Something went wrong again! A large number of Amazon sellers have abnormal orders

“I don’t know what Amazon is up to!”

Although Amazon is a world-renowned cross-border e-commerce company, it has been repeatedly criticized by cross-border sellers for its "inadequate technology". In the past month, everyone has just reported that the front and back ends were stuck, and other problems have come one after another.

In addition to the old problems of front-end and back-end lag, advertising pages are difficult to open; the back-end order data is also "weird", and the order data is inconsistent with the data on the order page. Traffic and conversion issues are troubling a large number of sellers. Naturally, traffic has skyrocketed, but the number of orders has not increased or even declined... Sellers are confused by this series of operations by the platform, and they are speculating that Amazon is going to introduce new policies again?

Amazon has frequent problems, organic traffic surges and conversion rates drop

As the Spring Festival holiday approaches, Amazon is causing trouble again. Recently, Amazon sellers have discovered that traffic and order volume are abnormal. Let’s take a look at the sellers’ feedback:

The recent sales have been like a roller coaster, the increase is particularly unreal;

On January 9, the traffic increased a lot, but the conversion rate was much lower;

Traffic doubled, but the number of orders remained about the same as usual;

The number of orders has dropped a lot since the 7th. When will it return to normal?

In recent days, no matter how the order volume changes, Amazon's ranking remains unchanged;

I was desperate when I saw the order volume these days, but I came back to life when I saw the rankings;

The ads are messy, the backend business report data is also messy, are Amazon's programmers on strike?

The effect of running the flash sale is pretty good, but the ranking has dropped dramatically. I’m convinced!

…

The editor summarized the recent experiences of sellers and found that a large number of sellers have encountered the situation that "no matter how many orders are placed, the category ranking has basically not changed ." For example, the number of orders has been increasing, but the rankings of 100 orders and 500 orders are actually comparable, or the rankings of 50 orders and 100 orders are not much different. "I dare not be happy even though the orders are booming, because I am afraid that these are all illusions."

Some people's natural traffic surged, but the number of orders did not change, and the anomaly occurred on January 9. "The traffic surged from more than 400 on normal days to more than 1,000, but the number of orders did not change." One Amazon seller said that most of his listings had this situation. On the 9th, the traffic doubled, but the number of orders was about the same as usual.

Normally, if seller traffic increases significantly, the number of orders will definitely increase to a certain extent. So when these sellers see that traffic increases but the number of orders remains unchanged, they all feel uneasy.

"This is an abnormal increase in traffic, which is not a good sign. It will definitely lead to a conversion rate that is much lower than usual." Judging from the results, although some sellers said that the impact was not significant, the conversion rates of many sellers have declined to varying degrees. Some orders have dropped by 10-20%, and some have dropped by as much as 70%.

Recently, in addition to encountering abnormal traffic and product rankings, Amazon sellers have also discovered that order quantity statistics are extremely unusual. Almost all sites, including the US site and the European site, have experienced differences in order management and business report data.

Some people saw that they had no orders for several hours and thought that their sales were really bad, but in fact it was a delay in the Amazon system. However, this is only a minority of sellers. After repeated checking for a long time, many sellers confirmed that the order data in the business report was indeed inconsistent with the data on the order page. Some sellers suddenly had more orders, while some sellers suddenly had fewer orders.

A US seller said that on January 6 and 7, the order data in the business report differed by 30-40 orders from the data on the order page, and he did not get a substantive response after consulting customer service. Another Canadian seller said that the order data on January 7 differed by several hundred orders. In fact, there are sellers whose order sales differ even more. "The day before, the sales of last week were normal, but the next day, there were thousands of extra orders for no reason. Is the business report out of control?"

Amazon customer service responded to the abnormal order volume

What are the reasons for abnormal traffic and order volume?

Regarding the surge in the platform's natural traffic and rankings, many sellers speculated that a system bug caused the data to become abnormal, and it is estimated that the data will be updated later. However, some sellers also speculated that the platform's data source will be open for update, or that the platform is brewing other new policies. After all, Amazon always makes trouble when there is a new policy.

Regarding the discrepancy between order management and business report data, Amazon responded that this was not due to system problems and gave four possible reasons for this phenomenon:

1. Business reports ("By ASIN" and "By SKU" reports) update order cancellations retroactively at the end of the day, while management orders reflect these cancellations in real time. Therefore, the order quantity in business reports may be greater than the order quantity in management orders.

2. The orders in the business report include orders that are automatically canceled due to payment failure , but the order report does not include them.

3. By default , the management order does not include pending orders, while the business report includes pending orders. Sellers are required to select "Include pending orders" in the "Advanced Search" view of the management order .

4. Management orders only include pending seller-delivered orders , while business reports include both pending seller-delivered orders and Amazon logistics orders.

According to Amazon, the business report includes canceled order data. Order management is real-time, and canceled and unpurchased orders are excluded, so the business report data is greater than the real-time order data. However, many sellers cannot accept this statement. After adjusting the calculation method according to the platform, they found that the data still does not match.

In fact, regardless of whether the above problems are system bugs or not, Amazon sellers have indeed encountered various problems in recent times.

In terms of search terms, when sellers searched for products in the past, the first 7 pages were filled with similar products with reviews. Now, when the same search terms are used, only 3 pages are displayed in many cases, and all the products after that are without reviews.

At the same time, the problem of Amazon's front-end and back-end being difficult to access continues. Sellers report that many pages cannot be opened, and restarting or closing the refresh method cannot solve the problem. This not only tortures the spirit, but also brings great trouble to daily work, seriously affecting work efficiency. Some people cannot download the cargo packing form successfully for three days and three nights. Some people want to open the advertising report to calculate the gross profit, but it is still going in circles after a week ...

Now these problems are still ongoing and have not been properly resolved. Sellers have said: Amazon is really a love-hate relationship!

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