5 Ways to Get Ready for Amazon Prime Day

Amazon Prime Day is one of the biggest annual online sales. Since its debut in 2015, the event has offered massive deals for Prime customers worldwide. Shoppers bought between 250 million to 300 million items in recent years, making it an ideal opportunity for stores to maximize sales.

Amazon sellers can use Prime Day to increase sales. The event can expose your brand to broader audiences, boosting brand awareness. By preparing in advance, your team can create a plan that sets you apart from competitors and increases revenue.

What Is Amazon Prime Day?

Prime Day is Amazon’s annual sales event for Prime members, most often held in June or July. The timing is an excellent mid-year opportunity for buyers because it doesn’t interfere with holiday shopping. The strategy also gives sellers a peak window for sales.

The first Amazon Prime Day occurred on July 15, 2015, to celebrate Amazon’s 20th Anniversary. Each year, Amazon increases its reach by expanding sales to new countries, sellers, and brands. Prime Day has consistently grown, achieving higher sales and revenue every year.

The first event lasted 24 hours and included exclusive deals for Amazon Prime members across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, continental Europe, and Australia. It was a massive success as customers bought more from Amazon on Prime Day than they had on Black Friday. Purchases spanned from Amazon Kindles to Instant Pots, giving consumers a multitude of options.

From there, the event grew. In 2017, Prime Day was extended to a 30-hour event and included shoppers in China and Mexico. Prime “Day” became a day and a half in 2018 and finally became the two-day marathon it is today in 2019.

In 2020, Prime Day moved to October due to sweeping supply chain disruptions, but independent sellers saw a significant leap in sales from the previous year’s event. In total, third-party sellers brought in more than $3.5 billion in sales during Prime Day 2020.

How to Prepare for Prime Day

Given that Amazon Prime Day allows businesses to reach a broader audience and boost sales, it’s important to spend extra time in advance to prepare your business for success and help you stand apart from competitors. Extra prep work can help your business stand apart from competitors and achieve even more success.

Here are five Amazon Prime Day tips to optimize your success.

1. Include Detailed Product Information

Your Amazon listing on Prime Day might be a shopper’s first impression of your brand, making product descriptions crucial. Compelling and informative product content can convince new buyers to purchase from your store. Beyond a striking product name and description, you 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, you should make sure they’re updated and completely accurate. Product information management solutions can help you update content by centralizing it in one location.

2. Optimize for Amazon SEO

The more people that view your products, the more you can sell. Like Google, Amazon’s search pages use a complex algorithm to help shoppers find the best products quickly. And like Google results, the product listings on the first page get the best views and sales.

Using SEO strategies ensures maximum visibility for your brand. Here are a few examples:

• Optimize your product title with keywords, colors, sizes, and your brand name.
• Make sure your product descriptions are easy to read and include important keywords. Color, size, materials, and compatibility are popular filters for shoppers. Make these details clear for better Amazon rankings.
• Check your product images. Images can increase your conversion rate, which is a key Amazon SEO factor. 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

Positive reviews can increase your conversion rates. Recent reviews are also as important, providing customers with all-essential social proof that other people love your brand. Consumers also tend to trust newer reviews more than older reviews because they show current product quality.

As you prepare for Prime Day, reach out to your latest Amazon customers and request reviews. Amazon has made this process easier than ever with a handy “Request a Review” button that automatically sends 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 maintain satisfaction, you need real-time, accurate inventory levels on all your Amazon product listings.

Inventory accuracy is often complex. Unless your business system and Amazon Seller Central account are linked, you must manually update your inventory every time a product is ordered. Integrating Amazon with your ERP system allows you to sync these updates automatically, reducing manual data entry.

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 fulfillment centers need to have the capacity and efficiency to distribute orders quickly.

Participants in the Seller-Fulfilled Prime Program must also meet Amazon’s strict guidelines to stay a Prime seller. Even on Amazon Prime Day, third-party sellers need to:

• Ship more than 99% of orders on time
• Fulfill orders with a “zero-day” handling time
• Offer premium shipping options for customers

Managing all that manually is a massive task, especially on Prime Day. Maintaining speed while preventing fulfillment mistakes is nearly impossible to do manually.

One way Prime sellers can improve their approach is with integrated, automated shipping solutions. These automate key parts of the fulfillment process, like turning around Advance Ship 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.

Learn more about Amazon integration capabilities.

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.