Amazon 2020 Innovations Each Seller Needs to Know

Amazon has been at the forefront of innovation for many years as demonstrated by them being one of the early adopters of personalized item recommendations. Whether directly from Amazon, or from third parties, there are a number of other innovations which can help to improve the operation of Amazon sellers. From climate related initiatives, to robotics and Alexa, there are a number of innovations that you should be aware of if you sell on Amazon.

Here, we explore a few impactful innovations that will benefit your Amazon business.

Life as an Amazon Seller

While this article is meant to highlight innovations, let’s backtrack a little and talk about some general knowledge that every Amazon seller should know. Having some insight into which products you should offer for sale through Amazon is important. Thorough market research is a big part of the battle when selling on Amazon. There are a few things that you should consider when trying to answer the question of how to find products to sell on amazon fba. Here are some criteria you should consider for a winning product:

Item price should be between $10-$70: in general this is the optimal price for selling on Amazon.
Item should be in high demand.
Item should preferably belong to an unrestricted category: Permission needs to be granted from Amazon to sell some products. This adds complication. If this can be avoided it could be better for you. On the other hand, you can apply to become ungated in order to sell items which require approval. This would mean benefits such as less competition and potentially more sales.
Item should have a low number of reviews: This is an indicator of low levels of competition.
General item quality and ratings are low: If you choose to sell an item which historically has been shown to have low ratings and generally low quality items, you could make an impact by significantly improving on the item quality.

The innovations mentioned below will definitely help you but you should also be aware of Amazon product research software. Such software will ensure that your items meet the criteria described above.

Amazon Innovations

Amazon Shipment Zero

Amazon is striving to achieve net zero carbon emissions for 50% of all of their shipments by 2030. This will benefit everyone since the effects and cost of climate change affect everyone. After all, things like rising sea levels will need to be mitigated against and this will probably be paid for with tax dollars.

The Global Commission on Adaptation, which was created to make sure that various social and economic systems can survive the effects of climate change, estimates that there will need to be $1.8 trillion in investment by 2030 to prepare for the effects of global warming. On the flipside, it is estimated that if these investments are realized, they would lead to $7.1 trillion in benefits. Amazon is investing in projects like outfitting their fulfilment centers with renewable energy generation systems and a fleet of electric vehicles to help reach this goal.

Amazon has a massive influence on how other businesses run and the example they set will be followed by other businesses. The resulting change and benefits to the environment will help sellers to operate more effectively, since ultimately, carbon neutral operations will contribute to the financial gains predicted by the Global Commision on Adaptation, if the effects of climate change are mitigated against.

AI Robotics

Amazon has been making use of advanced AI robotics in an effort to increase the efficiency of their shipping operation. Robots are involved in both the packing and sorting of packages. This finely tuned operation gets packages ready to be sent to customers more quickly than humans could hope to do.

Humans still make valuable contributions to this process however, as the robots still need some oversight. With robots handling things like packing and shipping, Amazon’s fulfillment centres can handle more orders. This translates into fulfillment centres being able to handle more seller items and more seller opportunities over all.

Amazon’s Tools For Small Businesses

Small to medium-sized businesses account for more than 50 percent of all of the units sold in Amazon’s stores. With this in mind, Amazon has made a variety of tools and services available to sellers, intended to help them manage their businesses. Here are some of the tools that Amazon has launched to help sellers:

Brand Analytics: This lets sellers see information about popular searches and similar products.
Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) Monthly Storage and Removal Fee Waiver: Sellers in select regions can test limited quantities of products recently introduced to Amazon for a limited time period. Monthly FBA storage and removal fees are waived in this case.
Global Registration Experience: This is a tool intended to help sellers expand globally.
Interactive Seller University Content: This provides sellers with information and live practice opportunities on how to run Amazon stores more effectively.

Visual Product Searches

Visual product searches are changing the way that customers find products. Several companies, including Amazon, have implemented a visual search feature which lets customers point their smartphone camera at an item to identify it and see if it is offered by the company. This is a genius feature, since it allows for customers to easily find items they have been looking for.

Technology like this has resulted in increased customer conversions for Amazon sellers, simply because items can be found more easily. In the past, a customer would have had to do a search using keywords to try to find an item they may have seen earlier and they wanted to find on Amazon. Now, this is no longer the case and a significant barrier to purchasing items has been removed.

Seller Central Alexa Skill

Managing any business can be stressful. Ecommerce can actually be even more so at times, since sellers have to consider things like analytics and figure out which products they should be selling. Amazon has made managing an Amazon business easier by allowing sellers to manage their businesses using Amazon Alexa. The Seller Central Alexa skill can provide information such as sales summaries, inventory recommendations, order information, campaign information, feedback on products, buyer messages, and payment data.

Amazon Voice Ordering

Amazon is constantly finding ways to remove barriers in the way of customers trying to buy stuff. People with Alexa devices can choose to order through Alexa. When a search is done for a product using Alexa, some of the top products are mentioned and users can go ahead and place their orders. Items must be Prime-authorized and sellers will need to have the Amazon’s Choice badge in order to be able to realistically take advantage of this. However, the benefits of this feature are undeniable.

Amazon voice ordering is another feature that increases conversions and it has been observed that products that need to be reordered are doing well. Things like makeup, baby supplies, and groceries should excel with voice search, since it’s so easy to ask Alexa to order something you already bought again.

Wrapping Up

There are a number of tools and initiatives out there which will give you an edge as an Amazon seller. Doing product research is a great place to start, and it is nice to know that Amazon is helping the planet with an initiative like Shipment Zero. This will benefit everyone, including sellers. Amazon’s AI Robotics initiatives, their tools for small businesses, the Seller Central Alexa Skill, voice ordering, and visual product searches are also quite useful and provide major benefits for Amazon sellers and could potentially increase sales. Even if all of these are not useful to you, check out the ones which are and you will likely notice the difference in your Amazon business.