By Liam Brennan
 

No eCommerce store can afford to ignore Amazon Prime Day.

Now in its 8th year, this two-day sales extravaganza has become one of the biggest annual events for online sellers and is next scheduled for July 12th-13th, 2022. Prime Day is an ideal opportunity to boost both sales and brand awareness via huge promotions across a range of product lines. If your business isn’t taking part in the event, you’ll be facing immense competition over these two days.

Prime Day sales broke sales records in 2021, and it looks set to do so again this year. Below are a few suggestions for how to get your store ready for this vital time in the eCommerce calendar.

 

How to list on Amazon Marketplace.

 

With Sellr it is easy to list your chosen items on Amazon and synchronize your stock levels with all your other channels. You can also view Amazon sales directly on the Sellr Dashboard, helping you to run your ecommerce operation smoothly and seamlessly.

 

 

 

 

Stock management.

 

Choosing which stock to select can be tricky, but one sure way for businesses to benefit from Prime Day is to reduce the price of items that you’ve been hoping to clear out from your inventory.

However, don’t choose stock that you expect won't sell well in a deal, as Amazon's rules state that sellers with an Inventory Performance Index (IPI) score of less than 500 are restricted to the amount of products they can turn into deals. Instead, it's best to take advantage of Prime Day by listing stock that you’re confident will sell.

 

Prepare to compete.

 

You can’t expect shoppers to find themselves a bargain on Prime day if you don’t adjust your prices to compete against other retailers. Reviewing your competition ahead of Prime Day to match or beat competitor prices is vital to success.

It's also advised to avoid using the tactic of putting your prices up ahead of a sale, and then reducing them for Prime Day to make buyers think they’re getting a bargain; when in reality you’ve just reverted them to the original price. Amazon’s algorithms monitor prices and will penalise you for such an act, and eagle-eyed customers hunting for a bargain may notice such changes too, which will surely damage trust in your brand. In fact, there are browser extensions available that allow buyers to view the historical price of a product, thereby exposing dishonest pricing.

 

Get your staff ready.

 

Another important aspect of Prime Day is being ready to meet sales volumes by hiring a sufficient number of workers to despatch orders in a timely and efficient manner. Although you can arrange for temporary staff to cover a busy period like Prime Day, they will likely need training in the specific warehouse model used by your business. A more effective approach is to rely on a Third-Party Provider (3PL), where experienced staff are conversant with effective warehouse and fulfilment practices, and are prepared for busy demand periods.

 

Determine the Best Deals.

 

The two main deal types for Prime Day are:

 

Spotlight Deals: A Spotlight Deal is a promotional discount that runs for 24 hour, or until stocks last. These deals must offer at least 20% off the average listed price of an item over the past 90 days.

Lightning Deals: Lightning Deals are usually represented with an orange banner showing a discount on those items for a short period, usually just a few hours. This creates a sense of urgency in buyers. However, these deals need to be approved by Amazon first before they are listed, so make sure you submit your Lighting Deals to Amazon several weeks ahead of Prime Day. Feel free to submit multiple content variations to ensure your offers aren't disapproved. You can always discard the disapproved listings later.    

 

You must adhere to the following criteria to run Lighting Ads:

• Have an overall seller rating of at least 3.5 stars;
• Have gained feedback for at least five sales each month;
• Be a registered professional seller;

 

Promote Your Store.

 

Promoting your Amazon store ahead of Prime Day is paramount for gaining traffic beyond basic Amazon searches. Sending users to a store via social media channels is one highly valuable way to do this in the days up to and during Prime Day. You can keep track of how this strategy performs by applying source tags to your store. Prime Day traffic is a rare opportunity in which directing traffic to Amazon is actually more beneficial than to your web store, as it signals to the algorithm that your store is reliable and will thus gain greater coverage on Amazon. Just remember to set your social links back when Prime Day is over.

 

If you wish to update stock levels manually, make sure you link your business system and Amazon Seller Central account together. However, if your list of SKUs is too large, you should consider integrating your store with a trustworthy third-party with a tech system and processes equipped to support large catalogues. Managing large volumes of shipments manually is hard enough at any time, but on Prime Day it’s almost impossible.

 

Ensure Delivery Success.

 

One of the most hated sales experiences is for buyers to make a purchase only to then be told that the seller can’t deliver to their location due to shipping issues. Thankfully, fulfilment centres have changed the way online retailers organise their deliveries.

 

A high quality Third-Party Logistics (3PL) provider has the scope and competency to look after all shipments via a network of fulfilment centres that are interconnected across multiple countries, effectively distributing orders whenever and wherever needed.

 

Fulfilment centres understand how to handle a sudden influx of orders during big online sale periods like Prime Day, Black Friday, and Christmas time, and they have all the capacity required for both large and small inventories.

 

Good luck!

In total, there will be more than a million deals on offer this year on Prime Day, selling to 20 countries for a predicted revenue of over 4.bn US dollars.

 

Make sure your store takes full advantage of this amazing opportunity. Good luck!