5 Tactics to Get Able for Amazon High Day 2021
Amazon Prime Day isn’t just another online sale occasion. And despite arriving on the scene 10 years after the creation of Cyber Monday—and normally happening in July, without any other holiday attached—it’s become one of the biggest eCommerce events in existence.
What’s more, it just keeps growing. Between the first Amazon Prime Day in 2015, and the late-in-the-year Prime Day from 2020, sales increases from just $0.9 Million to over $10 Million.
But What is Amazon Prime Day, Anyway?
Amazon Prime Day launched for the first time on July 15th, 2015, to celebrate Amazon’s 20th Anniversary. That’s right: Amazon is still in its 20’s.
Even in their first press release, Amazon sought to make a splash, saying, “Step Aside Black Friday—Meet Prime Day.” That first event lasted just 24 hours and included exclusive deals for Amazon Prime members across the US, Canada, UK, continental Europe, and Australia. And it was a massive success; customers bought more from Amazon on Prime Day than they had on Black Friday, with purchases spanning from Amazon Kindles to Instant Pots (24,000, to be exact).
From there, the event grew. In 2017, Prime Day was extended to 30 hours, and expanded to include shoppers in China and Mexico. Prime “Day” became a day and a half in 2018, and finally became the 2-day marathon it is today in 2019.
2020 threw a wrench in Amazon Prime Day planning due to sweeping supply chain disruptions and shifts in eCommerce buying. Instead of occurring in July, Prime Day was moved to October 13-14th, serving less as a “preamble” to the holiday season than it did to simply move holiday shopping up a month.
It wasn’t just Amazon itself that benefitted, either. In 2020, independent sellers saw a 60% leap in sales from the previous year’s event. In total, 3rd party sellers brought in more than $3.5 billion in sales during Prime Day 2020.
When is Prime Day 2021?
On June 1st, Amazon announced that this year’s Prime Day event will take place from June 21st to 22nd. It begins and ends at midnight, pacific standard time.
Leading up to the 2021 event, Prime members will receive a $10 credit in return for shopping from select small businesses from June 7th to 20th, which they can put toward more than two million expected Prime Day deals. Amazon is also offering four free months of Prime to encourage new member sign ups.
How to Prepare for Amazon Prime Day
With Amazon Prime Day 2021 in just a couple of weeks there isn’t much time left to prepare. So what can your business do to stand out from the crowd and win the buy box?
Follow these five tips, and you’ll know just how to get ready for Prime Day.
#1: Make Sure You Have Awesome Product Information
Your Amazon listing might be the first impression a shopper gets of your brand on Prime Day, so it’s crucial that you have compelling, rich product content for every item in your store. Beyond a great product name and description, you’ll also need:
- High-quality images
- Videos and 360-degree views
- Accurate and detailed specifications
- Warranty information
Even if you have existing content on your Amazon listings, now is the time to go in and make sure they are up-to-date and fully accurate. One easy way to update your Amazon listings is with a product information management solution, which lets you view and update all your product content in one place. By ensuring your product listings are complete, compelling, and correct, you can not only increase your Prime Day sales — you can also reduce your post-Prime-Day returns.
#2: Optimise for Amazon SEO
It’s hard to sell products on Amazon if no one ever sees them. Like Google, Amazon’s search pages are based on a complex algorithm to help shoppers find the best products quickly. And like Google results, the product listings that don’t make it to Page 1 get far fewer views and sales.
While you are updating your product information, keep these listing optimisations in mind to ensure maximum visibility for your brand:
- Optimise your product title with keywords, colors, sizes, and your brand name.
- Make sure your product descriptions are easy to read and include important keywords (without any keyword stuffing!). Don’t forget that color, size, materials, and compatibility are popular filters for shoppers. Make these details clear for better Amazon rankings.
- Check your product images. Having images increases your conversion rate, which is a key Amazon SEO factor. But you also need to make sure each image meets Amazon’s requirements.
- Pick the right backend keywords. While these aren’t visible to customers, Amazon uses them to help put your product listings on relevant pages.
#3: Request New Reviews
It’s a well-known fact that having reviews can increase your conversion rates. But having recent reviews is nearly as important. Recent reviews provide customers with all-essential social proof that other people love your brand. Consumers also tend to trust recent reviews more than older reviews, because they show the quality of your products right now.
If you haven’t done so already, this is the perfect time to reach out to your latest Amazon customers and request reviews. The best part is, Amazon’s made the process easier than ever, with a handy “Request a Review” button that will automatically send a request to the buyer for an order.
#4: Double Check Your Inventory
Nothing frustrates customers more than placing an order, only to get an email saying the item is out of stock. When this happens, you don’t just lose that sale– you may lose a customer for life. To keep your customers happy, you need real-time, accurate inventory levels on all your Amazon product listings.
This isn’t easy. Unless your business system and Amazon Seller Central account are linked, you’ll need to manually update inventory every time a product is ordered. For some SKU’s, that might be manageable. For others, like the Instant Pot, which was ordered 300,000 times in 48 hours in 2018 (or over 100 times per minute), it’s downright impossible. So if you haven’t looked into integrating Amazon with your ERP system, right now is the “prime” time to do so.
#5: Make Sure You Can Deliver
During a major sales event like Amazon Prime Day, shipping plays a crucial role in customer satisfaction. To keep up with the potential influx of Amazon orders during Prime Day, your fulfilment centers need to have the capacity and efficiency to get orders out the doors quickly.
If you are using Amazon’s fulfilment services, fantastic. But participants in the Seller-Fulfiled Prime Program need to impress more than customers; they also need to meet Amazon’s strict guidelines to stay a Prime seller. Even on– perhaps especially on– Amazon Prime Day, third party sellers are expected to:
- Ship more than 99% of orders on time
- Fulfil orders with a “zero-day” handling time
- Offer premium shipping options for customers
Managing all that manually is a gargantuan task on any day, but on Prime Day? Keeping up with the speed required, while preventing fulfilment mistakes is nearly impossible to do by hand.
One way Prime sellers can step up to the plate is with integrated, automated shipping solutions. These automate key parts of the fulfilment process, like turning around Advanced Shipping Notices, printing compliant labels and pick lists, and auto-filling and verifying delivery addresses. The result is faster order processing, more bandwidth for your team to pack, and fewer mistakes.
Prime Day Preparation: Make Sure Your Business is Ready
When addressing the question of how to sell on Prime Day, your business needs to take several factors into account. To keep both shoppers and Amazon satisfied, you must provide the highest level of availability, deliverability, and customer service. With the right processes and integrations, you can be more than just a Prime seller: your business can be an Amazon seller in its Prime.
