Orders from multiple sites plummeted! Amazon's ranking system is messed up

Since last weekend, the order volume of many sellers has plummeted, ranging from 1/3 to 2/3, across North America, Europe, and Japan. Analyzing the factors for the decline in orders, the three-day Memorial Day holiday in the United States is an important reason, but this cannot explain the simultaneous decline in sales at multiple sites, and the orders have also dropped significantly compared to last year.

In fact, this wave of decline had already begun before the holiday. Taking mid-May as the boundary, many sellers' orders began to be halved in the second half of the month, which was completely different from the upward trend at the beginning of the month. Traffic decreased, conversion rate decreased year-on-year, and summer products that should have seen a surge in sales in early May in previous years are still lukewarm. Where did the traffic go?

The spearhead is once again directed at Temu. Temu relied on low-price strategies to capture cities and strongholds, and copied Amazon's homework in terms of product selection and listing optimization. Its investment managers would recommend hot-selling products on Amazon to sellers, select new products from long-term hot-selling products such as best sellers and new product lists, and optimize the main pictures with reference to the top products on Amazon, and release products in advance according to the platform's activity calendar. It is undeniable that Temu did "copy" some traffic.

In addition to poor order performance, Amazon's system has also been plagued by bugs recently. In the past few days, the rankings of the US and European stations were abnormal. Due to fluctuations in order volume, sellers closely followed the ranking changes, but found that the rankings were unchanged. After asking their peers, they learned that the rankings had not been updated for a long time. Not only that, there were also problems with the QA section, advertising space, and flash sales, and sellers complained constantly.

Orders plummeted, and operations were "stupid"

Recently, cross-border sellers have generally felt a significant drop in orders. This morning, after looking at the sales volume, many sellers couldn't help but ask: Why are there so few orders today?

In fact, some sellers have been experiencing a slump in orders since March. In May, more sellers reported a decline in orders, which was worse than the previous two months or even the same period last year. In recent days, the order volume has directly fallen to the bottom. One seller said bluntly: "After looking at the sales volume, I feel like I'm going to lose my job."

This wave of order plunge came very suddenly. Sellers reported that almost all European, American and Japanese sites were attacked indiscriminately:

"Last year, the order was 598, today's order is 98, I am crying."

"Sales on the US site fell 20% year-on-year, and it's half dead."

"In the toy category on the US site, the number of orders is only one-third of that in early May, and the traffic is only two-thirds of that at the beginning of the month."

“Europe as a whole is down by a third.”

"The number of new orders has been cut in half in the past week. The number of orders in the US has dropped by one-third, and the number of orders in Germany has dropped from 80 to 30."

"It has dropped by nearly 1/3 in the past week. I still suspect that the link is being restricted."

"People are so dumbfounded that they can't operate anymore and are thinking of running away."

Some sellers said that the current order volume can no longer be described as halved, but almost ankle-cut. Seeing the orders instantly chilled my heart and I didn’t even need to turn on the air conditioner. I thought last month was the lowest sales month, but I didn’t expect there would be this month, and maybe next month.

"Since the 27th (US time), the number of orders has been declining every day. Today, the number of orders is only about 30% of the previous level. However, the category ranking has not changed much, and there has been no major movement in the head link. Looking at the report, both the traffic and conversion rate have declined. The advertising acos has increased significantly since the 24th. I don’t know what to do at the moment, so I can only wait and see." said a seller.

It is normal for the number of orders to decrease on weekends, but this time the order performance has hit rock bottom, and many sellers can’t sit still. After flipping through the calendar, sellers quickly found a problem for the decline in traffic - the holiday.

The last Monday of May every year is Memorial Day in the United States. This is an important mourning holiday, and it also marks the official start of summer in the folks. Beaches and amusement parks start operating from this weekend. Because there are three consecutive days of holidays, many Americans will go to the suburbs for barbecues and picnics, and go to the beach to have fun.

AAA predicts this year will be the third busiest Memorial Day weekend since 2000, with about 42.3 million people traveling by car, plane, bus or train over the weekend, nearly 3 million more than last year.

Many sellers are relieved by the holiday, as consumers are busy traveling and naturally have no time to shop, so the sharp drop in orders is understandable. However, many sellers do not fully agree, because the traffic did not drop at this time last year, and the overall traffic of summer products has not increased this year.

This topic was hotly discussed on Zhiwubuyan. One seller said: "Our average drop is over 40%, and some dates have dropped over 50%. What festivals are not festivals? Are festivals created this year? There is a problem with the traffic on the Amazon platform. The platform's traffic does not come out of thin air, but is obtained by its own pitchers on major platforms. This must be traced back to the source of traffic: Is Amazon getting less traffic, or is Google and other traffic sources also getting less? In other words, is it Amazon that is not doing well, or is it the entire US consumer market that is not doing well?"

In fact, the recent plunge in orders cannot be blamed entirely on the "holiday", because sales not only in the United States, but also in Canada, Europe, and Japan have fallen sharply; this wave of order declines did not occur in recent days, but started in mid-May and has lasted for half a month; in addition to the decline in orders, traffic and conversion rates also declined year-on-year.

Sales at multiple sites have been halved in the past half month, and summer products are still lukewarm

The overall sales in May were disappointing, but this may not be the worst news. After analyzing the sales in May, sellers are worried about: Why did the order volume change after mid-May? Will this situation continue into June? The popularity of summer products should have soared long ago, so why is it still mediocre now? The product conversion rate has dropped significantly year-on-year, and various system failures have continued, giving sellers a headache.

1. The order volume of multiple sites changed in the second half of the month

Since March and April, many sellers have found that their sales have dropped significantly year-on-year and hit a small trough. The downturn in some stores has continued to this day. Since the end of March, traffic has been cut in half, and the number of orders and rankings have been declining. Although sales are poor, advertising costs are still burning. Operations have no idea how to operate.

After entering May, the order volume rebounded significantly, and the sellers were secretly happy, thinking that May was stable. However, this momentum only lasted for a short week, and the order volume continued to decline. According to the feedback from many sellers, mid-May was a watershed, and sales have been getting worse since then.

For example, in early May, a European store had 70 orders a day, but in late May, it was only half of that. The operation described that the first half of the month was full of smiles, but from the second half of the month onwards, it was getting lower and lower. "Also on the European site, sales began to be cut in half in mid-May, advertising ACOs were rising, exposure was plummeting, and some product ads could not be sold." The seller complained that this situation is not an isolated case.

Sellers clearly felt that traffic began to decline around the 16th, with the middle of the month as the boundary, for unknown reasons. The direct result was a decrease in orders. Compared with the first half of the month, the number of orders in the second half of the month dropped by about 30%, and advertising costs rose against the trend.

This situation also occurred on the US site, but the sellers were unaware of the situation and thought that it might be because the Consumer Notification Act required information verification, which led to the decline in the weight of their stores. On the US-Asia forum, many foreign sellers also complained about the reduction in orders.

The decline in performance in the second half of the month led to a generally bleak performance in the industry in May. "Orders were 30% lower than last month and 40% lower than the same period last year." "The sales of the lucky three treasures category in Europe were halved in May, and acos doubled compared to April, and are already on the verge of collapse." In this case, sellers can only reduce their advertising budgets and wait until next month.

2. Frequent system failures

Last week, Amazon sent out verification notifications about the Consumer Notification Act and reminded sellers in the backend that their accounts were at risk of being deactivated, catching sellers who were already busy with various verifications off guard. Sellers who had just completed verification also received verification notifications again. But this seemed to be a mistake. The business manager also reminded that the backend pop-up window prompts and submission verification errors should be system problems, and it is recommended not to operate and wait for new information. Later, the backend reminders of many sellers disappeared automatically.

Orders have been fluctuating in recent days, and the rankings should have fluctuated greatly, but the actual situation is that the product rankings are more stable than ever before.

“My product ranks around 100 in a small category, and the traffic is unstable, so the ranking generally fluctuates, and it looks different in the morning and evening.
But my ranking has been stable for the past two days, which doesn’t seem normal. ” said a seller. Soon many sellers reported the same situation, and their rankings had not changed for several days. “This morning, I saw that every ranking was exactly the same as yesterday, accurate to the single digit, and I thought the rankings were delayed in updating.”

It is understood that the ranking has not been updated since the 27th, and this applies to both major and minor product categories, and the situation is the same in European and American sites. The seller was anxious and consulted customer service about this. The other party said that there was no problem with the system, and there was no clear regulation that the ranking would be updated every day. The seller was speechless.

However, according to the latest feedback from the seller, the system has resumed updating today. Perhaps the holiday is over and the technicians have returned to work to fix the problem.

In addition to the abnormal ranking, there are other problems. "The QA under the link disappeared. The QA is displayed under the title, but sometimes it doesn't appear when you click it." The seller carefully checked and found that the QA was displayed in a folded state and needed to be clicked to jump to the display. In addition, there were also abnormalities in the flash sales and advertising space. Sellers who reported the flash sales were worried that it would affect the effect of the flash sales.

At present , bugs frequently occur. Sellers believe that on the one hand, the platform has too many verifications recently, and the technical staff may focus on account verification; on the other hand, due to the holiday, the technical staff will not work overtime to solve the problem, which has delayed the problem for several days. However, with the Member Day approaching, sellers still hope that the system can operate normally to warm up for PD.

3. Summer products are not very popular

The current poor sales volume of ordinary products is understandable, but the low sales volume of seasonal and holiday products is a bad sign.

Sellers said that in previous years , sales of summer products had already started to pick up in early May, but this year, sales were still tepid at the end of May. "Last year, after May Day, sales of summer products started to surge, but this year, at the end of May, there is no growth trend at all, and advertising exposure and conversion are very poor."

Not only did they not receive a surge in orders, but sales of summer products are even declining. One seller said that his products are more summer-oriented, but now his orders have dropped by at least 30% against the trend. The seller speculated that the entire market for summer products is declining, and his major category ranking remains unchanged, while his minor category has moved up by more than ten places.

4. Conversion rate decreased year-on-year

Sellers have found that this year's traffic seems to be much less than last year. "Compared with the previous quarter, the traffic of the entire category is declining. Judging from the sales and rankings, the number of orders for the three lucky treasures and the top 100 in the subcategory is less than 300 in the same period last year."

Naturally, traffic has decreased, so we can only increase advertising efforts. However, after increasing advertising, there are advertisements almost every day, and sellers complain that they are working for the advertisements.

Not only did the traffic shrink, but the conversion rate in May also dropped by half compared to last year, and even the advertising conversion rate dropped a lot. Some sellers thought that there was something wrong with their store operations, but when they looked at other people's stores, they found that theirs was even lower. At present, many people believe that this year's conversion rate is significantly lower than the same period last year, and they look forward to a better performance next month, but the results are not satisfactory.

The industry is talking about traffic decline, so whose traffic is increasing? The arrow points to Temu.

Temu "stole" traffic

Speaking of the reasons for the poor order, many people believe that Temu's raid is one of them.

In the past two years, Amazon sellers believed that the low prices of competitors on the platform had reached the ceiling of price wars, until Temu came with its "cut one knife" super marketing and super low prices for all categories of goods, and then they saw the real hand-to-hand combat. The price of many Temu products is less than half of the price on Amazon.

The industry is watching how the booming Temu can compete with Amazon. It’s incredible that 8 makeup brushes cost less than $1, and they can be shipped across borders for free. But there are many similar products on Temu - 50 hair bands cost $1.17, 10 pairs of socks cost $3.87, and six lipsticks cost $0.97.

"You can compare the prices of similar products on Temu, which are really low. Foreigners are not stupid, and they will definitely take advantage of bargains, as they all know that products are made in China. In the future , Temu will increase its publicity. There are two nodes where I estimate that it will promote regardless of cost, one is Amazon's Prime Day, and the other is several festivals in November and December. Even if the Prime Day has little impact, it will definitely have an impact in November and December. " A seller analyzed. Although it is summer, the chill is still there. He suggested that his peers should make good use of the inventory in the second half of the year to avoid excessive shipments that lead to storage fees during the peak season.

In terms of product selection and page optimization, Temu has been copying Amazon.

The investment manager will recommend the hot-selling items on Amazon to the sellers, such as outdoor hammocks. These items, which are currently rare on the Temu platform, are considered potential products and are also the mainstream products for recent product selection and promotion. Sellers with resources are recommended to arrange for listing.

Where to choose new products? The investment manager introduced: long-term hot-selling products of best sellers on other platforms, similar pictures; new products on the new product list or best sellers on other platforms, with full keywords; pay attention to the top stores on the platform, their new products are researched by senior operations; the platform's grocery store, its overall sales are poor, but some products have orders, indicating that they are in-demand products.

When the sales volume of Temu Europe Station was growing rapidly, the manager told the sellers to check the best-selling products on the corresponding cross-border platforms such as Amazon to grab the top resource position. When optimizing the main picture, sku picture, carousel picture, and product name, it is also recommended to refer to the top products on Amazon, but they cannot be the same, because homogeneity will affect the listing and traffic.

In addition, it shared with sellers the event calendars of other platforms in recent months, such as back-to-school season, US Independence Day, Prime Day, etc., and reminded sellers to release event products at least one month in advance.

In terms of consumer groups, Temu ships cheap products directly from Guangzhou, targeting cash-strapped Americans. Analysts believe that its customers in the United States are mainly Asians or low-income buyers with an annual household income of less than $30,000.

A seller believes that this audience positioning has a low overlap with the middle and high-end consumer groups on Amazon. If the seller sells low-priced products, Temu will indeed steal traffic; but Amazon does not rely mainly on these low-priced products, but more on high-priced, high-quality services to gain consumer favor, and it is unlikely that such products will be robbed of sales. In addition, in terms of shopping experience, Temu cannot be compared with Amazon. Those who are willing to accept a poor experience are mostly middle and low-end consumers, and their spending power is relatively poor.

However, under the catalysis of Temu's overwhelming publicity and economic pressure, there will be many people who do not mind trying out new shopping platforms at super low prices. This is Temu's opportunity. It is also seizing the opportunity to retain these users.

It now appears that Pinduoduo's overseas expansion has been effective. With seemingly unlimited financial support from its parent company Pinduoduo, Temu may be the fastest retailer in history to grow from 0 to a certain scale. In just seven months, the Temu app has been downloaded more than 50 million times, becoming the most downloaded shopping app in the United States, France, Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom and other places.

As Temu becomes more and more popular overseas, Amazon will face a more intense battle for traffic. Especially for standard products, the future situation may not be optimistic.

In addition to Temu's share of traffic, another major reason for the recent decline in sales on Amazon is still the economic pressure from the society. Due to the continuous impact of inflation, people's economic burden has continued to rise, consumer psychology has also changed, and they have begun to seek more flexible payment methods.

According to foreign media reports, based on an analysis of more than 1 trillion visits to US retail websites , 100 million different products and 18 categories, in 2022, the share of online shopping orders using buy now, pay later (BNPL) services increased by 14% year-on-year, and sales revenue increased by 27% year-on-year. In the first two months of 2023, the share of BNPL orders increased by 10% year-on-year, but revenue decreased by 19% year-on-year. It can be seen that consumers are using this payment method to make small purchases to alleviate the pain of emptying their wallets at one time.

Data released by eMarketer shows that the number of consumers in the United States who choose the "buy now, pay later" service is expected to reach 88.2 million in 2023, accounting for 33.9% of the total number of Internet users in the United States.

This pressure from the wallet is the biggest obstacle to cross-border e-commerce sales, but it is difficult to solve in the short term. Sellers can only work hard to improve products, optimize advertising and other aspects to maintain sales and increase profits.