Amazon Shakes up its Shipping
Amazon Shakes up its Shipping
Are you ready for Amazon’s shake up of marketplace shipping?
Amazon has always been surprisingly generous with marketplace sellers shipping schedules – but signs are that Amazon has woken up to the competitive disadvantage of slow shipping and guess what? They’re getting ready to shake up market place shipping!
Shipping timeframes are pre-set in Amazon – order with a standard shipping option from any marketplace seller and your shipping window will allow 8 days for your order to reach you. Choose Expedited and your shipping window may be up to 4 days! This has allowed Amazon to offer much faster shipping times than its marketplace sellers – it’s also allowed lots of sellers to trade on supplier stock without holding stock.
Although many good sellers will beat Amazon’s pre-set shipping timeframes hands down, customers’ perceptions of the platform are arguably set by the pre-set shipping schedules. This isn’t what buyers want – and it isn’t what marketplace sellers want either!
Perhaps Amazon has woken up to customer demand for faster shipping – after all, why stick to a marketplace if you can buy it somewhere else and have it shipped in half the time? Perhaps Amazon has also realised that it can’t stock and deliver every product in the universe and so need to facilitate speedier shipping from the platform.
We can expect to see Amazon offering high performing sellers more shipping options and better shipping speeds, enabling them to match Amazon Prime and meet customer needs which will include both 24 hour and 48 hour shipping options.
A client of Relton Associates who operates using Seller Dynamics middleware with Net Despatch (essential tools if you want to offer your customers this type of substantially enhanced customer service) is currently participating in the Beta trial for these new marketplace-shipping options.
For sellers, Amazon’s shipping shake-up will mean even more reasons to watch those metrics as these may be the gateway to gaining access to improved shipping options. It will certainly hand the advantage to sellers able to offer fast order turnaround and reliable shipping, so reliable stock data and despatch automation are a must. For buyers, it will mean improved delivery choices on a wide range of products. In other words, music to the ears of both buyers and sellers in the run up to Christmas!
