Amazon FBA has overhauled the world of ecommerce and made it much easier and straightforward for sellers to reach a worldwide audience and sell their products efficiently. In a nutshell, fulfilled by Amazon allows businesses to sell products on the Amazon platform whilst Amazon takes care of the fulfilment process, i.e.. storing of products, picking, packing and shipment from their fulfilment centres.
The benefits of Amazon FBA are vast for small businesses, but overall it reduces day-to-day operations and logistics which gives business owners more time to focus on the growth of their brand and new products and development.
The FBA Process
To better understand how FBA can be a helpful tool for small businesses, here is the basic process for selling through Amazon FBA.
- Sellers will send products to be stored at Amazon Fulfilment Centres.
- Amazon receives the products and sorts and stores the inventory so it is easily accessible.
- The items are made available for purchase via Amazon Marketplace, where customers can find them and place an order.
- Once an order is placed it will come through to the fulfilment centre where it is picked, packed and shipped.
- Customers will have access to the great customer service options available on their Amazon App or the website, and Amazon will respond to any customer queries.
- If the customer decides to return the product for any reason, Amazon will arrange the refund and return labels as well as receiving the return back to the fulfilment centre.
The Benefits of Amazon FBA
We have highlighted that the process of selling on Amazon has been built to be an easier and efficient way to sell to Amazon’s worldwide established customer base. However there are, of course, pros and cons for selling products in this way and here we give the main points to consider before taking this route yourself.
Benefits:
- Product Ranking – listing your products through the FBA program will help to rank your product higher in search results.
- Amazon’s Trusted Services – Consumers trust Amazon’s customer service and there is a lot of brand loyalty. There is no need for stress as complaints and queries from customers will be taken care of by Amazon with their 24/7 customer support, they will also handle any returns.
- Streamline Your Selling – Amazon FBA offers multi-channel fulfilment solutions which means you can expand your reach to other platforms like eBay, making the most of Amazon’s considerable shipping services to fulfil your orders. You can harness these services in order to streamline your operations whilst reducing cost, becoming more widely available and offering faster, reliable shipping to customers wherever they do their shopping.
With all this information in mind you will need to decide if selling through Amazon FBA is worth it for your business. Although Amazon offers the FBA service to make it easier for businesses to sell products via their platform, it is still an extremely competitive marketplace. There is still an opportunity to garner success from selling on such a huge and widely used platform, as ecommerce businesses can benefit from the already established fulfilment infrastructure. It can help to have the support of a respected brand and trusted customer service offering, relieving some of the biggest stresses of launching a business to a wider audience.
Regional Express offers a full service to support E-commerce sellers with becoming an Amazon seller – please see https://www.regionalexpress.co.uk/services-for-amazon-sellers/ and get in touch for a quote.
