in a single click. Inline Checkout enables you to embed the Amazon address book and wallet into your existing checkout experience.

•    Easy to integrate, customisable checkout experience

Integrate easily with Checkout by Amazon using cut-and-paste, configurable JavaScript code. Customise the Checkout by Amazon experience to match your website look and feel, for a consistent brand experience throughout the checkout process.

•    Complete e-commerce checkout service

Checkout by Amazon is a complete checkout service with tools for you to manage delivery charges, promotions, and post-sale activities including refunds, cancellations and chargebacks. It also enables you to allow your customers to ship items in a single order to multiple addresses.

For further information or if you would like to register, please follow this link Checkout by Amazon

If you have any questions, feel free to contact our Technical Support Team. Our colleagues will be very pleased to help in any way they can.

Wishing you a strong and successful start to your sales in 2012.
 
With kind regards
Amazon Services Team