Guest blog from Seamus Breslin at RepricerExpress
Repricing software allows Amazon sellers to automatically compare their product prices to those of competitors’ and adjust them accordingly. Price is so closely linked to sales and product visibility on Amazon that sellers need to continually ensure their products are priced competitively. If you have hundreds or thousands of products, doing this manually isn’t viable.
RepricerExpress offers a solution which will automatically manage the prices of the seller’s products, adjusting them regularly to ensure they are well ranked and visible. Sellers can set their min and max prices for their products and the software then knows never to go below or above these price.
Every 15 minutes, the repricing software will check prices and adjust when necessary with the goal to win the Buy Box or rank highly in search results. With an increasing number of sellers using repricing software it is very much becoming an essential part of your ecommerce business rather than a nice tool to have.
What’s the Buy Box?
On the Amazon marketplace, both Amazon and third-party sellers are responsible for selling products. When a customer reaches the product page, Amazon places one seller’s details and price in the Buy Box.
Because the Buy Box is so prominent and linked to the ‘Add to cart’ button, any seller with placement in it, will guarantee more sales for the seller that wins it. In search terms, the Buy Box is effectively the first result of a customer’s search for a specific product, and the one that they are likely to click most to complete a purchase.
Last year, Amazon’s revenue was close to $75 billion, with more than $60 billion of sales coming through the Buy Box and with $30 billion being attributed to third-party Amazon sellers.
How can l win the Buy Box on Amazon?
Your eligibility to win the Buy Box is linked to your seller performance.When you exceed Amazon’s standards you’ll obtain the Featured Merchant status—a prerequisite to Buy Box eligibility.
When that’s in place, your placement within the Buy Box can be largely governed by price, which is why anyone seriously selling on Amazon needs to put repricing strategies in place to consistently maintain healthy sales.
Reach 237m customers
An area that small sellers often overlook is the huge audience of consumers are on Amazon—with around 237m customer accounts globally, any small seller with their own website is never going to be able to bring that size of audience to their own site.
Amazon’s new Subscriptions API means that sellers are able to filter their competitors with much greater control and only compete against similar sellers instead of reducing their prices against non-featured merchants and those who aren’t eligible for Buy Box placement.
What are the biggest fears of customers using repricing software?
The number one fear of sellers is that repricers can lower prices to as low as a penny, but the truth is that sellers need to input their minimum and maximum sell prices before repricing begins—so if you set a minimum sell price for your football as £5 your price will NEVER get pushed below that.
A modern repricing solution will increase your prices where possible. If your min and max prices for the football are £5 and £20 respectively and your competitor sells out of stock, the repricing would push your price up to maximise your profits on any new sales.
There are so many myths about repricing software but the truth is, the practice has been going on in retail for decades, albeit in a different way. In any competitive market, you’re going to have to compete on price in some regard, particularly on a marketplace that is renowned for its competitive pricing, however, with a repricing solution, you get to compete on your terms where you can win.
Have you any advice on executing a repricing strategy?
Sellers should use a pricing strategy in line with their overall business strategy. It is important your repricing software allows you to decide who you want to compete with and also who you don’t want to compete with.
There isn’t one quick fix for all sellers since everyone is different, but what you do get with a modern repricing solution is the ability to match your repricing rules to your own business, so you’re competing only where you can win a sale.
What features does RepricerExpress offer?
With RepricerExpress you get a super-fast repricing solution that:
- Is really easy to set up,
- Offers continuous and blazingly fast repricing,
- Offers multiple ways to increase sales,
- Allows you to compete with different sellers in different ways,
- Can run in Safe Mode (whereby you can try repricing without affecting your live marketplace listings),
- Works across eight Amazon marketplaces,
- Can include or exclude specific sellers*,
- Offers infinite customisation of your repricing strategies*,
- Can filter competition based on seller rating, feedback, shipping country and dispatch times*,
- Auto-enables price increases under common scenarios*,
- Comes with a 15-day free trial.
* features coming soon
How long does it take to set up?
Because RepricerExpress is online and ‘talks’ directly to your Amazon account, there is nothing to install or setup outside of the app—you can be up and running and trying repricing live or in Safe Mode (won’t affect live listings) within 30 minutes of sign up.
How much does it cost?
Our packages start at £30 a month which includes 2,500 SKUs. We also offer a free 15-day trial so you can find out if repricing is suitable for you without it costing a penny.
Further questions?
If you have any further repricing queries and can’t find the answer on our website please get in touch via [email protected] where Seamus or one of the team will get back to you asap.
About the author Seamus Breslin
Designer, marketer and all things ecommerce related.
*This article originally appeared on Taxjar.com