It’s been roughly 45 days since Amazon rolled out its new Seller Fulfilled Prime (SFP) delivery metric requirement, meant to ensure the delivery expectations of Prime members are met.
Amazon has now started reviewing and evaluating sellers by looking back through 30 days of delivery speed performance and potentially suspending sellers from the SFP program.
See a recent message from Amazon to a SFP participant below:
As you can see, Amazon has started to take action on third-party seller accounts based on their Delivery Speed metric requirements. In this blog post, we break down two of the most common questions we’re hearing from sellers as the new rules take effect.
We recommend that you take some time and review your Delivery Metrics, evaluate where you stand and consider some of these tactics outlined below:
‘My numbers look low, how can I protect against a potential SFP suspension?’
The most important thing any seller needs to do is increase your Delivery Speed metrics. And there are several actions we have seen that directly improve performance.
1. Select the Saturday Operation Button
First of all, your seller account must be activated for Saturday pick-up. Some sellers have just started shipping Saturday and may have forgotten to select the setting. Simply visit the Order Fulfillment Settings page in Seller Central to select enable Saturday operations.
2. Experiment with Prime Shipping Region Automation
You can turn on this automation feature in the shipping templates section of your Amazon Shipping settings pages. Turning on this feature will help Amazon select the correct carrier and service to your customers when they are visiting your product detail page.
3. Activate Same Day Handling
You can also turn on this setting in the shipping templates section of your Amazon Shipping settings pages. This feature will help Amazon advertise your offer to its customers in a quicker time. Make sure you consider your order cut-off time in your order fulfillment settings if you do happen to implement this.
What if I have already completed the above steps, but I’m still struggling with improving my shipping metrics?
1. Review the Delivery Speed Report
Inside of the Seller Fulfilled Prime metrics dashboard, there’s a report that allows you to review the specific ASINs that contribute to bad performance within the SFP program. We recommend reviewing this report and removing any ASINs that are the negative outliers to the program.
2. Consider FBA or other shipping options
- Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA): Although FBA fees may have deterred you from the program in the past, this may be a good time to reconsider your options. Building out a cost analysis to compare the FBA fees you would incur, compared to the increased cost of shipping to adhere to the new SFP regulations could provide you with clear answers on what the best next steps to take could be.
- Third-Party Logistics (3PL): If you would prefer to not use FBA, but also do not have the inhouse capabilities to meet the new SFP requirements, exploring partnering with a third party logistics provider (3PL) may be beneficial to you. A list of third party logistics providers (3PLs) who partner with ChannelAdvisor can be found here.
Read more about both FBA and 3PLs on our blog.
3. Expand into marketplaces outside of Amazon
If you’ve previously been on the fence about expanding into new marketplaces, this may be the perfect time to grow your footprint within e-commerce. Increasing the number of sites and locles you are selling on eliminates your dependency on any one site, which, in turn, causes fewer concerns in the event any single marketplace makes an unforeseen decision that can heavily impact your business.
ChannelAdvisor integrates with hundreds of marketplaces worldwide to allow you to seamlessly sell on new channels.
ChannelAdvisor is here to help you transition through these changes. If you’re a ChannelAdvisor client, free to reach out to your client strategy manager or account manager to discuss specific strategies related to your account.
If you’re not currently a ChannelAdvisor client and would like to learn more about our suite of services, contact one of our e-commerce consultants here.
