Guest blog from Seamus Breslin at RepricerExpress
Price is so closely linked to volume of sales and product visibility on Amazon, that third-party sellers need to continually ensure their products are priced competitively to keep sales flowing—and if you have hundreds or thousands of products, doing this manually, isn’t viable.
That’s where repricing software comes in—it allows third-party Amazon sellers to continually and automatically compare their prices to those of competitors’ and adjust them within floor and ceiling limits set by the seller—in fact, you can’t reprice your stock unless you have set min and max prices, as this tells the software never to price below or above your limits.
The main objective is to win the Buy Box or rank highly in search results displayed on the ‘More Buying Choices’ box or ‘Offer Listings Pages’.
What’s the Buy Box?
On the Amazon marketplace, both Amazon and third-party sellers are responsible for selling products. When a customer reaches the product page, Amazon places one seller’s details and price in the Buy Box (this could be Amazon or any eligible third party seller).
Because the Buy Box and its ‘Add to cart’ button is the first option a buyer sees, any seller that wins a spot in the Buy Box, will be guaranteed more sales, in the majority of cases. In search terms, the Buy Box is effectively the first result of a customer’s search for a specific product, and the one that they are most likely to click to complete a purchase.
In 2013, Amazon’s revenue was close to $75 billion, with more than $60 billion of that going through the Buy Box—and with half of those Buy Box sales being attributed to third-party sellers.
How can l win a spot in the Amazon Buy Box?
Your eligibility to win the Buy Box is linked to your seller performance. When you exceed Amazon’s standards you’ll obtain the Featured Merchant status—a prerequisite to Buy Box eligibility.
When that’s in place, your placement within the Buy Box can be largely governed by price, which is why anyone seriously selling on Amazon needs to put repricing strategies in place in order to consistently maintain healthy sales.
Reach 270m customers
Smaller sellers often overlook the fact that Amazon has a huge audience of consumers ready to buy—with around 270m customer accounts globally, any small seller with their own website is never going to be able to drive that size of audience to their own site. Even bringing a respectable number of visitors to an independent ecommerce site takes a huge amount of effort and money.
How does it work?
A solution like RepricerExpress uses Amazon’s new Subscriptions API to access price and seller information. Repricing begins when one of the top 20 sellers for an item with the same condition changes price or other important info like handling time, shipping price etc.
Is it safe?
As well as your repricing solution not pricing your products below your minimum (floor) price or above your maximum (ceiling price), every price changed on Amazon is now processed through its own Pricing Error System—so Amazon itself will look at your min/max prices within your Seller Central account and not allow any price change below or above your min/max. If you don’t have these set on Amazon, its own algorithms may deactivate a listing if it detects a potential pricing error.
A modern repricing solution will increase your prices where possible. If your min and max price for a product is £5 and £20 respectively and your competitor goes out of stock, the repricer should push your price up to maximise profits on any new sales.
There are so many myths about repricing software but the truth is, the practice has been going on in retail for decades, albeit in a different way. In any competitive market, you’re going to have to compete on price in some regard, particularly on a marketplace that is renowned for its competitive pricing. However, with a repricing solution, you get to compete on your own terms.
How should I price my stock?
Sellers should use a pricing strategy in line with their overall business strategy. It is important your repricing software allows you to decide, who you want to compete with and also who you don’t want to compete with.
There isn’t one quick fix for all sellers since everyone is different, but what you do get with a modern repricing solution is the ability to match your repricing rules to your own business, so you’re competing only where you can win a sale.
What features does a repricing solution like RepricerExpress offer?
With RepricerExpress you get a super-fast repricing solution that:
● is really easy to set up,
● offers continuous and blazingly fast repricing,
● offers multiple ways to increase sales,
● allows you to compete with different sellers in different ways,
● can run in Safe Mode (whereby you can try repricing without affecting your live marketplace listings),
● works across eight Amazon marketplaces,
● can include or exclude specific sellers,
● offers infinite customisation of your repricing strategies,
● can filter competition based on seller rating, feedback, shipping country and dispatch times,
● auto-enables price increases under common scenarios,
● offers a free 15-day trial.
Special offer for Parcelhub readers!
Because RepricerExpress is online and ‘talks’ directly to your Amazon account, there is nothing to install or setup outside of the app—you can be up and running and trying repricing live or in Safe Mode (won’t affect live listings) within 30 minutes of sign up.
As a Parcelhub reader, if you sign up for RepricerExpress and use the promo code PARCEL10, you’ll enjoy a 10% discount on your first month’s subscription plus get your free 15 day trial (no credit card required).
* A version of this blog originally appeared on RepricerExpress
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