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We Just Uploaded 1500 A+ Pages to Amazon – Here’s Five Things We Learned

24 June 2022 by Mike Digishare

Have you ever typed a word so many times that it stops looking real? After submitting 1500 A+ pages to Amazon on behalf of one of our client brands, we can confirm it’s not only words that start to feel a bit strange. Images, layouts, existential concepts—at some point all of these acquired a sheen of unreality, forcing us to step away from the screen and indulge in a fortifying cup of coffee before pressing on. 

It’s unfortunate that, despite progress elsewhere towards bulk processes, most brands that sell on Amazon need to submit their enhanced A+ content manually, one at a time. We at Digishare have experience working on hundreds of thousands of pages during our decades of experience but tackling this project illustrated that submitting A+ content at scale has several unique challenges. 

 

Measure Twice, Cut Once 

Amazon notoriously has specific requirements when it comes to A+ content assets. Text content needs to abide by a word count. Images need to follow guidelines on content and dimensions. At low volumes, any assets not meeting these standards can prove to be a minor but solvable headache. These can be fixed on a one-by-one basis, and (if you’re smart) the changes are fed back into the sourcing process, so future assets (including localised ones) no longer have this issue. 

It feels like a very different problem when, at the end of a months-long process of asset generation by a client, you receive 1000s of images which are the wrong size. In our case, a content agency used by our client had created assets by following guidelines set out by an instructional document. An official Amazon instructional document that, while not recent, was released sometime in the last decade. 

The problem? One of the image dimensions it listed was wrong. 

The agency was blameless in thinking that the document they were working from was legitimate, but anyone with Amazon experience could have identified the problem and amended it early in the process. As that didn’t happen, we were faced with thousands of assets that needed more work before they could be considered usable. 

When working at scale, even if a process looks clear and straightforward, it is always worth spending the additional time needed to have it examined by experienced eyes. For every minor issue that they spot, they might save you hundreds of hours of work. 

 

Name Your Assets Consistently 

It’s vital to organise your process so that when an error is detected, it can be located and fixed as efficiently as possible. Although the A+ submission process itself is resistant to bulk processes, that’s no reason not to organise your content and assets in a way that bulk processes can easily be performed on them. 

The simplest way of doing so is by having a consistent file naming structure. If done correctly, you can quickly identify assets according to product SKU, product group, type of asset and so forth. 

Even if this proves of little use during the actual Amazon A+ submission process, it provides flexibility and futureproofs your assets for use on other platforms with different systems. Updating or modifying assets is made easier and allows new users to utilise the files in the future without having to refer to an esoteric guide (or visual page mock-up). 

 

Don’t Include Things That Shouldn’t Be There 

Speaking of consistency, it’s an open secret that Amazon unevenly enforces its guidelines, especially for text content across different regions. In some countries, you can include references to warranties and guarantees without fear of your submission being rejected. In other countries it’s a gamble: you might see your page accepted only to have it taken down weeks (or months) later. 

For small numbers of pages, you might be tempted to push your luck, especially if the content you’re trying to include is key messaging or a USP. However, when working at scale the unpredictable nature of this enforcement can work against you. If consistently applied, you might find 100s of pages being rejected at a time, causing large-scale disruption and potentially leading to your future submissions coming under increased scrutiny and delays. If inconsistently applied, you may only have a handful rejected but these are easily lost in the larger mass of submissions and may not even be noticed. The result is that key products in your launch might be missing the vital A+ content required for maximum conversion, and you might not be aware until it is too late. 

Our recommendation: try to follow guidelines as best you can and work with partners who have experience with Amazon A+ content. Although it is impossible to fully predict what might provoke Amazon’s ire on any given day, by doing this you will avoid the worst of the disruption and find ways to mitigate the effects of any rejections that do occur. 

 

Name Your Vendor Central Project with a Project Identifier 

Vendor Central does not always make it easy to locate and view any given batch of submissions. Especially on accounts that have multiple users, sorting by date becomes inefficient due to the muddling that happens when older pages are amended and re-submitted. 

To save yourself time and effort in the future, it’s easier to name each batch in Vendor Central a unique project identifier. This doesn’t have to be complicated (a simple string of letters will do) but it has to be something that, when typed into the VC search, will return all the submissions you are looking for. 

Equally vital is a separate “control sheet” where all the SKUs, ASINs and projects are listed for easy reference in the future. 

 

Use the Amazon API Connection If You Want to Work at Scale 

At the start of this list, we mentioned that Amazon A+ submissions are a manual process. That’s not quite true. For a lucky few brands who sell on Amazon, their accounts are enabled to use the new Amazon API connection which allows A+ submissions to be done as a bulk process. 

Although we are more than happy to help guide our clients through the trials of submitting thousands of pages manually, we’re much happier to tell you that we are one of Amazon’s Software Partners. We would love to help you find out how efficient this process can be. If you’re interested in enabling the Amazon API connection for your account, drop us a line at info@digishare.eu and we’ll discuss how best to make it work for you. 

Filed Under: Amazon, Blog

Customers Are Wishing Physical Retail Was More like Online

28 October 2021 by Mike Digishare

Everybody is aware of the stellar performance of online retail during the global pandemic, both internationally and specifically in regions that experienced lengthy and restrictive lockdowns. And, as expected, the gradual lifting of restrictions has led to a rise in in-person shopping once more. But have we now grown too accustomed to the ease and speed of online retail?

In a recent survey of 1,600 US shoppers, Reflect Systems discovered that although shoppers have predictably missed high-street retail and the benefits of physically interacting with goods, they also feel like they’re losing out on the upsides of shopping online. This has been built into a narrative that brick-and-mortar retailers need to provide more in-store tech for their customers, but could we look at this from the opposite angle?

For so long online retail has been focused on trying to replicate the offline experience, and we’ve seen that stall. In a separate survey run by YouGov on behalf of Zakeke, 71% of U.S. consumers who had purchased online in the last 12 months have never used any virtual try-on or any AR online tech while shopping. Although these systems continue to become more powerful and less complicated for the shopper to access, we’re still seeing a comparatively low take-up for numerous reasons.

While progress in this area will undoubtedly continue for some time, maybe it’s time to just celebrate all the things that online retail does that physical retail could never do? And, maybe, devote some of all this time and development into making online the best it can be, without an envious backwards glance at the physical experience.

Filed Under: Blog

Amazon and the Issue of Trust

28 October 2021 by Mike Digishare

To say that Amazon has been late to the party when it comes to combating counterfeit goods would not be entirely unfair. Despite claims of action and regulation, as recently as April 2020 several of Amazon’s international sites were listed as notorious markets for counterfeit and pirated goods. What’s even more striking is that the list was published by the US government itself.

Whatever the motivating factor was, it’s difficult to not say that Amazon has beefed up its response in that area. Launched last year, the retail giant’s Counterfeit Crimes Unit has been trying to champion the cause, urging businesses and governments alike to work with it to fight the tide of fake goods globally. They have developed various tools and brand registries as weapons in the fight, and are offering these to partners with transparency in the hope they help spur a more unified front against criminals.

Even the usual refrain of “actions not words” doesn’t seem to apply to Amazon’s response. Earlier in the year, Amazon suspended numerous high-profile third-party brands from their platform for violating its marketplace code of conduct. Big names such as Mpow and Aukey disappeared from the site, and a number of them have yet to return. The impact was so great on Chinese third-party sellers that the city of Shenzen was paying vendors to create their own online marketplaces so that they could avoid Amazon. Even the Chinese government has made noises about helping its businesses better navigate the different customs of international retail.

But.

For Amazon to successfully lead a fight against fraudulent and illegal business practices, it requires the trust and goodwill of thousands of global businesses and brands, big and small, partners and rivals. And Amazon has a trust problem.

Not necessarily with consumers (after all, Amazon recently topped yet another brand loyalty poll), but the recent damning news from Amazon India is sure to make many in the retail space think twice about how they approach the company and its international marketplaces.

Reuters recently uncovered documents detailing Amazon’s business practices in the region, namely how they would identify and copy third-party sellers’ products, before rigging the search results to display the company’s own products at the top of the page. This is the first time there has been hard evidence of these sorts of practices and comes after years of question from sellers as to where Amazon designs and sources its own-brand goods. In even more shocking news, the documents show that executives such as Diego Piacentini, who was in charge of Amazon’s international business, and Russell Grandinetti, senior vice president of international consumer were aware of the practice. As these two are members of the senior management team, they worked closely and reported directly to Jeff Bezos. Amazon will find it hard to deflect accusations that this was not an isolated initiative by a regional team, but something condoned by the business at large.

Filed Under: Amazon, Blog, News

Looking to the Future with Translation and New Item Setup

28 October 2021 by Mike Digishare

 

Black Friday is rapidly approaching, and with it the broader holiday season and the final few weeks of the year. 2021 isn’t quite over yet, but we here at Digishare are already looking ahead to what 2022 has in store, especially the new features planned for the new year. Over the next few months, we’re excited to share some sneak peeks about what new functionality is just over the horizon.

Ensuring your content is consistent across multiple international markets is never a simple task. That is why we want to include the ability to submit and receive translations directly from Digishare to/from your chosen translation partners. We hope that you will be able to design and build your product content within StoryBuilder as normal and select an option to send your content off for translation. Our system will automatically format your content to allow for easy translation and send the data directly to your specified translation partner. Once this process is complete, your partners can return the translations by the same method and they will be uploaded into StoryBuilder, ready for your approval process.

Another process that is often difficult and time-consuming is the process of setting up new items (NIS) on your chosen retailer platforms. In 2022, we aim to allow you to perform this task within Digishare, allowing you to easily format your data for different retailer requirements and submit, all within our tool.

We hope that you’re as excited about these new projects as we are. Please keep visiting our blog for our latest development updates, or consider subscribing to our monthly newsletter at:  https://mail.digishare.eu/mailing-list

Filed Under: Blog, News

Research Shows That Poor Product Content is Still Driving Customer Frustration

16 September 2021 by Mike Digishare

To say that online retail has had a “good time” in the past year is a gross understatement. With the global pandemic in full force and people’s movements restricted, millions of people in multiple countries turned to the internet, not just for their essential groceries but for all the items they would otherwise be buying on the (shuttered) high street.

However, with vaccine rates rising worldwide and economies starting to open up again (albeit with the continuing complications caused by the Delta variant), there has been one constant question on retailers’ lips: will these new customers now abandon online for the high street? How much of that lovely online growth is temporary? How bad will the backslide be?

Answers range from the anxious to the bullish, but the truth is that it is still too early to tell how much of a permanent change has occurred in people’s shopping habits. However, what we do have is a prime opportunity to capture as many of those consumers as loyal, online customers of your brand as possible.

Selling online continues to have challenges. Recent research by Walnut Unlimited on behalf of Ve Global has identified some of the customer difficulties and frustrations that plague online purchases. Chief amongst these, as has long been the case, is a lack of clear information. A quarter of respondents said they’d had trouble when trying to browse for products online, while over 20% said that they had encountered confusing or missing product information. Over a third of electronics customers said they missed the buying advice that often came with in-person shopping experiences.

These are not insurmountable problems. There are new technologies to help fill the experiential gap that customers find online vs the high street. There are new and more accessible formats to get the story of your product across. And, at the centre of it all is the continuing need to have clear and consistent product information for your products, on every page they are listed. If we’re able to deliver on these fundamental aspects of the buying experience, we’re already well on our way to making a customer an online retail convert.

Filed Under: Blog, Etail

Digishare Publication Tracker Updates and UI Overhaul

15 September 2021 by Mike Digishare

Here at Digishare, we’re continually looking to refine and add new functionality. We’ll be sharing regular blog posts talking about the recent changes we’ve made to Digishare, and what new features you can look forward to in the future.

Publication Tracker Updates

We’re pleased to announce a long list of improvements arriving shortly, with a number of long-requested features:

  • ASINs – ASINs will show in the Publishing Tracker
  • Comments – Comments can be left next to any product in the Tracker, to add context to their status
  • Comments Filter – Products can be filtered to show only those with or without comments
  • Filter by Multiple Statuses – Products can be filtered to show those with one or more statuses. This is ideal for identifying products that have yet to be submitted or published
  • Preview StoryBuilder – You can view the StoryBuilder preview directly from the publishing tracker

 

Digishare 3.0 UI Overhaul

Progress on Digishare 3.0 continues, with development on our UI overhaul now underway. Our aim is to take all of the great functionality we’ve created for Digishare over the past two years and present it in a clean and intuitive way. By splitting out various functions and content types, we’re hoping to decrease page load and save times by at least 50%. By speeding up these functions, we hope that it will go a long way towards helping to streamline your workflow.

We’ll be posting more in the future to keep you up to date with all the latest news, so make sure to check back regularly, or sign up for our newsletter here.

 

Filed Under: Blog

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+31 (0)76 7630831
info@digishare.eu

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+31 (0)76 7630831
info@digishare.eu

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info@digishare.eu

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