Anyone can sell just about anything on Amazon as long as they know what they are doing and how to do it. The key to making sales on the platform is an efficient and functional setup that ensures that you deliver quality products and services at a competitive price. One way to achieve efficiency in operations is to use the Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) service offered by the platform along with a smart Amazon Repricing Tool.
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What is Fulfillment by Amazon?
Fulfillment by Amazon is a service that allows a seller to sell products while Amazon handles all the shipping, returns, and refunds. If you opt for FBA, you will not have to worry about finding a warehouse or picking up the products from the manufacturers or suppliers and packing them.
Amazon handles all of this for you.
With FBA, you also get a few additional features that help you develop a competitive edge over other third-party sellers on the platform.
- You get 24-hour customer service.
- The fulfillment, shipping, picking, packing, and storing costs are included in the Amazon fees, so you don’t have to pay additional charges on every sale.
- You also get access to warehouses and exceptional dynamic fulfillment services in many locations across the globe.
- With FBA, you can even guarantee 2-day express shipping to your customers.
Here, you need to understand that FBA may not be ideal for low-value items. When you add the Amazon fees for FBA on items that don’t have a high price margin, you may find that you have to increase your prices in order to make a profit (or just to break even). This means that you’ll lose your competitive edge in the market. Customers will surely turn to other sellers offering the product at a lower price, even if they have to receive the product a few days late.
At the end of the day, it all comes down to your pricing. Even if you have high-value products and you are an FBA seller, you will have to make sure your product is priced competitively, especially if you want to win the Buy Box. And trust us when we say this, you want to win the Buy Box.
Why Do FBA Sellers Need Amazon Repricing Tools?
The Buy Box is the rectangular box on the right side of the page listing product details. It allows customers to buy the product instantly without having to scroll all the way down to access the “Buy the Product” button.
According to Data Feed Watch, more than 80% of all web sales on Amazon go through the Buy Box. Some experts also believe that around 90% of all mobile sales happen through the Buy Box.
The reason why the Buy Box is so efficient is that it provides the customer with ease of use. They can easily customize their purchase, such as defining quantity and area, and then select shipping preferences, etc. It does wonders for the user experience and is one reason why Amazon is such a popular online shopping platform. However, not every seller gets a chance to win the Buy Box.
Amazon is a customer-centric platform obsessed with providing customers with the best possible shopping experience. Thus, it considers various features before awarding a seller a Buy Box. Though the algorithm is hard to predict, there are a few factors that experts believe matter the most.
Customer Feedback
As mentioned earlier, Amazon places great emphasis on customer experience, and thus, feedback matters a lot. If the customers appear to be unhappy with a seller, Amazon will not award them a Buy Box unless they improve their services and customer relations.
In fact, you only really get the Buy Box if you are among the top-ranking sellers. If you have excellent customer ratings, you may be able to hold the buy box for about 70% of the time, and the lowest ranking seller may only get it for around 30% of the day, and that too at low traffic hours.
Here, FBA sellers have an advantage as they generally have some of the best ratings on the platform because of how efficient their delivery, return, and refund system is, thanks to the FBA service.
Competitive Pricing
Equally and perhaps even more important than customer feedback is competitive pricing. Amazon’s algorithm runs a search every time a customer searches for a product and puts forth the most competitively priced product by the seller with the best reviews at the top.
In fact, if the platform finds that the product you are selling is not competitively priced, it can take away the Buy Box even if you have some of the best ratings on the platform. There could be many other factors that Amazon’s algorithm may take into account, but pricing is definitely the most important factor.
How to Price your Products Competitively
Before we dive into the ins and outs of competitive pricing, you need to understand who your competition is. There are three types of sellers on Amazon. The first is Amazon itself, the second is FBA sellers, and the third is independent, third-party sellers.
Amazon has a very well-established network and enjoys all the benefits and perks that it has to offer. Thus, there is no way an independent retailer, even one enjoying the FBA service, can compete with Amazon.
FBA sellers have access to a well-established and dynamic setup through Amazon. They have the power to scale their operations and increase sales and inventory, provided they have the vision and passion for it.
Lastly, there are third-party sellers. They have a very limited setup and not as many resources to be able to compete with either FBA sellers or Amazon. As mentioned earlier, even FBA sellers cannot compete with Amazon. Thus, the main competition for you as an FBA seller is other FBA sellers like you.
We stress the need to establish who your competitors are because you will have to keep an eye out for their prices. If you want to develop a competitive edge over other sellers, you will have to continuously change your product prices, keeping them in line with price fluctuations in the market.
There are two ways you can go about setting product prices. You can spend hours manually monitoring and going over competitor prices and making adjustments to your own as soon as you notice changes. Sounds time-consuming and extensive, doesn’t it? Well, it is, and it is also very inefficient.
Chances are, you will get tired, and a tired brain loses the capability to think straight and make sound pricing decisions at all times. You could end up pricing your product so low that you may be barely making a profit.
Yes, you need to watch your competition to stay competitive, but doing so manually is not the way to go if you truly want to scale your operations. For this, you will need to opt for Amazon repricing tools.
What is the Amazon Repricing Tool?
FBA sellers should consider themselves quite lucky to have access to repricing tools that automatically help them reset their product pricing. These tools watch your competition, keep an eye on market price fluctuations, and update the prices on your Amazon seller account as quickly as the platform allows it.
Benefits of Using Amazon Repricing Tools
Most FBA sellers have high seller ratings, good customer feedback rates, excellent inventory management, and express delivery services. So, the only way for you to actively engage in healthy competition with them is through your pricing.
But you have to make sure that you do not end up underpricing your items. Imagine going through the trouble of monitoring market prices all month long, only to earn a net loss after paying Amazon fees and covering other operational costs. Trust us, FBA sellers do incur a substantial amount of additional costs. Here is where using automated amazon seller tools can help you.
See Also: Rule-based vs. AI-based Amazon Repricer – What’s the Difference?
Saves Time
Time is of the essence, especially in the fast-paced digital world we operate in. You cannot afford to lose a minute more than is absolutely necessary, as there is always another seller lagging behind by a few points, just waiting for a window to take over.
With an automatic Amazon repricing tool, you will not waste any time and update your prices as quickly as possible.
You Can Compete with Targeted Competitors
Competing with everyone on the platform is quite honestly impossible and frankly inefficient, even with an automated repricing tool. You don’t want to ruin the software’s efficiency by forcing it to spend substantial time scouring through competitors who are not an immediate threat to your positioning on the platform.
Thus, you can point out a select few instead of monitoring all sellers and have the software monitor their pricing strategies. Doing so will improve the efficiency of your pricing strategy.
You Can Change Prices as Needed.
An automatic repricing tool allows you to reset the price as often as is necessary, even if it is ten times a day. This removes the need for you to constantly be at your computer, monitoring your competitors’ prices and changing your products’ prices as necessary.
Creates a Cost-Efficient Operational Model
We all want to make sure we earn more than we spend, and time is money. You can lose a lot of time evaluating and thinking of a new pricing strategy. If your competitors use pricing software, you could lose a substantial amount of potential clients just because you’re behind the curve.
Tools and software like Amazon repricing tools help you avoid losing customers to the competition. They ensure that the decision-making and implementing process is quick and efficient. They consider various financial and performance metrics when resetting prices, ensuring they make decisions that will prove fruitful for the business.
Reduce the Human Error with Amazon Repricing Tools
As much as we’d like to believe otherwise, humans are emotional beings, and we do get overwhelmed and side-tracked. Sometimes, you have to reduce your profit margin to stay relevant among top sellers on Amazon.
Software may recognize that better than a human brain may. You may end up not repricing your products for fear of incurring losses in the short run, only to guarantee losses in the long run. This is where a repricing tool is so handy. It removes the emotion from the task and focuses solely on the numbers.
You Can Keep an Eye on As Many Competitors as You Want
The sky is the limit when you have an efficient repricing tool by your side. You can choose to keep an eye on 10, maybe even 20 of the top-ranking sellers on the platform, and the software can manage that extremely efficiently.
However, we do suggest that you narrow down your focus and set goals for yourself. Try to target a few competitors at a time, take over their position and move on to better performers. It helps set short-term goals for you, giving you a sense of achievement and improving your motivation to do better every time you achieve your goals.
More Free Time for You
Perhaps the most important benefit of using an automatic repricing tool is that it frees up much of your time. Running an online business can be very hectic and time-consuming. Using such tools, you can earn some free time to enjoy the fruits of all your hard work and spend some quality time with your family (or you can use that free time to improve your sales strategy).
See Also: 12 Super Amazon Pricing Strategy for All Sellers
Conclusion
If you truly want to leverage the power of FBA services, you will have to use an automated Amazon repricing tool. These two services work the best hand-in-hand and can help you generate more sales and increase revenue in the most efficient way possible.
If you want to achieve all the benefits of a great repricing tool, look no further than Eva. Want to learn more about what Eva’s Amazon repricing tool can do for you? Reach out to us.
