Entering the world of Amazon selling entails considering numerous factors. Beyond understanding the nuances of Amazon’s business model, newcomers to the platform should also focus on becoming proficient in using and navigating the Amazon Seller Central platform.
Knowing how to use Amazon Seller Central is crucial for expanding your Amazon business and efficiently overseeing it through a centralized dashboard. This article will delve into key insights and provide valuable tips on effectively utilizing Seller Central.
Understanding Amazon Seller Central
What is Amazon Seller Central?
Third-party sellers manage their Amazon seller account through Seller Central, utilizing it as a platform to oversee their business activities. Seller Central serves as a central hub for account management, offering a comprehensive solution for efficiently monitoring orders, fulfillment, and sales while acting as the primary resource for conducting sales on multiple Amazon marketplaces.
With the help of Seller Central, third-party sellers can use diverse Amazon seller tools and promotional features. Amazon sellers can also take advantage of data reports to make decisions based on insightful information. Additionally, Seller Central facilitates communication between Amazon sellers and customers, extending their reach on a global scale.
In summary, Amazon Seller Central simplifies listing, inventory management, account administration, pricing, payment processing, and other Amazon selling transactions, all while providing valuable insights into customer behavior.
Core Seller Central Tools and Features
Seller Central aims to provide sellers with the tools and features to manage their eCommerce enterprises effectively. With this objective in mind, Amazon has integrated several tools and features into Seller Central to assist sellers in managing and expanding their businesses.
To help you learn how to use Seller Central effectively, you should familiarize yourself with some of the noteworthy features of the platform, including the following:
Product Listing
Online sellers can create detailed product listings via Seller Central, including incorporating images, descriptions, and pricing information. The Amazon product listing page will inform customers of all the information they need for a given Amazon product, making your products more visible to potential Amazon customers.
Order Management
Whether you are an Amazon FBA or FBM seller, you can use Seller Central’s order management feature. The said features give Amazon sellers a customizable view of all their orders received through all sales channels.
Sellers may check all their unshipped, pending, shipped, and canceled orders within a given date range or use search filters to check specific data. Therefore expediting the process of order fulfillment through a single platform.
Inventory Management
Amazon Seller Central includes a feature for managing inventory. This inherent seller tool is designed to provide Amazon sellers with inventory management controls, preventing products from being out of stock or overstocked. Inventory Management gives sellers insight into the following:
- Excess inventory
- Stranded inventory
- Idle inventory
- Orders pending removal
- Overage storage inventory
- Inventory in Amazon shipments without a delivery plan
- Aged inventory
Customer Communication
Exceptional customer service plays a pivotal role in Amazon sales. To this end, Amazon offers various channels through which third-party merchants can interact with their customers.
Through Seller Central, Amazon sellers can communicate with Amazon shoppers, respond to customer queries, and manage customer feedback, resulting in better customer relationships.
Performance Analytics
For most online sellers, analytics is a crucial component of their business. eCommerce analytics helps online entrepreneurs determine how their business is doing now and how it will likely perform in the future.
For that matter, Amazon provides online sellers with detailed analytics and reporting on sales performance, customer behavior, shipping performance, and other vital metrics accessible through Amazon Seller Central. The generated information aids sellers in making informed business decisions.
Fulfillment Options
Using Seller Central, you can select fulfillment options for your listings. Sellers may choose to fulfill orders themselves (FBM) or use the Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) service, where Amazon handles storage, picking, packing, and shipping. You can choose between two fulfillment channels when listing products.
Image Source: Amazon
Account Health Monitoring
Amazon has a feature that helps sellers identify the well-being of their seller accounts. The Account Health overview offers insights into performance metrics and ensures compliance with Amazon’s selling policies. The summary of account health is a valuable tool for devising strategies to enhance overall Amazon business performance.
Marketing and Advertising Tools
Amazon’s ability to provide third-party sellers with multiple marketing and advertising options makes it unique from other online selling platforms. You can access these advertising tools and solutions via Seller Central.
Some popular marketing and advertising options that help sellers enhance product visibility and increase sales include the following:
- Amazon Deals
- Amazon Coupons
- Amazon Promotions
- Prime Exclusive Discounts
- Amazon Ads Campaign (Sponsored Display Ads, Audio Ads, Video Ads)
Global Selling
Amazon stands out as a widely favored choice for global selling. If your goal is to expand your market reach across multiple regions, participating in sales on Amazon proves to be a highly beneficial strategy.
Through Amazon Seller Central, sellers can access Amazon Global Selling via the Sell Globally tab. With Seller Central, online sellers can manage international transactions and reach hundreds of millions of new customers.
Seller Support
One distinctive aspect of Seller Central is the quick access to seller support for third-party sellers. Amazon is renowned for its exceptional customer support in the eCommerce sector, and similarly, its support for sellers stands out without comparison.
When selling on Amazon, you gain access to customer support and resources to help you navigate any issues, challenges, or questions you may encounter while using the platform.
Pricing Management
Amazon Seller Central provides sellers with the chance to present competitive prices to Amazon customers using its suite of price management tools. Amazon sellers can manually set prices or automate their pricing strategy, allowing them to offer competitive listing prices and enhance their likelihood of securing the Amazon Buy Box.
Educational Resources
Seller Central provides educational materials, webinars, and other resources to help Amazon sellers understand and optimize their use of the platform as well as improve their Amazon Campaign. In particular, sellers can access Seller University via the Seller Central Dashboard.
The ones mentioned above are the core features that collectively make Seller Central a comprehensive platform for sellers, offering tools and resources to manage various aspects of their eCommerce business on the Amazon marketplace.
Seller Central – Benefits for Sellers
The advantages of utilizing Amazon Seller Central become apparent to online sellers when considering the array of features and resources it provides, including the ones mentioned above.
With these Seller Central features come several key benefits sellers can obtain when using Seller Central or engaging in the broader Amazon marketplace. These benefits may include:
- Product listing becomes much more accessible, and updating product information is quicker.
- Participating in the international eCommerce marketplace is much easier with Amazon Global.
- Sellers can easily monitor customer feedback and reviews even through the mobile app.
- The report of daily sales for all products on Amazon is conveniently accessible.
- Keeping track of inventory and updating listings is much easier with Seller Central.
- Conveniently manage other selling programs such as Amazon Handmade, Amazon B2B, and Amazon Custom.
- Quick access to custom business reports and performance metrics.
- Growth tools and resources are available to help you increase sales and grow your business.
How Do You Gain Access to Amazon Seller Central?
Amazon Seller Central is open to all Amazon sellers. It can be accessed once you complete the registration process. Upon registration, you will be granted entry to Seller Central.
As mentioned earlier, through Seller Central, third-party merchants can efficiently handle day-to-day Amazon business operations and utilize various tools and resources to enhance sales and grow the business, all conveniently located in one platform.
To initiate access to Seller Central, your first task is to select an Amazon selling plan aligned with your business objectives. To give you an overview of the available Amazon selling plans, here are some essential things to consider:
OPTION 1 – Individual Selling Plan:
This Amazon selling plan operates on a simple business model. It provides access to basic seller tools. You only incur fees if an item is sold, making it ideal for entrepreneurs new to online selling and those with few inventory items.
OPTION 2 – Professional Selling Plan
In contrast to the above-mentioned selling plan, the Professional plan provides advanced selling tools for a monthly subscription fee. This option grants you access to more advanced inventory tools, allowing you to upload batch files, which is ideal for medium and large businesses.
Apart from the recurring monthly fee for the professional plan, there are other selling fees associated with the Professional Seller Account. Some of the expenses to anticipate include but are not limited to:
- Referral Fees
- Fulfillment Fees
- Inventory Storage Fees
- Long-Term Storage Fees
- Removal Order Fees
To learn more about creating a selling account, check our Selling on Amazon Guide.
Navigating Amazon Seller Central | Ways to Use Your Seller Central Account?
Amazon Seller Central serves as a valuable resource for sellers to organize, manage, and grow their Amazon business efficiently. The discussion below outlines the platform’s functionality and suggests ways to optimize critical features for the maximum benefit of your Amazon enterprise.
Listing Improvement
Seller Central also provides a Listing Quality tool. This seller tool is designed to assist you in showcasing critical information about your Amazon products.
By leveraging this feature, you can enhance the discoverability of your products and create better shopping experiences for your Amazon customers. To better understand the Listing Quality Dashboard on Seller Central, we encourage you to watch the video presentation provided below:
To access the Listing Quality Dashboard, go to the Inventory tab, click Manage all inventory, and then click Listing Quality Dashboard.
Automating Product Price
Apart from improving product listings, sellers can also enhance their product pricing with the help of Amazon Seller Central’s automatic price feature. Automate Pricing is a feature designed to streamline and simplify the pricing process for sellers on the platform.
Amazon’s automated pricing feature offers sellers a swift and convenient method for effortlessly managing pricing updates. This tool allows sellers to establish price rules or choose from predefined pricing rules, enabling the Automate Pricing tool to independently adjust the listing price within specified parameters.
In summary, Amazon’s proprietary automated repricer offers multiple functionalities to Amazon sellers; some of these notable functions include the following:
Pricing Rule Creation: An Amazon seller can create pricing rules that govern how the product prices are adjusted.
For instance, Amazon sellers can create a price rule that ensures the listing price remains $1 below the Featured Offer price. Alternatively, sellers can also set another rule to keep their prices at least $1.00 above the lowest marketplace price that utilizes the same fulfillment channel.
Flexibility and Control: Seller Central’s automated price adjustment feature allows sellers to start, stop, or modify automated pricing rules at any time.
Consumer Trust Protection: With the rule-based price adjustment feature, Amazon sellers can set a maximum price, preventing their listing offers from being priced significantly higher than recent historical prices. This maintains consumers’ trust in the brand while ensuring that offers remain eligible to be showcased on the Amazon Buy Box.
Amazon Business Integration: The Automate Pricing feature of Seller Central allows businesses to update their prices. This gives Amazon Business sellers a more seamless integration between consumer and business pricing strategies.
When determining the pricing for your items on Amazon, it is important to note that Amazon sellers on the Individual selling plan are not permitted to list items at a price exceeding $10,000, and those sellers under the Professional selling plan should ensure that listed items do not exceed a price of $300,000.
Manage Orders and Returns
You can efficiently handle customer orders and Amazon return processes by utilizing Amazon Seller Central. Through Seller Central, you can take advantage of features that enable you to seamlessly upload files and access order reports. These functionalities empower you to navigate the complexities of handling orders, processing returns, and managing claims more effectively.
Stay On Top of Performance
Through Seller Central, you can access dashboard overviews to comprehensively understand your Account Health. This account overview encompasses Customer Service Performance, Policy Compliance, Shipping Performance, and other critical customer metrics. Keeping a close eye on these metrics can help you promptly address customer concerns and maintain overall online business performance.
Leveraging the Amazon Seller App
Seller Central does not only limit its support to sellers within its platforms. It likewise introduces third-party seller tools and services that help sellers automate, manage, and grow their Amazon businesses.
Amazon sellers can access Amazon Selling Partner App Stores through their Amazon Seller Central account to explore various seller tools and apps intended mainly to improve a specific aspect of the business, including but not limited to the following categories:
- Product Listing
- Inventory and Shipping
- Marketing
- Customer engagement
- eCommerce management
- Finances
To access Amazon’s Selling Partner App Stores via Amazon Seller Central, navigate to the Seller Central dashboard menu, look for the App and Services tab, and click Selling Appstore. Please see the image below for guidance.
Key Guidelines for Amazon Seller Central: What to Do and What to Avoid
To maximize the efficiency of your Amazon campaign, it is vital to acquaint yourself with both effective strategies and areas to steer clear of when navigating Seller Central. To provide insights into these aspects, here are some guidelines for practical use and precautions to take when utilizing Seller Central:
Amazon Seller Central What To Do:
Optimize Product Listings
Be sure to create detailed and accurate product listings. Always remember to incorporate useful keywords when crafting listing details, and you must always provide shoppers with honest, direct, and understandable product descriptions along with high-quality images.
Competitive Pricing
Ensure competitiveness by consistently examining and modifying your prices in response to market trends and competitor price changes. In addition to employing Amazon’s proprietary repricer, you have the option to utilize third-party repricers. To upgrade your repricing approach, you can leverage the power of AI repricing solutions like Seller Snap.
This form of Amazon repricer automates repricing by analyzing competitor actions and prevailing market conditions. Unlike traditional repricing tools that adhere mainly to seller-created price rules or platform-predefined rules, AI repricers automatically adapt listing prices based on multiple factors to maintain competitiveness with the help of its advanced algorithm.
Advertise Strategically
Seller Central gives you access to various Amazon advertising solutions. Utilize these advertising tools strategically to advertise products and increase visibility. Depending on your goal, you may use these advertising tools such as coupons, promotions, deals, and more.
Stay Informed
The Amazon Seller Central dashboard gives you access to the latest news and community discussions. Take advantage of this feature by checking Amazon Seller Forums and Amazon News.
Amazon admins and community members constantly share content that can help you improve your Amazon campaigns further. Some of these contents may include, but are not limited to, updates on Amazon’s policies, changes, and marketplace trends to adapt your strategies accordingly.
Amazon Seller Central What To Avoid:
Violating Amazon Policies
When accessing your account via Seller Central, avoid violating Amazon policies, including listing prohibited products or even engaging in unethical practices such as price gouging.
Failing to Utilize Feedback Manager
Neglecting to use Amazon Seller Central Feedback Manager is equivalent to disregarding customer contentment. This specific seller tool on Amazon provides valuable information about customer satisfaction with your services.
Utilizing Amazon Feedback Manager, you can access immediate and long-term performance metrics. Additionally, it allows you to review detailed feedback entries, encompassing buyer emails and Order IDs.
Pay attention to customer feedback and address any issues promptly. Ignoring feedback, especially negative feedback, can impact your seller rating.
Manipulating Reviews
With review management, you should also avoid manipulating reviews. Any attempt to manipulate or fake product reviews can lead to penalties and account suspension.
Duplicate Listings
Duplicate listings on Amazon arise when multiple listings reference the same ASIN. Such duplicate listings frequently exhibit identical images, titles, and content, leading to consumer confusion and adding complexity to product searches and choices.
Duplicate listings often lead to penalties or listing suppression. To avoid listing suppression of ASINs identified as potential duplicates, you may follow these steps:
Amazon Seller Central FAQs
Here are some frequently asked questions about Seller Central that can help you further boost your understanding of the platform.
How can I access Seller Central?
To access Seller Central, begin by registering as an Amazon seller. Following registration, you will be provided with a Seller Central account. It is worth noting that when creating an Amazon Seller Central account, sellers can choose between the Individual selling plan or the Professional selling plan, which involves a fixed monthly fee.
Is Amazon Seller Central free?
Access to Seller Central is free for registered sellers. Your expenses are associated with the chosen plan and its accompanying charges.
What is an Amazon seller account?
An Amazon seller account is the key to selling on the Amazon marketplace. Upon registering as an Amazon seller and selecting a selling plan, you will get a seller account and gain entry to Seller Central as an integral component of your business account to effectively manage your Amazon business.
What is the difference between Amazon Seller Central and Amazon Vendor Central?
Amazon Seller Central and Vendor Central offer different selling approaches. Vendor Central supplies products directly to Amazon for resale, while Seller Central allows direct sales to Amazon customers.
What can I sell on Amazon as a new seller?
Amazon allows sellers to sell a diverse range of products, including but not limited to electronics, books, clothing, and home goods. Some of the profitable Amazon categories you can check include:
- Handmade
- Apps & Games
- Industrial & Scientific
- Luggage & Travel Gear
- Grocery & Gourmet Food
- Arts, Crafts & Sewing
- Pet Supplies
- Musical Instruments
While many categories are open for new sellers, certain Amazon categories, like grocery and jewelry, may have restrictions requiring approval. It is worth noting also that gated categories, such as automotive or collectibles, require application and approval. Sellers should know these brand restrictions and obtain authorization before listing products from well-known brands.
To avoid account suspension, sellers should exercise caution regarding intellectual property rights and selling counterfeit or fake items. Amazon maintains a list of prohibited items, including illegal or offensive products, which sellers should avoid to comply with Amazon policies.
In general, Amazon restricted products are those deemed illegal, unsafe, offensive, and those that portray nudity unnecessarily or graphically.
Seller Central: Empowering Your Path to Success
Amazon remains committed to offering the necessary assistance to third-party sellers for the effective management and expansion of their businesses. A good example is the Amazon Seller Central, a hub available for sellers to oversee their operations on the platform.
The tips and insights mentioned above are geared towards enhancing your understanding of how to use this tool effectively. This, in turn, empowers you to optimize your Amazon campaign and improve your chances of success in the eCommerce industry.
