Amazon debuts Marketplace seller storefronts
Amazon has rolled out its Marketplace storefronts and sellers have noticed a few significant shortcomings.The most glaring issue for most sellers is the default name displayed on their storefront. Instead of their seller nickname being displayed, it's sometimes the seller's actual name, such as "John Doe." Quite a few sellers are unhappy about that, since they don't want personal data out there on Amazon for everyone to see.
My storefront, for example, says simply "Steve," only half of my seller nickname. Why only half? Who knows.
The URLs for storefronts, though, still work the same as zShops: http://www.amazon.com/shops/SELLER_NICKNAME
There is a way to change the Marketplace storefront name: From your Seller Account, go to:
> Edit Your Marketplace Seller Profile.
You can change the name of your storefront by entering a "business name." If the "business name" box is blank, your seller nickname will appear on your storefront.
You might want to also check to see if your street address is displayed. Many sellers would rather not have this publicly viewable on Amazon.
Also, from your seller account, you can click:
>Edit your seller preferences -- This allows you to change the display of your "customer service policy" and "shipping methods."
One new feature: You can add a logo to your storefront. Fine.
A major weakness of the storefronts is there's no categories or search function. Customers aren't going to scroll through 5,000 listings to find books.
Amazon says it plans to add storefront categories for books at some point. And the sellers participating in Fulfillment by Amazon already have some sorting ability on their storefronts. Although there's no category browsing, you can sort by bestselling, newest arrivals, featured items, "on sale" and by price.
One obvious question for sellers: If books are listed in your storefront now, will categories magically appear sometime later, assigned by Amazon? Or will a system be phased in later, and sellers will have to work backwards, recategorizing all their previous listings? It's an important question for those sellers who are currently struggling to convert old zShops listings into Marketplace. If anybody knows the answer to this, they aren't talking.
What's your take on the new storefronts?
posted by Steve Weber at 10/26/2006
8 Comments:
The old adage of "if it ain't broke..." comes to mind immediately for me.
I just checked out the new storefronts and I'm not particularly impressed. I don't like the idea of having my address available publically (whose bright idea was this?), and putting in a blurb about your storefront is pretty lame. Only the first 200 characters are listed without having to click to see more, which basically limits us to "Me sell books. You buy me books. Me very HAPPY!" (insert frowing smiley face here).
Also, did everyone notice that Amazon concurrently changed the template for individual book listings? The prices are now listed in huge numbers, and they also shorted the amount of text we can include about our items to much less than it was before. So all of my careful work to describe my books without an extra click has pretty much gone out the window. Thanks, Amazon!
Steve, thank you for sharing this information with us, regardless of another doosy by the big A, I always appreciate that you keep us up to date and well informed with your blog.
Amazon requires ALL fields to be completed on the Seller Profile entry screen, but to prevent your street address from being displayed (for non B&M sellers) you could enter a line of Underline characters (it won't accept blank spaces). It would look something like this, with the omission not being TOO obvious....
Primary Address:
__________________
Serendipity
AL , 33894
USA
Contact the Seller
__________________
This will allow you to enter enter the About Me info if you wish to have that displayed on the web site.
dd
We cannot understanding a dealer on Amazon does not want to dislose his address to potential customers.
Please forgive the errors in previous message.
It should have read We do not understand why a dealer on Amazon does not wish to disclose his address.
Why do Amazon sellers not want their address on public display?
There are a number of reasons and it really doesn't make any difference what those reasons are but a few spring to mind immediately - privacy, safety, inconvenience. We live in a world where cautious use of our personal information in public is very important.
For instance some folks sell from home and do not want potential buyers showing up at their front door asking to look through the "bookstore". If you have a store where people can browse, that's another story.
Yes, thank you Steve for posting this and other interesting information on your blog. Very much appreciated.
I found the search function right there at the top.
Thanks 'dd' for the idea of using underlines to blot out the street address. I did leave the city/state information though as I recently got two orders from people very close to my town and I think that made a difference. I don't have a real storefront and so people would probably not be amused to show up only to find the address being a residence.
What I can't figure out is why we should even care about this Storefront feature. I'm very new at this so I don't mind being corrected/informed at all.
But, when I click on one of the books I have listed, it just goes into a default Amazon type of screen, doesn't say what price my particular listing is at and gives the customer a chance to view all the listings for the book, which then takes them away from my so-called 'store'.
"But, when I click on one of the books I have listed, it just goes into a default Amazon type of screen, doesn't say what price my particular listing is at and gives the customer a chance to view all the listings for the book, which then takes them away from my so-called 'store'."
anon,
Click on the link on the second Amazon screen and you will find that only YOUR book is displayed, with no reference to any other copies available on Amazon.
dd
Do you know if there's a way to see the old version and sort by price, etc?
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