5 Amazon FBA mistakes that kill your sales (and what to do about them fast)

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You may have been selling on Amazon for a while now with your ecommerce business. And at this point, you might be considering selling on Amazon FBA.

However, you might not be sure what to sell on Amazon FBA and you may be nervous about messing up the process.

You really don’t need to be intimidated by FBA, though.

But to help relieve any FBA-related anxiety, in this post, I want to talk about five Amazon FBA mistakes that could negatively impact your sales and how to fix them fast.

Let’s take a look…

5 Top Amazon FBA mistakes

Not choosing clear winners or best sellers

One of the first mistakes new FBA sellers make is not choosing a clear best selling and/or evergreen product to add.

When you first start selling with Amazon FBA, you may feel like you want to sell a bunch of products in a bunch of different niches. You might even feel overloaded by all of the niches you want to try!

After all, you want to maximize your chances of making sales, so you may think you want to have as many opportunities for people to buy as possible. However, that’s not necessarily the case with FBA.

A big part of the Low Hanging System involves throwing spaghetti at the wall. But with FBA, it’s good to be more focused and intentional with the products you add, primarily focusing on products that already have made a few sales or are proven best sellers.

Additionally, to get the most from your FBA listings, you should focus on products that can sell all year round. These products are referred to as evergreen products.

Later down the road, you can add more trendy products, including holiday-specific items. But to start, it’s better to choose designs that never go out of style. Otherwise, you could get stuck with a bunch of inventory that no one wants because it’s not relevant or timely.

For example, I wouldn’t recommend adding a bunch of Halloween mugs to FBA because, for the most part, customers only shop for that type of item in October.

Here are some examples of evergreen designs that could sell well as FBA:

Birthday celebrations
Anniversaries
Occupations (e.g. teacher, lawyer, doctor)
Hobbies, sports, and passions (e.g. knitting, baseball, SCUBA diving)

So to recap, when you’re trying to decide what to sell on Amazon FBA, focus on these types of products:

best selling items, or items that have made at least a few sales
evergreen products with year-round selling potential

Using low-quality product mockups

One of the most important things you can do to increase your chances of making a sale on Amazon is to use high-quality product mockups.

Product photography is incredibly important, especially with ecommerce, but it’s also expensive and time-consuming. That’s why many new sellers make the mistake of using low-quality images, thinking that any image is better than no image at all.

Unfortunately, this isn’t really the case.

If you’re using low-quality or amateurish product images, you can actually hurt your chances of making a sale. Buyers are much less likely to purchase a product if they can’t clearly tell what it looks like. So make sure you’re using high-quality product mockups from the start.

Fortunately, if you do LHS, you get access to tons of great product mockups. I routinely have my designers create free product mockups for you to use with your listings and any promotions you run. These mockups also include lifestyle mockups, which show the products in use so shoppers can get a better feel for what it’s like to own a particular item.

To find more mockups created by my designers, use the search bar on my website to run a search for “mockups” and you’ll find tons of great stuff.

NOTE: Your listings’ primary default photos on Amazon always need to be featured against a white background. So just keep that in mind when creating product mockups yourself or adding the mockups my designers created.

Not updating your SEO

Another mistake that new Amazon FBA sellers make is failing to update their SEO regularly.

SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of optimizing your listings so they rank higher in Amazon’s search results. The higher your listing ranks, the more likely it is to be seen by potential buyers.

However, Amazon’s algorithms are constantly changing, so it’s important to keep your SEO up-to-date. Otherwise, you run the risk of your listing being buried deep in the search results where no one will find it.

To fix this problem, simply make sure you’re regularly updating your keywords and other listing information. You can also use Amazon’s Sponsored Products program to help get your listings in front of more potential buyers. Sponsored Products are ads that appear on Amazon next to related products. When someone clicks on a Sponsored Product ad, they’re taken directly to your listing.

You can learn more about Amazon’s Sponsored Products program here.

Ignoring customer feedback and reviews

Customer feedback and reviews are one of the most important factors when it comes to making sales on Amazon.

Amazon is a highly competitive marketplace, and shoppers rely heavily on reviews when deciding which items to add to their shopping carts.

Buyers trust reviews from other customers much more than they trust your marketing materials. So, if you’re ignoring customer feedback, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to increase sales.

The good news is that it’s relatively easy to fix this problem. Just be sure to regularly monitor your reviews and take the necessary actions to improve customer satisfaction.

For starters…

Focus on fulfilling orders quickly and accurately
Let customers know when their orders are likely to ship
Provide customers with tracking numbers so they can monitor their orders’ progress
Make your return policy clear, concise, and transparent (customers should know what to expect if they need to return an item, and you should make the process as easy and hassle-free as possible)
Whenever possible, try to build personal relationships with your customers
If something does go wrong, respond as quickly as you can (within 24 hours)

And this should go without saying, but you should always be courteous and professional when interacting with customers. Even if a situation is not going well, treating the customer with respect will help build relationships and preserve your company’s reputation. It can even encourage customers to shop with you again in the future.

Your customers should always feel confident that they can reach out if an issue arises and get a prompt resolution.

Additionally, you should always double-check your product is high quality and well-packaged, especially with print-on-demand items. No matter how great your product is, you’ll get stars knocked off if it’s poorly packaged and the customers receive a defective product.

Stay on top of changes your manufacturer makes to the product so you can communicate those changes to your customers through the product descriptions. First impressions are everything, so you want to make sure that the product your customer receives is exactly as described.

Lastly, you can use Amazon’s Vine program to get honest, unbiased reviews from customers. To learn more about how Vine works, click here.

Creating the same title and tags for every product

Finally, many new Amazon FBA sellers make the mistake of using the same title and tags for every product they sell.

This is problematic because it means your products are more likely to be lost in the sea of similar products on Amazon. Instead, you need to take the time to create unique titles and tags for each product in your inventory.

Doing so will help your products to stand out and be more likely to be found by potential buyers. It takes a bit more time and effort upfront, but it will be worth it in the end.

Here are some tips for writing great titles for your products according to Amazon:

You can learn more about writing unique product titles that live up to Amazon’s standards here.

I hope you find this post useful! If you can share any other tips or advice about what to sell on Amazon FBA and how to improve those listings, please leave a comment below. And if you enjoyed this post, please share it with your friends and followers.

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