How to Manage Your Amazon Seller Central Account On a Daily Basis

Amazon offers entrepreneurs significant opportunities to sell products and grow a business. You gain access to a massive audience, and you can manage nearly your entire business in one space.

However, you can quickly become overwhelmed with all the capabilities of your Amazon Seller Central Account—especially if you’re new to the platform. To that end, we have created a guide to help you manage your Amazon Seller Central Account.

Our goal is to help familiarize you with the platform. In this article, we will discuss setting up your account, explore the dashboard, examine the other Seller Central features, go over some things you should do on Seller Central to succeed, and how to solve your problems with Amazon customer service.

Setting up your Amazon Seller Account

Before you can take advantage of all of Amazon Seller Central’s features, you will need a seller account. Having the right information on hand will make this as easy and efficient as possible.

You will need to provide the following information when signing up.

• Business name and address
• Tax Identification Number or Social Security Number
• Tax classification (LLC, partnership, or sole proprietor)
• Contact information for Amazon and your customers (keep these separate)
• Real name and address
• Shipping locations (all regions that you are willing to ship products to)
• Bank account info
• Seller logo
• Business info/About us
• Return and refund policies (if applicable)

To create your account, go to sell.amazon.com and click “sign up”. Amazon will bring you to the account creation page, where you will create your login credential. Then, you will follow the rest of Amazon’s instructions and provide information about your business. Make sure to double-check that everything is entered correctly. We would recommend setting up two-step authentication right away as well. Extra security never hurts.

Once you finish creating your account, you will be taken to the Seller Central dashboard.

Amazon Seller Central Dashboard

The Amazon Seller Central dashboard allows you to look at various essential aspects of your business and its performance with a glance. Here are some of the features you can take advantage of in the dashboard.

Your Orders

The “Your Orders” section shows you important information about recent customer orders that were fulfilled by both you and Amazon. It tells you how many pending and unshipped orders you have, as well as any return requests you’ve received from customers. If you see anything concerning, you can click “View your Orders” to head to the Orders tab.

Payments Summary

Amazon pays you your earnings every seven days, with a 14-day holding period. Pro sellers get paid every 14 days without a holding period. Payments Summary helps you track the money Amazon owes you, and it lets you see your most recent payment amount.

Amazon Selling Coach

Amazon Selling Coach informs you about your inventory levels and recent sales numbers and offers some helpful information about items that sell quickly. It also advises you on what items you should consider expanding shipping options on. If you agree with Amazon’s advice, you can click “restock,” and Amazon will automatically order more of that inventory for you.

Manage Your Case Log

The Manage Your Case Log area tells you if any of your customer support cases need your attention and provides a quick link to your cases.

Sales Summary

The Sales Summary shows your total units sold and total dollar amount of sales over the current day, as well as rolling 7, 15, and 30-day periods.

Performance

Performance gives you a glance at your overall store performance. It tells you if you have any buyer messages, any A-to-Z or chargeback claims, and shows your customer feedback.

Headlines

Headlines provides you with news updates about Amazon and eCommerce that could affect your business.

Amazon Seller Central Features

Along the top of your seller portal is a menu containing all of the main Amazon Seller Central features. Let’s look at each one.

Catalog

Catalog is where you can update your store’s product selection. You can choose items already available on Amazon, add your own, or edit existing listings. Catalog allows you to save listings as drafts if you need to come back later, too.

Inventory

Inventory lets you monitor and manage your inventory levels and order new inventory to keep things in stock. You can also manage any FBA shipments on the Inventory screen.

Pricing

Pricing is pretty self-explanatory. You can view and edit the prices of your items. You can also set notifications when competitors change prices. Additionally, you can automate price changes in case competitors do so. If you become eligible for discounts on Amazon fees, pricing is the screen where you can claim them.

Orders

Orders lets you view all orders and whether they’re pending, unshipped, or shipper. If you are processing any returns, their information lives on this screen as well.

Advertising

Advertising is one of the more open-ended screens, as you can set up and monitor Amazon PPC campaigns here. But PPC isn’t the only type of campaign you can run. Advertising lets you promote your products with coupons and lightning deals.

Lastly, you can implement A+ content in your listings here.

Reports

Reports is self-explanatory. You can look at in-depth reports of various metrics within your business, from sales to taxes to advertising and more.

Performance

Performance essentially shows the same information in its dashboard counterpart but in more detail.

So far, we have covered all the basic screens and menus you’ll need to navigate in Amazon Seller Central. Now, we will show you some things you should do regularly to maximize your success as an Amazon Seller.

Amazon Seller Central: Things to Do

Optimize Your Listings

Having the best products on Amazon does not do much if you cannot get them in front of the right people. You should invest significant time in polishing and tweaking your product listings for Amazon SEO as well as user experience.

In general, this means including relevant, descriptive keywords (color, size, etc.) and your brand name (if possible) in your title. Sprinkle keywords throughout the listing as well. However, make sure the listing sounds compelling. Paint a picture of the user’s life with the product by writing engaging copy that is concise yet descriptive. Make sure all your product’s details are clear as well.

As for pictures, use a high-quality camera, and consider a black and white background for your main photos. Capture multiple angles. Depending on what you sell, snap some pictures of your product in action, too. These pictures can further help your customer visualize themselves using the product.

If your brand is in the Brand Registry, you can enhance your listings with A+ content.

Seller’s Choice and our team of expert digital marketers are experienced in optimizing every aspect of your Amazon listings. We help brands that are attempting to scale to stay relevant in Amazon search results with deep competitor and keyword research as well as image and copy optimization.

If you’re looking to expand your marketing efforts, but you don’t have the time to do it yourself, or the resources to bring everything in house, add Seller’s Choice to your growing business’s e-commerce arsenal to stay at the top of your niche!

Monitor Inventory Levels

Running low on (or out of) inventory already spells bad news for your business. However, you running out of stock is bad for Amazon, too, so they will push you down in the search results if it happens. If you run out, your listing may not show up at all. Check on your inventory levels daily and try to synchronize inventory across all your sales channels.

Run Ad Campaigns

Similar to Google Ads, Amazon offers PPC campaigns—where you only pay when a customer clicks a listing—through Amazon Marketing Services. In an Amazon PPC campaign, you get to pick the keywords you would like your ad to appear for. Alternatively, you can ask Amazon to select the keywords automatically.

Amazon will then display your product alongside organic listings when a customer searches the keyword. Since you only pay when a customer clicks, your PPC campaign can lead to a high return on your investment. Plus, you can test various versions of your listing with different keywords, copy, and pictures without paying for every ad.

However, the benefits go beyond immediate sales. Each winning listing you create will generate an influx of traffic. More traffic gives you an SEO boost, helping you rank higher in the organic search. Thus, you could see a long-term sales increase.

An excellent time to run a campaign would be during the holidays. Consider combining your campaign with a discount or deal, and you could make substantial sales.

Now, even the best campaigns eventually fatigue. You must regularly monitor your campaign in the Amazon Seller Central Campaign Manager to ensure it is still earning you strong sales. If not, it might be time to end the campaign or try a new idea.

Entrust Seller’s Choice to create and manage your Amazon Ad campaigns. Our team of digital marketing experts have a deep understanding of Amazon Seller Central and can create and report on any campaign, leading to great insights for future Amazon marketing efforts. ‍

Get in touch with us today to learn more about what working with Seller’s Choice looks like!

Learn How to Read Metrics, then Analyze Them

Every sale you make and every ad you run provides you with data. You must know how to read and analyze that data so you can use it to move your business forward. Some of the most important metrics to track include the following:

• Sales
• Views
• Conversion rate (sales/views)
• Returns
• Customer reviews
• PPC metrics

Fortunately, Amazon simplifies and centralizes much of this in the Reports section of your Seller Central dashboard. Check these reports regularly to see weak areas you could improve on. For example, if you have a low conversion rate—which could mean plenty of views but few sales—your listing copy or pictures may not be compelling. However, if you have low views on a product, you might just need to optimize the listing for Amazon’s search algorithm.

Answer Customer Questions and Concerns Promptly

Customers love doing business with brands that offer a fantastic customer experience. This is especially true on Amazon since the company is known for it. In fact, Amazon itself will penalize you for not responding to customer questions within 24 hours. Amazon will place a late response mark on your profile. Too many of these can lead to suspension.

With that in mind, set aside some time every workday to answer product questions and process returns and refunds. Ensure you are cordial in all customer communications, even if your customer does not do the same.

Learn About Taxes

When you sell online, your tax situation can become complicated fast. Nowhere is that clearer than with sales tax.

As a product business, you will have to pay (and therefore collect) sales tax on most of your sales. You may sell to more than one state—meaning you could be liable for paying sales tax in those other states. That does not consider selling to other countries, either.

Your business’s tax return paperwork will be much more complicated than your personal returns, too. Plus, you will have to keep much more documentation to back up the numbers on your tax return.

If you are not confident that you can handle all of your taxes, consider hiring a professional accountant specializing in e-commerce business taxation.

Amazon Seller Central Customer Service

Selling on Amazon is overwhelming, even for many sellers with moderate experience. You will likely have questions or run into issues at some point. Fortunately, Amazon has a few resources to help you out.

How to Contact Amazon Seller Central Customer Service

The best way to contact Amazon Seller Central is to do so in your account. First, navigate to the customer support area. You will then be presented with two options: “Selling on Amazon” or “Advertising and Stores”. Pick the one that more closely resembles your problem, and it will take you to a detailed page that answers common questions. You can then look around that page or use the search bar to find an answer to your issue.

If you can’t find an answer, click the “Other Issues” dropdown on the left side of the screen, pick the language you’d like to communicate in, then choose the method of communication: phone, email, or live chat. Fill in any relevant info, and they will contact you.

The Amazon Seller Central Forums

In addition to customer support, Amazon maintains the Amazon Seller Central forums, where Amazon sellers ask and answer each other’s questions and discuss the various features of Amazon Seller Central. You may find your answer here without ever having to talk to support.

Conclusion

Amazon Seller Central does pretty well in its goal of consolidating your entire business in one area. However, you still have a lot of features to deal with, so unleashing Seller Central’s full potential can be a challenge. Hopefully, this guide makes it a little easier to navigate the many tools Amazon Seller Central provides you with.