The pros of Amazon.com online shopping website include; international shipping exposure, Amazon FBA business, inventory management, increase in sales revenue, access to purchase-ready customers, visibility on search engines, and more. However, the cons of Amazon.com online shopping website include; high competition in a saturated marketplace, low control, high charges, review limits, brand limitation, no data access for Amazon FBA sellers.
Every third-party seller will gain access to a global audience when they transition to Amazon’s marketplace, which is the biggest in the world. It’s not news anymore that this e-commerce company has a large customer base with 112 million Prime subscribers just within the United States. However, understanding the pros and cons of thriving on the platform helps make your business stress-free and more successful. Therefore, in this article, we’ll be taking a deep look at the pros and cons of Amazon.com online shopping website. Let’s go!
Pros Of Amazon.com Online Shopping Website
Selling on Amazon.com has a lot of benefits and advantages, and we are going to talk about it in detail.
Access Purchase-Ready Customers
If you choose to sell through Amazon, you’ll have instant access to purchase-ready customers. Most buyers/customers on Amazon don’t have to go through the awareness phase because they already know what they want to buy. It will be much easier for a seller to list products on a platform where customers have high-buying intent.
Increase In Sales Revenue
Business owners on Amazon have the advantage of selling to millions of potential buyers. Thanks to the product cataloging system of Amazon, sellers will be able to optimize and categorize their items to enable buyers with eh most appropriate search queries to locate them. You don’t need to spend extra money to advertise your products to irrelevant buyers. Selling on Amazon has already given you incredibly targeted traffic to your products.
Great Amazon Reputation
A lot of people buy from Amazon because of its reputation for delivering high-quality products with an excellent customer experience. As a seller, you’ll benefit from Amazon’s incredible reputation all over the world.
International Shopping Exposure
Thanks to the brand trust and international exposure of this company, sellers will be able to take their product offerings to new markets without any hassle. You can actually sell outside your town, state, and even country. Amazon Global can help you fulfill and ship your products to over 100 countries in the world without any problems.
Quick And Easy To Use
It’s quite easy to start a business on Amazon from a practical point of view. Within a day, you’ll be able to set up your business.
Visibility On Search Engines
Another great advantage of selling on Amazon is that your product listing can appear on the first page of Google if you’re willing to optimize your product pages for the right keywords. Just so you know, product pages rank so well for highly competitive terms as a result of the high amount of authority that Amazon has.
Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA)
Most of the sellers on Amazon use the FBA program. It involves keeping your products in Amazon’s fulfillment centers. Amazon does the picking, packing, shipping, and also delivers customer service for your products. Sellers will be able to save valuable time and resources since the logistics are taken care of by Amazon.
Inventory Management
You don’t have to worry about tracking your products if you allow Amazon to manage your inventory, packaging, and shipping. We advise you to join the Amazon FBA to enjoy all these offers. Amazon is well known for its world-class infrastructure to help sellers in inventory management and logistics.
Cons Of Amazon.com Online Shopping Website
Amazon has its strengths and weaknesses, and it’s very important for all sellers to know these before starting a business with the company. Let’s see some of the weaknesses of selling on Amazon.
High Competition In A Saturated Market
When you’re selling on Amazon, there will be a large amount of competition for you. And the bad news is that the competition keeps growing. In 2019 alone, over 1 million new sellers were registered with Amazon. It is likely you have like over a thousand competitors that are competing with your business in the I’m a product category. The marketplace is already saturated with over 2.5 million sellers so expect high competition.
Low Control
Amazon has its rules and regulations and all vendors must be ready to follow them. Keep in mind that Amazon’s loyalty isn’t with you, it’s with their visitors/customers. They might just decide to remove or block your product listings including (product descriptions, weight, and dimensions) since they have total control of your listings. That’s not all. Amazon can remove vendors’ product catalogs. Let’s take, for instance, if a vendor sells a large number of products that might be difficult to get back up, then such vendor might be restricted from further sales.
Review Limits
Selling on Amazon simply means there are things you’re not allowed to do. Unfortunately, Amazon can reduce the number of product reviews a vendor can get at a particular time. Although the main aim of review limits is to stop false reviews on the website, it is not good enough for a vendor getting legitimate reviews. A vendor’s chances of getting organic visibility on Amazon will be reduced when there are review limits.
Expect Fees
Expect to be charged for a certain amount even though your sales revenue may move up sporadically. Before starting up as a vendor on Amazon, it is always a smart move to do some research on your specific Amazon fee plan. Amazon has two major types of selling plans, and they include a professional plan and an individual plan. Each comes with a specific fee.
Amazon’s Customer Loyalty
Customers are generally loyal and committed only to Amazon when they buy your items. Amazon doesn’t permit vendors to link to their website and social media. Vendors are only allowed to show names, logos, and a few images. So, it is possible these customers don’t even know much about your brand.
No Data Access For Amazon Vendors
Some crucial information of the customers is restricted by Amazon. It is difficult for sellers to personalize their experience without access to their customers’ behavior on Amazon.
Amazon Limits Your Brand
Amazon is a bad choice when it comes to building your brand from scratch. It is possible that your business competes with thousands of other vendors without using your unique brand story. Amazon basically removes your brand from the buying process which results in customers only focusing on product reviews, price, and popularity on the Amazon marketplace.
FAQs
We’ve highlighted some frequently asked questions and answers about the Amazon.com Online Shopping Website.
Is Amazon Responsible For Their Sellers?
Amazon authorized its third-party sellers to vend products through the company’s website, and are subjected to the terms of Amazon’s Business Solutions Agreement(BSA). These terms state that third-party sellers are “responsible for any non-conformity or defect in, or any public or private recall of, any of their products
What Happens If The Amazon Seller Doesn’t Ship?
Amazon will be responsible for refunding you if you place an order and the seller couldn’t deliver your item.
Is Amazon A Safe Website?
Yes! Just like every other established e-commerce website, Amazon is completely safe. Amazon helps to protect your financial and personal information.
Bottom Line
Selling on Amazon has both advantages and disadvantages. The only serious shortcoming about selling on Amazon is that you lose control of your brand. Aside from that, all other disadvantages can be controlled. Besides, the advantages are much more important to business owners than the disadvantages. We’ve come to the closing session of this informative article. We hope you were able to find reliable resources in your quest to know the pros and cos of selling on Amazon.com.
References:
https://www.consumerreports.org/online-shopping/pros-cons-amazon-prime-a7384439028/
https://www.thebalance.com/the-pros-and-cons-of-online-shopping-939775
Last Updated on August 5, 2022 by Ana S. Sutterfield
Magalie D. is a Diploma holder in Public Administration & Management from McGill University of Canada. She shares management tips here in MGTBlog when she has nothing to do and gets some free time after working in a multinational company at Toronto.
