Month: October 2016

Categories
Updates

[Updates] Order Timelines

I won’t lie. We’re pretty excited about this one.

On EVERY order we’ve added a timeline so you can see what happened and when. This includes

  • Purchase Time
  • Shipping Time
  • Delivery Time
  • Estimated Delivery Time
  • Email Sends
  • Review Dates
  • Seller Feedback Dates

No other Amazon Seller tool gives you this much info, so easily accessible.

Order Timeline

 

Hovering over the title of any event will give you the specific timestamp for that event.

What Are the Advantages?

When you know this much data it’s easy to see how effective your email campaigns are being.

Also, you can find out if your emails are going out at the right time.

In the order below we can see that the first email (which was a shipment notification) actually got sent after the item was delivered. This is because as Amazon speeds up their shipment processing you’ll need to update your email template send times.

Late Email

 

Knowledge is Power

Ok, we’re data nerds, but still we strongly believe that you can’t improve if you don’t know what’s going on. With our recently enhancements to show more stats and charts we think we’re giving you the tools you need to optimize your business. We hope you agree.

As always, these tools are available on ALL our plans.

Categories
Updates

[Updates] Order Overview Graphs

More Stats On Orders

In the second of our releases that exposes more stats, this time we’ve got a graph that gives you an overview of your orders.

This graph can be found on the orders listing page: https://www.zonmaster.com/orders

Broken down by month, and going back as far as we have orders for your stores, we show you how many orders, number of items shipped and reviews you received. It looks something like this:

Order Totals

 

Hovering over any of the data points gives you a break down for that month’s stats.

Order Info 2

With this kind of information we hope that you can spot trends and hot items much easier.

Categories
Updates

[Updated] Enhanced Merchant Fulfilled Support

mfn-power

MFN Power

Do you manage your own fulfillment instead of using Amazon’s FBA service? If so, then ZonMaster has an update that adds even more power to your orders.

From today, ZonMaster will offer the same level of tracking packages to MFN shipments as we do for FBA shipments. No more uploading spreadsheets to ZonMaster! This feature is invisible to you, the seller (and of course to the customer!).

For it to work you do need to do the following:

There are various ways you can do the second thing – either by uploading a spreadsheet or manually. You should be doing that anyway as it is the best way to let Amazon know what’s going on with the order.

Once you’ve done those two things ZonMaster will AUTOMATICALLY start pulling and updating shipment information, allowing you to send emails on triggers like Delivered. If you mix and match  – some items are FBA, some you send yourself – no problem. We know which is which and will get the appropriate info.

This update applies to all marketplaces that we currently support (North America, Europe and India) and all our supported carriers.

We’re happy to bring you this update and to finally bring MFN sellers from 2nd class to the first class cabin 😉

If you have already given us the Seller Central permissions then your account – if you are selling MFN – will be pulling the info.

 

Categories
Instruction

[Tutorials] Configuring An Email Template

Creating Your First Template

Sometimes setting up your first email template can be a little confusing, what with all those options!
Here’s a little video where ZonMaster founder Phil Smy walks you through configuring a basic email template.

We take you through all the settings – from when the email template will get triggered, to stop settings – like if the customer has already left you a review on Amazon.

Video not showing? Click here to see it on YouTube.

[arve url=”https://youtu.be/FV6ofcuXKwQ”]

Categories
Updates

[New Feature] Enhanced Sales Stats Graphs

We’re trying to expose more of the statistics we’re gathering to you, the seller. The latest one is more detailed sales stats for your items. Through a series of graphs we offer you greater insight into number of units shipped and returned, as well as reviews that items have received.

First, on the items listing page (https://www.zonmaster.com/items) we give you an overview of the last 30 days of sales, and how your items have performed. It’ll look a little like this:

sales_graph1

We show you levels only for items that sold in the last 30 days. If you hover over a bar you’ll see the details in the top left.

You can click on the bar and that will take you to the specific page for that item, where you’ll see another graph, breaking down that item’s sales by month for as long as we have data:

sales_graph2

Hovering over the data points displays the info in the bottom left, showing you units shipped, returns and reviews for that month.

Finally, if you click on one of THOSE data points you’ll be taken to that month’s info, broken down by day:

sales_graph3

Once again, hovering over a data point will show you that day’s stats: units shipped, returns and reviews. You can go backwards and forwards through the months by clicking on the ‘Previous Month’ and ‘Next Month’ links at the top of the graph.

We hope you find this information useful! Let us know.

Categories
News

[News] Amazon Brand Gating – The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

As most of you Amazon sellers know, Amazon is implementing tighter control over the selling of recognized brand names on their platform.

Here’s what we officially know:

  • Amazon will start charging new sellers a fee to register to sell a brand
  • These sellers will need to register their authorization to sell the brand
  • The one-time fee will (normally) range between $1,000 and $1,500

Here’s the important bit: the fee applies to NEW SELLERS only (at the moment). This is direct from an email the Amazon spokesman Erik Fairleigh sent to CNBC:

“If a seller is already selling brands on Amazon that are now subject to a fee, they are not required to pay the fee to continue selling those brands. The fee only applies to new sellers of particular brands. Sellers can see whether a product requires a fee to sell when they search for that product using the “Add a Product” tool on Seller Central.”

So, if you want to START selling Nike shoes you’re going to have to pay. If you did it before, though, you can do it again.

Who Wins?

There are 2 big winners that we can see

  1. The Customer! The whole reason Amazon is doing this is to ensure that when the customer buys a Nike shoe they are getting a Nike shoe. No one can – or should – complain about a marketplace that is looking out for customers.
  2. Private Label Sellers. Private Labelers Win Again! If you’ve been following the ethos of selling Private Label goods (which you probably have, as you are reading this on ZonMaster.com, which is aimed at helping private label sellers get the best from their work). There might be an extra bonus here, if Amazon decides to fight counterfeit goods even of smaller sellers.

Who Loses?

Sadly some people will take a hit. Especially Arbitrage and Liquidation Sellers. Amazon isn’t really helping matters by not publishing a complete list (though, as stated above, it’s pretty easy to find out if a product is subject to a fee).

I’ve read other places saying how it is worse for the consumer and Amazon. This is not true. As I said, the consumer gets a huge boost in consumer confidence, which means they have a huge boost in the confidence of Amazon. Losing a few sellers – either because they can’t afford the fee, or can’t get the authorization to sell – is NOT going to hurt the consumer and it will not raise prices. Sorry, it’s true.

If you want to read more, there’s a great article over on CNBC. Please don’t trust public discussion forums as a source of reliable facts about this. A lot of people are screaming, but mostly because it affects their arbitrage business.