7 Ways Fulfillment by Amazon Can Increase Your Holiday Sales

It’s late November and for Amazon marketplace sellers, the holiday sales season is well underway. To make the most out of quickly approaching holidays like Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas, your business needs to have a solid fulfillment plan in place. For more information on how to plan, build and execute your entire marketplace seller strategy, download the Marketplace Sellers Guide.

Amazon offers a service called “Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA)”, where it handles third-party sellers’ back-end operations, including storage, fulfillment, and customer service. Sellers simply ship their inventory to Amazon, which then manages the entire fulfillment process once an item is purchased, giving sellers the space to concentrate on improving their bottom line.

Here are 7 benefits of FBA that can increase your sales this holiday season:

1. Products in Amazon FBA have access to Amazon Prime members: More than 20 million Amazon customers subscribe to Amazon Prime (about 10% of its customer base). And on average, Prime members spend twice the amount on Amazon per year as non-Prime shoppers. By using FBA, sellers get prime real estate in front of Amazon’s most active shoppers. Sellers can also place an Amazon Prime widget on their webstores, to increase buyer trust.
2. Your products are more likely to win the Buy Box: Amazon’s algorithm gives strong preference to products whose sellers meet Amazon’s high standards of customer experience. Because products in FBA are fulfilled by Amazon’s own teams, sellers are guaranteed a quick, consistent fulfillment experience for their products. Become a featured seller and win the Buy Box to immediately improve the trust of your buyers and increase sales.
3. Exclusive access to last-minute holiday shoppers: The holiday season usually brings a wave of last-minute shoppers. Amazon’s Fulfillment Centers are used to seeing last-minute orders during the holiday season and are fully equipped to handle them, so you can run last-minute holiday promotions with confidence!
4. Improve customer service: Customer service excellence is at the core of Amazon’s success. Customers can contact Amazon customer support via phone or email day or night and this service is provided at no charge to you. Sellers can count on FBA to handle shipping issues and returns and to offer a growing selection of customer benefits such as gift wrapping.
5. Fulfill orders from other sales channels: With Multi-Channel Fulfillment you can fulfill orders from other sales channels using your inventory stored at an Amazon fulfillment center. Amazon FBA allows you to streamline your fulfillment operations and manage orders from various other marketplaces or your own webstore all in one place.
6. Increase international exposure: FBA sellers can leverage Amazon’s advanced global fulfillment network to easily reach international customers at no added expense and far less hassle. Amazon currently enlists no extra FBA charge to sellers for international delivery; therefore, sellers can use this program to gauge the interest of certain products in various countries.
7. FBA is more cost effective than outsourcing 3^rd party shippers: Identifying a handful of shipping centers in strategic locations can be an overwhelming task. Every drop shipper has unique requirements/ pricing, and sellers are responsible for getting products to these locations and managing relationships with each of them. Amazon FBA allows you to streamline operations for both products sold on Amazon or elsewhere.

The holiday season is well underway and it’s important you make the most of it. According to Amazon, a 2014 survey revealed that 71% of FBA respondents said their unit sales on Amazon.com increased by more than 20%. Utilize the FBA Revenue Calculator and determine whether “Fulfilment By Amazon” is right for you.

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