In the actual operation process, it is still inevitable to encounter several “Waterloo”. Even for many experienced big sellers, product out of stock is a common phenomenon. Who among Amazon sellers has not been out of stock several times? Out of stock is not terrible. What is terrible is that after out of stock, sellers do not know how to deal with it effectively and deal with it in time. As a result, the adverse effects of out of stock are infinitely magnified, and finally cause great losses.
Once FBA products are out of stock, the biggest impact is the ranking weight of the product page. The longer the out of stock time, the greater the impact on the ranking weight. Out of stock will cause the ranking to drop, and it will be very difficult to return to the original position at that time. This is also easy to understand. The game between you and your competitors is like a marathon. If you suddenly stop, your opponents will naturally run ahead. The longer you stay, the more difficult it will be to surpass your competitors later. However, sometimes out of stock is inevitable. What should we do to minimize the impact of out of stock?
In the first stage, assuming that our inventory may still support about half a month, but we have estimated that we will definitely not be able to complete the replenishment within half a month, and out of stock has become a foregone conclusion. At this stage, I suggest that sellers do not make any adjustments for the time being. They should continue to sell as they did before, and actively replenish the stock and shorten the out-of-stock time as much as possible. In addition, remember that you must not raise the price. Many people think that they are about to run out of stock, so they think about raising the price to slow down the sales speed, hoping that the existing inventory can be sold for a few more days. This approach is very unwise.
Why can’t you raise the price?
Raising the price can indeed slow down the sales speed and shorten the out-of-stock time. However, the decline in sales speed means a decline in ranking weight. If it is not out of stock, your ranking weight will fall sharply. Once it is really out of stock, the ranking will have fallen to the sky. This is why I do not recommend raising the price.
When your FBA inventory can only support about a week, it will enter the second stage. At this stage, it is recommended that sellers start to lower the price of the product. Lowering the price will definitely increase the sales speed. The product that can be sold in a week may be sold out in 3 days. The purpose of this operation is to let our products rush the ranking weight before running out of stock. The sudden increase in sales speed will definitely have a positive effect on the ranking weight.
When the product is completely out of stock, it enters the third stage. Once the product is out of stock, the front-end product page will display the red characters “Currently Unavailable”, and the product page cannot be found by searching in the Amazon search box. Never use self-delivered products to follow sales. Many people see that FBA products are out of stock, and immediately use FBM self-delivered products to follow sales, thinking that they can make more money. This idea itself is good, but it ignores a very serious problem: if you blindly use FBM self-delivered products to follow sales, the product can indeed be sold, but the conversion rate and sales speed will be greatly reduced compared to before, which will greatly affect the ranking weight of the product.
After many tests by our team, as long as your out-of-stock time does not exceed two weeks, after using the above method, out-of-stock has almost no effect on the ranking weight of the product. Even if the out-of-stock time exceeds two weeks or even more than a month, using this set of methods can help you minimize the impact of out-of-stock on the ranking weight of the product.
Seeing this, some old Amazon sellers may think that I am making a fuss a little bit. When facing product out-of-stock before, sellers should raise prices and follow the sales, but they did not find much impact. Even if there was some impact on the ranking weight, after the FBA products were put back on the shelves, they did a few “flash sale” activities and advertisements, and the ranking came back quickly. There is nothing wrong with doing this, but it is not very appropriate. There were few sellers on the Amazon e-commerce platform before, and the competition was not fierce.
However, as cross-border e-commerce Amazon becomes more and more popular, a large number of sellers have settled in Amazon, resulting in increasingly fierce competition. What we need is a more refined and process-based operation method. If you still use the previous method of extensive operation, you will find that Amazon will become more and more difficult to do, and it will become more and more difficult to make money. This is also the reason why many old Amazon sellers complain that Amazon is not easy to do and lose money. The era of extensive management and extensive operation is over. You can only avoid being eliminated by the times if you actively change your previous inherent thinking mode!