The eCommerce market has drastically improved ever since the launch of Amazon in 1994, with millions of merchants joining the platform to start their own businesses. However, eCommerce isn’t exactly the easy, do-nothing lifestyle that many people make it out to be. Unlike what people think, online retailers still have to do a lot of work in order to ensure their business is running smoothly. From researching trends, sourcing products, and managing inventory, you can always be doing something as a seller. However, that doesn’t mean it has to be difficult. With the creation of the Amazon Seller app, Amazon marketplace sellers’ lives just became a little easier.
How does the Amazon Seller app work? Learn all about it down below!
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How to start your Amazon business
To start an Amazon business, there are many things you should consider in order to start on the right foot. Down we below, we have a step-by-step guide to get you started.
Step 1: Determine what you will sell
Product research is essential in choosing a lucrative product or product category to start selling in. First, you will want to research the market to choose a profitable niche. After that, you can discover the top trending products in that category. A great and easy way to accomplish these tasks is through ZonBase’s ZonResearch tool. This ZonResearch tool uses Amazon’s database to discover winning products and niches. While you can use it to find all-time popular products, you can also use several filters— such as number of reviews, product weight, and even rating averages— to uncover product opportunities that match your criteria. It’s as easy as clicking a button.
Related: How to find products to sell on Amazon
Step 2: Estimate Your Finances
Once you decide on a product, it is important to determine if it is worth investing in or not. You can work this out based on the product’s sale rank and current price using the Chrome Extension tool, which allows you to view relevant data about Amazon products at a glance. You also have to make sure you factor in the price of the item and shipping costs. Another way to determine if the product is a good choice is by using the Product Validator tool. The Product Validator tool gives you information about your selected product to tell you if it would be profitable to sell on Amazon or not.
Step 3: Create an Amazon Seller Central Account
Now, you need to have a Seller Central account to start your Amazon FBA journey. To do this, you can follow the steps below:
- First, visit amazon.com
- Fill in the required details and click continue
- Next, choose a location, and then click ‘Agree and continue’
- Fill all necessary details in the following steps
- Choose a fulfillment option and complete the Amazon FBA sign up registration process
Step 4: Source Your Products
Now, you need to research trustworthy suppliers who are willing to supply your products at a favorable price. Before you decide on one, you should confirm the quality of their items. Another thing to keep in mind is choosing manufacturers who have good return policies and plenty of options.
Step 5: Create Optimized Listings
Optimized listings are crucial to getting your products seen by as many people as possible. A simple way to do this is by using ZonBase’s Listify. Listify is a sure-fire listing creation tool that allows you to create optimized listings by using relevant and high-converting keywords from competitors’ listings. It doesn’t get easier than that.
Step 6: Ship Out Your Products
You are nearly there! Now, you have to send your products to Amazon’s fulfillment center. Before you do, make sure you check on them for no defects and package them well to ensure they stay high quality during the shipment process.
Amazon provides clear guidelines on how to ship your products correctly, so make sure you follow them. If you don’t, you may receive fees from Amazon or even lose customers.
Step 7: Get Sales
Now, you wait until you get sales. However, that doesn’t mean you have to sit twiddling your thumbs. During this period, you can use advertising services to help you reach your target audience and thus increase your chances of making sales.
What is the Amazon Seller app?
Designed by the Amazon team, the Amazon Seller app is a mobile application that allows sellers to manage their accounts directly on their phones. It gives users the freedom and flexibility to take care of their business without being tied to a desk or office. While it’s great for reviewing orders and staying on top of your store notifications, its real value lies in the instant management of time-sensitive tasks, such as responding to customers and changing prices.
What features does the Amazon Seller app have?
Along with the standard options available on your browser, the Amazon Seller app has features exclusive to your smartphone that sellers of all kinds will benefit from. All the features below make it easy and accessible to manage your Amazon store.
Create and edit product listings
Probably the most useful feature of the app, creating and editing listings on the go allows sellers to keep up with Amazon’s market demand. You can scan barcodes, take product pictures, and update documents all with your mobile device’s camera, as well as add offers to existing listings.
Manage pricing
Through the app, you are able to view product-level pricing details, such as competitor offers, low price matches, and fee previews in order to make sensible pricing changes. It is great for repricing your inventory quickly to secure successful revenue opportunities. Along with that, you can use the profitability calculator to estimate your profit margins, a useful tool to ensure your cash flow is always positive.
Fulfill orders
You can choose to receive push notifications for when your products sell as well as get shipment updates to know when your orders are in process, transit, or when they’re completed. Also, if you use FBA to outsource order fulfillment, you can check on the status of those shipments.
Edit product photos
Take product photos on your phone and edit them in Photo Studio for fast, easy uploads.
Oversee inventory
The app allows you to access your inventory details to get detailed analytics and information. This helps you optimize your inventory decisions in order to best meet consumer demand. You can also view FBA inbound or status statistics as well as make quantity changes.
Respond to customer messages
Numbers next to the Communications tab lets you know how many pending messages are in your inbox. You also get alerts whenever you get an inquiry, allowing you to instantly reply on your device.
Manage returns
You can confirm returns and issue refunds with the touch of your fingertips.
Track sales analytics
Following your business and product sales can help you make informed decisions to best maximize your revenue. Through the app, you can view your top-selling products and charts to track sales performance as well as compare your performance to past years.
Why should you use the Amazon Seller app?
While the app doesn’t have too many unique features from Seller Central, its main advantage is making your tasks more convenient with its real-time management. You can fix critical issues at any given moment, such as jumping on important pricing opportunities, inventory alerts, and growth opportunities from the Amazon Selling Coach. Also, the ability to list items from anywhere is extremely useful as you can be ready to sell products even before you leave the warehouse. Best of all, the app is completely free and you can even use it with the free Amazon Seller account!
Disadvantages of the Amazon Seller app
A huge downside of the app is that it is incompatible with other programs such as ZonBase. ZonBase is an extremely useful tool that makes selling on Amazon simple with features such as its Chrome Extension, which shows you valuable information such as the sales history and price changes of certain products.
The reason why this is such a huge downside is that the app currently only shows you the lowest new and used prices of listings, which severely limits selling strategies. For instance, sellers are not able to accurately reprice their items according to market demand, which prevents them from maximizing their profits. Also, many people use Amazon for product resourcing, meaning they can’t make sound sourcing decisions due to the lack of information. We hope with customer feedback that developers will one day fix this issue in the coming updates.
While this is a large caveat, you luckily are still able to use other programs on your computer, making the Amazon Seller app still a great tool for managing your inventory on the go.
How to use the Amazon Seller app
Overall, the Amazon Seller App offers more positives than negatives. With its free price point, there is really no reason not to try it out. If you want to download it, follow these quick steps:
- Create a seller account on Amazon
- Download the app— currently available for iOS and Android
- Log in and start exploring
Now that you have the app, it is only fitting that we help you make the most of it. Read on ahead to learn how to use the Amazon Seller app’s best features.
Create and edit listings
One of the best uses of the app is producing listings on the go, allowing you to get products to the market instantly.
To do this, you can either use your gallery or camera on your phone to upload images for your listing. Also, you can use the built-in photo editing feature to make the images look as appealing as possible. After that, you type in your description and bullet points.
Unfortunately, you won’t be able to use ZonBase’s Listify tool to create optimized listings with relevant and high-converting keywords, but you can always edit the listing later.
Searching for products
In the app, you have three options for finding products.
- Scan the product packaging: Simply hold your camera over the item and the app will search the Amazon database and display important information.
- Scan the product barcode: You can also scan the item’s barcode.
- Search bar: Click on “Add a Product” and manually type the title of the product and/or keywords. This is similar to the search bar on the Amazon website.
This feature is particularly useful for sellers involved in retail arbitrage sourcing.
History and favorites
Like a browser, the Amazon Seller app has tabs to view items you search for regularly. This helps you access your most popular products quickly and easily.
Along with that, every time you scan an item with your camera, the result is stored in your History. You can access the History tab and search through past products by date.
Calculating your profit
Another great feature of the app is determining the profit you will make on a product. This saves you the time and headache of calculating your revenue manually.
First, you select the option that says “Gross Proceed”, and then add the cost of your product. The app will then recalculate and let you toggle between FBA and FBM choices. That then can help decide how to list and sell the item.
Conclusion
Maybe one day you’ll be able to make money without getting out of bed, but that day won’t come if you never start. While running a business on Amazon isn’t easy, once you gain experience selling and building your brand, it becomes a well-paid and flexible source of income that is difficult to beat. While the Amazon Seller app will help, combining it with other software such as Zonbase will make that day come sooner than you think.
ZonBase was developed to help sellers like you achieve their growth goals efficiently with minimal effort. With tools such as Reverse ASIN and ZonTracker, you can easily determine the best keywords for your listings and get the most sales on your items. Also, with its Hot Products feature, you can even figure out which products are trending to sell them yourself. With listings and items being key factors to being a successful seller on Amazon, using ZonBase basically guarantees you a lucrative Amazon career.
