Christmas Selling Tips for Amazon Sellers

Update Your Account Settings and Policies

As a seller on Amazon, you have a lot going on over the festive period. Spare yourself unnecessary headaches by making sure the information on your seller account is up to date.

1. Confirm that your email contact information in Seller Central is up to date.
2. Confirm that communications from Amazon are not being processed as junk mail by your email program.
3. Explain your delivery and return polices clearly, and display other delivery information such as options and prices.
4. Post a customer service phone number
5. Make sure you follow our policies by not displaying any portion or version of your URL (e.g., .com, dot com, .net, etc.) anywhere on Amazon.

Offer Promotions and Free Delivery

Customers love promotions because they offer ways to save money. When considering online purchases, your buyers will be looking at the whole range of promotional offerings – for example, a percentage or a few pounds off the price, or free delivery on the order.

Manage Your Inventory Proactively

As your orders start to build up during the festive period, make sure you can keep up with the demand by following a few good practices:

1. Identify which of your products are likely to be your big sellers for Christmas and make sure you have enough stock available.
2. Pay very careful attention when matching your items to existing product detail pages in our catalogue. Correct matching helps to optimise your buyers’ Christmas shopping experience by ensuring that they receive exactly the product they are expecting. 
3. Always keep your listing details up to date using the tools in your seller account.
4. If you use inventory uploads, keep in mind that all items in a feed must be processed before changes to any items will appear on the Amazon website.

Improved Low Inventory Alerts and Christmas Inventory Planning Support

Keep  inventory in stock with real-time Low Inventory alerts

Use the Low Inventory alerts available  through Amazon Selling Coach to help ensure your inventory is well stocked in the run-up to  Christmas. The Low Inventory alerts are updated in real time and let you know within  minutes if your products are out of stock or could be out of stock within the  next 21 days based on current sales.  You  can view all your products with low inventory in the Restock these Low Inventory Items report within  Business Reports.You can view your out of stock products in the Restock Out-of-Stock Items report within  Business Reports. If you wish to receive these notifications via  email, you can set up your preferred email address in Notification Preferences.

Create Compelling Product Detail Pages with Category Style Guides

Amazon provides a consistent look and feel in every category.  Amazon category-specific Style Guides are a convenient, printable reference to help you create concise, accurate and compelling detail pages for your products.

Consider Relisting Popular Out of Stock Products

As you may know, Amazon notify sellers by email when a significant number of potential buyers are looking for a product you once sold on Amazon.co.uk.

If you receive one of these “popular out-of-stock notifications”, we encourage you to take advantage of the recent customer interest in the product and offer it again for the festive period.

Offer Expedited Delivery

 Speedy delivery is especially important to your customers during the festive period. By offering expedited delivery, you are showing that you care about customer satisfaction.
Sellers who offer a next-day and 2-day delivery service can increase the number of orders they receive, as they’re giving buyers a couple of extra days to order their items in time to arrive for Christmas.

Meet these expectations for the delivery options you select:

1. Domestic Standard Delivery: The buyer should receive the order within 3 to 5 working days of the day of dispatch.
2. Expedited Delivery: The buyer should receive the order within 1 to 2 working days of the day of dispatch.

Pack with care

Many of the orders placed in the run-up to Christmas are intended as presents. Buyers expect to receive them on time and also in excellent condition. Having to return items that have been damaged in transit is never a good buying experience – and even less so at this time of year.

Make sure your buyers have an entirely positive experience by following a few good packaging practices:

1. Pack fragile items carefully using bubble wrap or polystyrene chips
2. Use a ‘Fragile’ sticker or mark the package clearly as needing to be handled with care.
3. Place your item in its original box (if you still have it), then put it in a slightly larger box and fill the space with paper, polystyrene or cardboard. If the contents still have space to move around, add more packaging.

Send your seller account on holiday

 Taking some time off for Christmas? The Listings Status feature allows you to change the status of your seller-fulfilled listings to "Inactive" until you are ready to fulfil orders again.

1. In Seller Central, click Settings and then click Account Info. 
2. Scroll to the Listings Status section.
3. Click the Edit button, select Inactive, and then click Submit. Within one hour your listings will be unavailable for sale on Amazon.co.uk.  You will still be able to create and edit listings.  Note: The Edit button is only available to users who have been authorised to manage inventory for the selling account.
4. When you are ready to sell again, go back to the Listings Status editing page and change the status of your listings to Active. They will reappear on the site within an hour.

Give Great Customer Service

Sellers who give great customer service can see the results in good feedback and repeat sales. Here are some good practices to help you to obtain positive feedback:

1. Try to respond to customer enquiries within 24 hours. Good communication with buyers promotes good feedback.
2. Add a personal touch by including "thank you" notes on packing slips.
3. Clearly describe your delivery processes as well as privacy policy, available gift services and other relevant information.

Source: Amazon seller central headlines