The e-commerce market has drastically improved since the launch of Amazon in 1994, with millions of merchants joining the platform to start their 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 to ensure their business runs smoothly.
From researching trends, sourcing products, and managing inventory, you may always be doing something as an Amazon seller. However, that doesn’t mean it has to be difficult. With the creation of the Amazon Seller app, Amazon sellers’ lives just became a little easier.
How does the Amazon Seller app work? Learn all about it down below!
How to start your Amazon business
When starting an Amazon business, there are many things you should consider in order to start on the right foot. Below, we have created 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 on Amazon. 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 the 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 an Amazon 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 in all the necessary details in the following steps.
- Choose a fulfillment option and complete the Amazon FBA sign-up registration process.
Step 4: Source Your Products
You need to research trustworthy suppliers 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.
Selling on Amazon is easy if you sell high-quality products that are capable of earning you return customers. Selling low-quality products on the other hand, may earn you tons of negative reviews and make it harder for you to scale your business.
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, 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 incur more Amazon FBA fees 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. As an Amazon seller, advertising is something you cannot do without if you want to improve your sales rank.
What is the Amazon Seller app?
Designed by the Amazon team, the Amazon Seller app is Amazon’s free mobile app that allows sellers to manage their seller accounts directly on their phones. It gives users the freedom and flexibility to manage their business operations without being tied to a desk or office.
While it’s great for reviewing pending 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 online store on Amazon.
Create and edit product listings
This is probably the app’s most useful feature. The Amazon seller app helps sellers with creating and editing listings on the go, which allows sellers to keep up with Amazon’s market demand. You can scan barcodes, take product pictures, and update documents with your mobile device’s camera, as well as add offers to existing listings.
Manage prices
Using the Amazon seller app, you can view product-level pricing details, such as competitor offers, low price matches, and fee previews, to make sensible pricing changes. It is great for repricing your inventory quickly to secure successful revenue opportunities. You can also use the profitability calculator to estimate your profit margins, a useful tool to ensure your cash flow is always positive.
Fixing competitive prices is always a great strategy for sales growth, so if you want to improve your sales rank, you should start with your prices.
Fulfill orders
You can choose to receive push notifications for when your products sell as well as get shipment updates to know when pending orders are in process, transit, or completed. Also, if you use FBA to outsource order fulfillment, you can check on the status of those shipments. This makes it easy to oversee your business operations with ease.
Edit product photos
Take product images on your phone and edit them in the product photo studio for professional quality product photos. If you do not have professional photography and photo editing skills, you should consider using a photo enhancement service like the one ZonBase offers. These kinds of services allow you access to a team of experts who can edit your product images and provide you with professional quality product photos.
Oversee inventory
Using the Amazon seller app, you can access your inventory details to get detailed analytics and information. This helps you optimize your inventory decisions to best meet consumer demand. You can also view FBA inbound or status statistics and make quantity changes. By managing your inventory on a mobile device, you can literally run your business on the go without any hiccups.
Respond to customer messages
The numbers next to the Communications tab let you know how many pending customer messages are in your inbox. You also get alerts whenever you get an inquiry, allowing you to reply on your device instantly and manage your business on the go.
Manage returns
The Amazon seller app helps sellers to confirm returns and issue refunds quickly with just the touch of your fingertips.
Track sales analytics
Following your Amazon business and product sales can help you make informed decisions to maximize your revenue. Through the app, you can view your top-selling products and charts to track sales performance and compare your performance to past years.
Why should you use the Amazon Seller app?
While the Amazon seller app doesn’t have too many unique features from Amazon Seller Central, its main advantage is making your tasks more convenient with real-time management. You can fix critical issues at any moment, allowing you to run your business on the go. You can also jump on important pricing opportunities, inventory alerts, and growth opportunities from the Amazon Selling Coach.
Also, listing 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. It is also easily accessible; all you’ll have to do is download the app from Google Play or the Apple store.
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.
This is such a huge downside because the app currently only shows you the lowest new and used prices of listings, which severely limits selling strategies. For instance, sellers cannot 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 an Amazon seller account
- Download the Amazon seller app—currently available for iOS and Android.
- Log in to your Amazon seller account and start exploring.
Now that you have the Amazon seller app, it is only fitting that we help you make the most of it. Read on ahead to learn how to use the 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 Amazon sellers who are 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 an online store 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. The Amazon Seller app helps a lot and 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.
Apart from product research, keyword research, and listing optimization, you can get professional quality product photos for your listings when you sign up for the Photo enhancer service. The service does not require you to have any professional photography or photo editing experience. All you’ll have to do is to send in your images and a team of experts will revamp them and send you a collection of professional quality product photos that will increase your chances of conversions.
With listings and items being key factors in becoming a successful Amazon seller, using ZonBase basically guarantees you a lucrative Amazon career.
