The competition in the Amazon marketplace is fierce. The e-commerce giant commands a massive customer base that visits the site daily, generating billions in sales. Of those sales, 56 percent were third-party sellers.

Digging deeper, of those third-party sellers, the most successful have learned to leverage Amazon’s FBA services. As FBA caters to Amazon’s Prime Members, these sellers see better sales and conversion rates than general sellers. 

For nearly every seller on Amazon, the FBA program provides a tremendous benefit. Understanding it can be a bit tricky, however. That is why today we’re going to look at what FBA is, and how you can utilize it for online sales success. 

What is Amazon FBA 

Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) is a service that Amazon offers to third-party sellers. The main purpose of this is to enable anyone to outsource their shipping, returns, refunds, and storage needs to Amazon’s warehouses. 

Sellers simply send their products to Amazon, and they process orders. This frees the seller to do what they do best: sell. 

Of course, there is a fee associated with this. However, the benefits frequently outweigh the costs for sellers. The key is to balance FBA fees and your ability to move products. 

Why Use Amazon FBA?

There are many benefits to utilizing Amazon’s FBA program. These include:

Shipping

Selling products is only half the battle. Once they’re sold, you still have to wrap, stamp, and send them.

Shipping is one of the main features of the Amazon FBA program — a great relief to sellers everywhere that are sick of spending all their time on shipping. 

This means all you have to do is track your listings and inventory. Then let Amazon take care of the rest of the process. Packaging, shipping, and tracking are all taken care of by Amazon directly.

Even more importantly, this gives your customers access to Amazon’s delivery times. All FBA products become eligible for Prime free shipping and shipping times. 

Fast, reliable shipping is currently an expectation, not a benefit. If you were to try and keep up with the next-day shipping power of Amazon, it would require costly premium shopping rates.

Storage

Not all of us can have a spacious warehouse on standby, and let’s face it, how much inventory can you manage on your own? FBA provides a solution by granting access to virtually unlimited space via Amazon’s vast network of warehouses. For a fee, you can utilize one of the biggest networks of warehouses for your own business. 

Customer Service

Amazon provides its customer service for FBA sellers. However, you can also use their platform to care for customer service needs personally while using the same platform for easier management. 

Multiple Channels for Fulfillment 

FBA recently started providing multi-channel solutions. As such, you can now also sell your products on other platforms such as eBay, and Amazon will still fulfill them! 

With this feature, businesses can market products across platforms, and still rely on the same service. 

Starting Right with FBA 

As with all things, it is important to start with FBA right. Jumping in without a plan is never wise in business. 

Start Smart

It is tempting to immediately start sending products to the warehouse. Before you do, you need to know what is going to sell. 

Start with a small selection of items to list with FBA so you can ease into learning best practices. These should be products you are familiar with, and know are going to sell.

Once you have learned the best practices for the platform, you can diversify with other items. This will help you avoid accruing warehouse fees on items that aren’t moving. 

Marketing

As in all commerce, marketing is key to getting the most out of FBA. Amazon has a massive customer base, and this means it’s an incredibly competitive market. Before getting started, make sure you’re ready to run an effective marketing campaign.

This is the secret of the top sellers on Amazon. Their marketing campaigns make their products rise above the rest. You’ll need to be ready to do the same to make your FBA products as effective as possible. 

Learn and Keep SEO Best Practices

It is always best to optimize Amazon listings for organic rankings. By learning the SEO best practices for Amazon listings, you will get more out of your FBA products. To do this, format listings and include information that puts your products in front of shoppers when they make a query. 

Here we’re going to list some of the most important qualities of a listing to optimize for SEO rankings on Amazon. 

• Description – The description should include all the information necessary for a customer to make an informed purchase. 
• Images – Amazon recommends sellers provide six images and at least one video for all products. You can pack a lot of selling points into these. So, do not underestimate them! 
• Title – Amazon provides 150 to 250 characters for titles. Make the best use of this space, and include necessary product elements and keywords here!
• Backend keywords – This is the most important part of the listing that the customer can’t see. Research your product thoroughly and provide strings of the most important keywords to your product.
• Bullet points – This is the place to present the most important information on a product. Amazon says keeping this section below 1,000 characters improves readability and discoverability.

Keep this information in mind when starting with FBA to ensure success and profitability.

More Tips for FBA sales 

Breaking into the Amazon marketplace can be a challenge as it is. So, here are some more tips to help you with your FBA sales. 

Analytics

Research is the name of the game. Use analytic tools to find the most profitable products on Amazon. This information helps determine which are the best products to sell and which will be the most successful when listed with FBA. If they’re doing well, you can get in on that success by doing well. 

Bundle Items

There are a lot of similar products on Amazon. Some of these only vary slightly in price and reviews. Try bundling items to draw attention and give customers more in one listing. This will drive sales and keep warehouse fees down.

Remember your Brand

Selling is more than making products available. Asserting your brand identity with your listings is a good way to stand out on Amazon. This will build a reputation with your target audience. Those that recognize your brand provides quality products are sure to give you repeat business across product categories. 

How Else Can You Succeed with Amazon

These are just some of the important points to remember when setting up with Fulfillment by Amazon. The endeavor can be complex and intimidating to newcomers looking to make a profit. 

That is why at Anata we offer services that will help you handle and improve your chances on the Amazon Marketplace whether you use FBA or not. Contact us today to free yourself of the tedious parts of running an amazon marketplace. 

Whether it’s education, brand essentials, or total handling of your Amazon profile, we’re here to help. We don’t get paid unless you do, so you know that we’re willing to put our money where our mouth is!

Free up your time to focus on the important things with our services.