MGR

MGR Amazon Weekly Update | November 12, 2019
Top News This Week

China’s “Black Friday” Was Yesterday, Alibaba Did Over $38 Billion in Sales

Yesterday was Single’s Day in China, the equivalent to Black Friday in the US. For reference, last year’s US Black Friday and Cyber Monday eCommerce sales combined for roughly $13-14 billion, Alibaba did nearly triple that in one day. So what can US eCommerce sellers learn from the Chinese?

Here are a couple takeaways. First, this is a glimpse of where eCommerce is heading for the rest of the world. The US is ahead of China in many things, but eCommerce is not one of them, meaning North American and European brands can learn from what’s working in China now to get ahead of the game in the West.

Another takeaway, it’s only a matter of time until there is a Western version of Tmall. What is Tmall? Think Instagram Live meets QVC. It’s where shoppers go to watch live streams of influencers or product experts explain and showcase products, and if a shopper is interested they can buy it right then and there. We’ve already seen Amazon launch Amazon Live in an attempt to replicate this, but the question is when will livestream shopping begin reaching mass adoption in the rest of the world like it has in China.

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Prepare for and Expect Amazon Glitches this Holiday Season

The next 6 weeks are the busiest time of year for every business in the consumer space from retail to eCommerce. This includes Amazon who has over 2 million businesses on their platform. Things will break, their support will be slower than normal, and you need to be ready for that.

We’ve already seen this past week an error that was not allowing Sellers who had suspended accounts get in contact with Amazon because of glitch in Amazon’s system.

What can you do to avoid issues? First, be patient and know ahead of time that you can’t expect everything to go perfectly, business never does. Second, make sure you are following all of Amazon’s guidelines so that you don’t run into trouble. Getting dinged this close to Black Friday means you may not be able to resolve the issue in time and miss out on the biggest sales weekend of the year.

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