Foreign media predicts: Amazon Prime Day sales growth may be less than 20%

Amazon Prime Day is coming, but the atmosphere of this year's promotion does not seem to be as strong as in the past. One seller joked that although everyone is running slowly this year, he is still responsible for "running with others" and waiting to see how things develop. Another seller directly said: "Let the top sellers work hard, and we will strive to make a breakthrough in the second half of the year!"

Amazon to cut back on Prime Day?

Affected by the epidemic, inflation, and war, the growth rate of many cross-border e-commerce platforms this year has not been as rapid as it was before, but has slowed down, and Amazon is no exception. Many sellers have also lowered their expectations for this year's Prime Day.

Regarding the expected growth of Prime Day this year, the forecast value of the research agency InsiderIntelligence has also dropped from the previous market assessment of 65% to less than 20%, with an overall downward adjustment of a large magnitude . There are also foreign media reports that Amazon is reducing the discount intensity and related budgets for Prime Day products, and focusing the big discounts on key self-operated products. This move will undoubtedly have a double impact on sellers' traffic and order volume.

In addition, the European and American markets, which are the main targets of cross-border sellers, do not seem to have brought too many surprises to sellers. According to foreign media reports, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said that a US economic recession is "definitely possible." As for the potential impact of the crisis, Amazon, as the largest e-commerce platform in the United States, naturally cannot stay out of it.

If a recession does occur in this market, it will first hit entertainment, hobbies, home improvement, activities and clothing-related products, thereby affecting the sales performance of related sellers. Luxury goods and other categories of goods may be most affected. In May, the prices of related products have fallen month-on-month, while necessities, as a must-have for consumers, will show relatively stable sales .

It is understood that in order to cope with the potential "crisis", Amazon sellers have taken some actions. In view of the fact that some consumers in this market have reduced non-essential spending, sellers believe that the conversion rate of certain product categories may decline. For this reason, many sellers abroad have strengthened the monitoring of product conversion rates in order to adjust the product categories sold in a timely manner.

According to research from research institutions, in the past few months, consumer behavior has become unstable, especially on Amazon, and in some cases, year-on-year conversion rates have declined, which has sounded the alarm for sellers: this situation may have an impact on their revenue goals for this year and beyond . In addition, there are sellers working hard on procurement and logistics costs to try to offset the rising logistics and transportation costs.

In addition to product conversion rates, other platforms’ big promotions also pose a threat to sellers who only sell on Amazon, including its biggest competitor Walmart and some large domestic retailers in the United States, with large discounts. Some sellers believe that although these competitors will not pose too much of a threat to Amazon, they will still grab traffic and market share to a certain extent. In addition, Amazon’s repeated cost increases in the past two months have aggravated the sellers’ predicament.

Since April, Amazon has imposed a 5% fuel and inflation surcharge on sellers at multiple sites, and will adjust the logistics and remote delivery fees of North American sites at the end of this month. Continuing supply chain problems and inflation have caused sellers to bear increasing costs and increased pressure. In response, many small and medium-sized sellers said they did not dare to make any big moves. Sellers said that the current high inflation in the European and American markets has led to a decrease in the disposable income of local consumers, and it is normal that everyone's order volume has not changed.

In addition, reduced shipments and clearance sales at low prices have become a common phenomenon in the industry, and sellers' profitability in the second half of the year has also been called into question.

However, some sellers believe that the current order volume has not changed or even decreased, perhaps because buyers are waiting for Prime Day to "take advantage of the bargains", and the orders may explode in those two days. But judging from the current market situation, everyone is obviously in a "silent state". Or maybe Amazon has also sensed the potential crisis and is launching a series of measures to increase sales on the platform.

Amazon optimizes product pages and keywords, or is in the testing phase

Recently, some sellers have reported that there have been subtle changes in Amazon's front-end product display pages and key search pages, mainly because the information on the product pages has become more detailed and accurate.

Take the product display page as an example. The thumbnail is significantly enlarged. The picture is directly related to the buyer's first impression and subsequent click-through rate. It also accounts for a large proportion of the buyer's search results page. Its importance is self-evident. In addition, the search matching degree of keywords is also improved. As a result, buyers can search for the products they want faster.

This subtle change certainly not only affects buyers, but also places higher demands on sellers in terms of product display. If the product information is not detailed and accurate, it may be screened out on the final display page, and the product exposure will be reduced.

However, it is understood that the scope of this adjustment does not involve all sellers, or is in the testing phase. Most sellers also said that their pages have not changed much, and they may not be within the scope of the adjustment. The focus now is to ensure that there are no errors in the products, and then there will be adjustments later.

The closer to the critical point, the control of each link becomes the focus of the seller.

Recently, Amazon also issued a message to remind sellers to check compliance issues, such as whether the image format is accurate, whether the main image is a real photo, whether there are irrelevant elements displayed, whether the variant theme and attribute values, brand name, etc. are wrong. Amazon said that if there are relevant non-compliance issues, the seller's products are likely to be banned from display, and subsequent sales will be affected.

In fact, in recent years, there have been many cases where sellers have missed out on Prime Day due to non-compliance issues . Therefore, sellers should pay special attention to the above issues to avoid unnecessary trouble.

While reminding sellers, Amazon also gave them some suggestions. For example, in terms of traffic, Amazon believes that sellers need to associate the correct classification nodes and refinements with products. In terms of keywords, they should be accurate and rich, and products should highlight differentiation and selling points, etc. This will help increase the chances of products being searched, increase exposure and conversion rates.

As the market growth slows down, sellers are more relaxed. As far as the current situation is concerned, most small and medium-sized sellers believe that seeking stability is still the safest strategy. Some sellers said that it is good enough if the order volume does not decline. The first half of this year was indeed not satisfactory, but Amazon has just kicked off the second half of this year, so they are still full of expectations.

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