Helium 10 Buzz 6/6/24: TikTok Shop Cancelled? | Walmart Review Mapping | Amazon Award Opportunity

We’re back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10’s Chief Brand Evangelist, Bradley Sutton. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, Walmart, and E-commerce space, talk about Helium 10’s newest features, and provide a training tip for the week for serious sellers of any level.

TikTok Shop Puts European Plans on Hold, Concentrates on US
https://www.pymnts.com/news/social-commerce/2024/tiktok-shop-puts-european-plans-on-hold-concentrates-on-us/

Amazon Small Business Report
https://sellingpartners.aboutamazon.com/impact

The Amazon 2024 Force for Good application is now open! Amazon is searching for mission-driven selling partners who drive positive change in their community.
https://sell.amazon.com/blog/force-for-good

Learn how Amazon uses AI to spot damaged products before they’re shipped to customers
https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/innovation-at-amazon/amazon-ai-sustainability-carbon-footprint-product-defects

But that’s not all! We’re also thrilled to announce Helium 10’s new Japanese version, designed to support Japanese users with native language navigation and subtitled tutorials. Plus, we’ve got a brand-new dashboard widget for tracking Amazon account metrics over time. Don’t miss out on the hidden gems of our Chrome extension that could transform how you manage your Amazon business. And for those looking to optimize Amazon FBA fees, we share critical tips on monitoring package dimensions to save on unnecessary costs. Tune in as we unpack these game-changing updates and arm you with the tools to elevate your e-commerce game!

In this episode of the Weekly Buzz by Helium 10, Bradley covers:

• 00:52 – TikTok Shop Cancelled?
• 02:33 – Amazon Small Business Report
• 04:33 – Walmart Review Mapping
• 06:11 – Amazon Force For Good Awards
• 07:30 – Amazon Project PI
• 09:22 – Follow The AM/PM Podcast On LinkedIn
• 09:50 – Helium 10 New Feature Alerts
• 12:39 – Pro-Training Tip: Under The Radar Chrome Extensions Features

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

TikTok shop plans canceled in some countries. A chance to win cash direct from Amazon. Walmart now allows you to tie reviews to orders. This and more on today’s Weekly Buzz. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I’m your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that is our Helium 10 Weekly Buzz, where we give you a rundown of all the goings on in the Amazon, Walmart and e-commerce world. We give you what’s new inside of Helium 10 as far as new feature goes, and we also give you training tips of the week that’ll give you serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. Let’s see what’s buzzing. We got a few news articles today and then we got some cool training tips that I want to get to as well. So let’s go ahead and hop right into the news Now

Bradley Sutton:

The first news article of the day is from Payments.com and it’s entitled TikTok Shop Puts European Plans on Hold. Concentrates on US. So it’s full steam ahead here in the US. But if you remember, a few weeks ago on the Weekly Buzz, we had reported that, hey, a release in places like Europe and Mexico and Canada was imminent, but now it is backtracking. So it says here in this article that, hey, TikTok had planned to roll out shopping platforms Spain, Italy, Germany, France and Ireland as early as July, but they have put a pause on these expansion plans, along with intentions to bring the TikTok shop to Mexico and Brazil. Now this article says, hey, that this decision reflected ByteDance, which is TikTok’s parent company, their strategy of focusing on the US market in order to avert a possible ban. Now, one of the other reasons that they did this it says that they were afraid that European expansion plans might run into potentially regulatory scrutiny, kind of like it has happened in the US? And so they are like, hey, we’re not about to uh, deal with that at this time. So for those of you who are excited in Europe about being able to start TikTok shop, unfortunately it’s a no-go Now if you are in another country. It’s pretty difficult to sell on TikTok shop in the USA because you need a social security number. But if you’re based in the USA, you want to learn more about how to sell on TikTok shop. Make sure to check out our workshop next week. We’ll have signup information this weekend in your email where we give you a detailed training on getting set up with TikTok shop.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, the next article here is actually from Amazon, and there’s some interesting stats that you might not have known. Right, you know, like before, in the past, 50% of sales came from third-party sellers. You know how much it is now 60%. Do you know how many employees Amazon USA sellers are employing? 1.8 million. That’s crazy. 1.8 million people are employed by Amazon sellers out there. How many sellers hit the seven figure mark for the first time last year? 10,000. So 10,000 sellers hit that seven figure mark for the first time last year. Are you one of them? Well, where is all of this data coming? This is from a report that Amazon put out called the 2023 Small Business Empowerment Report, so linked somewhere here in this. You know, above or below. Wherever you’re watching this on, make sure to download this report, because it is super detailed and it’s got a lot of cool information Like did you know that? The five most shopped categories from US for third-party sellers, what do you think? Number one health and personal care. Two, beauty. Three, home. Four, grocery and five, apparel. It also has this interesting map here we can click on any state and see some stats Like, for example, I live in California. There are 77,000 sellers in California who sold 715 million items. Now if I go to New York, there’s 37,000 sellers but almost sold the same amount as the California sellers 721 million. I was like just picking random states here to see, hey, which one really doesn’t have that many sellers. And I hit South Dakota. South Dakota only 600 Amazon sellers and they only sold 5 million products. So it’s a pretty cool article and also this download is super detailed, with a whole bunch of information on what Amazon has done last year and some stats that maybe you never knew, that you wanted to know.

Bradley Sutton:

Next article is actually not really an article, but it’s an email I got from Walmart. Maybe some of you Walmart sellers got it and might make some Amazon sellers jealous. What have Amazon sellers always wanted to be able to see, as far as like, for example, negative reviews, I mean for years and years. This is what Amazon sellers asked for. Is what? Yes, it’s like hey, can I see who is the one who left me this review, or can I see which order it was? And, as we know, that’s not available on Amazon. In Amazon, you can, if you’re a brand registered seller, contact people who have left you a negative review using the Amazon templates, but you still it’s. You know, for the majority of orders you can’t really tie the order or the review to an order. But check out this message from Walmart here. This says it’s entitled Ratings and Reviews. This brand new dashboard serves as a centralized hub for monitoring and managing customer reviews. So it’s a new review dashboard, it says. Now you can connect reviews to specific orders and pinpoint the products behind negative or positive feedback. This streamlined approach makes it easier to resolve issues with fulfillment, listing, quality or customer service. So if you guys didn’t get this email, go check your dashboard in your seller center in Walmart and see if you can start mapping those reviews, both positive and negative, to exact orders. And then, are you, you know, does Walmart allow you to contact those buyers? Again, I think this is something that Amazon sellers definitely wish we had. But now, Walmart sellers, you can now tie reviews directly to orders.

Bradley Sutton:

Next article is actually a press release from Amazon. It’s entitled Amazon 2024 Force for Good Applications is open, all right. So this is basically an award that you can possibly win be featured on Amazon Accelerate. You can win cash prizes. This is for, you know, those who are third party sellers who have you know good stories about. Hey, are you giving back to your community? Are you involved in charity? Are you doing something with the proceeds from your Amazon business? You know that is for your local, community or neighborhood. Last year, there were three individuals that won these prizes. We don’t know exactly what they won, but they’re also featured at Amazon Accelerate, so it’s free to apply for this award. You only have until June 12th to apply for it, so check somewhere below. If you’re watching this on YouTube or listening to this podcast on a podcast player, we should have the link there or you can find it in sellercentral.com. Just look up Amazon Force for Good Application and, who knows, maybe we’ll get to see you on stage at Amazon Accelerate and you’ll be able to treat me for dinner because you just won a whole bunch of cash for winning this award from Amazon. Actually, yeah, if you do win and you found out because of this podcast, I expect a nice dinner at Amazon Accelerate. On you, all right, all right. Last article of the day, also about Amazon, and it’s entitled Learn. On you All right, all right. Last article of the day, also about Amazon, and it’s entitled learn how Amazon uses AI to spot damaged products before they’re shipped to customers.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, this, I think is kind of cool. First of all, this is something that Amazon is saying hey, we’re actually doing this. You know there’s a lot of speculation and a lot of change coming with AI and some things we see. You know, we see in seller central, where Amazon is allowing you to use AI sometimes to make your listings, which I don’t think anybody’s actually doing, um, because it’s still not that great yet. Um, you know, there, there there’s rumors about where Amazon search might be going with AI and the kind of roles that it’s going to play. We don’t know, but this is something that’s a hundred percent confirmed. I mean Amazon is doing this. Um, but this is something that’s 100% confirmed. I mean Amazon is doing this in certain warehouses. It’s kind of interesting. There’s like this tunnel now that Amazon is putting products through, and then you know this AI can, like, detect, like is the package broken or is it damaged or other things that this article talks about, and this it’s called a project PI for private investigator. So I think this is, this is, overall, going to be good for us, for sellers. How many times have we lamented that we see a bad review and what we find out is that a customer got a product that was like return from another customer and it’s in bad, it’s in bad shape and we’re like why in the world did Amazon even send this product, you know, in this shape, to the customer? Um, well, hopefully those kinds of situations are going to be decreased the more that Amazon uses this uh project PI here to kind of detect those things. So move in the right direction, I think, by Amazon are.

Bradley Sutton:

One last thing, last thing A lot of you guys have LinkedIn and you follow Helium 10. Great, you also see you follow me on LinkedIn. Excellent, make sure you’re following Helium 10 and myself. Just look up Bradley Sutton on LinkedIn, but now also add the AM PM podcast. All right, so just type in AM slash PM podcast on LinkedIn and you’ll be able to get some snippets from the AM PM podcast that you otherwise might have missed out on in some little nuggets from Kevin King here and there. So again, LinkedIn. Follow three accounts myself, helium 10, and then now also follow AM slash PM podcast. All right, let’s get into the new feature alerts for Helium 10. All right, now this first announcement I’m actually going to give in another language. You’ll see why in a second.

Bradley Sutton:

皆さん、お知らせがあります。 Helium 10の日本語版の正式にロンシー。. Basically, I just said all right, guys got an announcement. Helium 10 now has been launched in Japanese. Now this is kind of big, because this is not Helium 10 works for Amazon Japan. No, helium 10 has worked in Amazon Japan for years, but a lot of our Japanese customers were like, hey, that’s great that we can use it, but we want to actually see Helium 10 in Japanese. So now for all Japanese users, you can go to the very top of Helium 10 and change a language. Japanese users, you can go to the very top of Helium 10 and change a language. You’ve been able to do English, German, Spanish, Italian and Chinese, and now you can do Japanese, so that all of the menus inside of Helium 10 and you know the columns and everything else is in the Japanese language. Also, you’re going to be able to see all of the learn button videos in Japanese with Japanese subtitles. So I hope everybody is able to get use of that.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, the next new feature alert from Helium 10 is a new widget for your dashboard that allows you to view different metrics from your Amazon account over time. So let me show you how you’re able to add that. So when you’re on your dashboard, go to the very top right and where it says add a chart, hit that button and then select chart library. Now the very first preset that’s going to come up is a brand new one. It’s called performance over time. When you add that, it’s going to show up here now at the bottom of your main Helium 10 dashboard, and now you can chart different things up to four different metrics over time.

Bradley Sutton:

For example, right here I have tracked day by day gross revenue on the same chart as net profit expenses and my cost of goods sold. I can actually change one of these and start tracking advertising costs or units sold maybe page views, sessions, unit session percentage and now you can see how different key metrics for your business might interact with each other. And I can do this at a daily level, a weekly level, monthly level, quarter or even a yearly level to see these charts. So at the bottom here you can also see alerts. So if something happened, like for example here on this day it says I got a new one-star product review, maybe I want to see did that have an effect on my sales or did it have an effect on my sessions. I can actually chart that here and see, hey, when it started and if it had an effect on any of these metrics. So, again, start playing with this. Add this chart, customize it however you want, and then you will be able to get some insights into your product performance.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, let’s get now into our training tip of the week, and what I wanted to talk about is just a couple under the radar things that you can do with your Chrome extension that I bet 95% of you are not using. Here’s the first one. All right, if you’re on a product page, like maybe your product page or your competitor product page, I’d say do this to your product first. At the very top, there’s this product summary widget that comes up right. Click the see more data right where it says all marketplaces. And now what this is going to do it’s going to tell you this product, if it’s yours or if it’s your competitor’s product. What other Amazon marketplaces is this product being sold in? Like? Look at this product. This product is being sold everywhere, from Amazon United Arab Emirates, amazon Saudi Arabia, amazon India. The only one where it’s not being sold, it seems like, is Amazon Netherlands Right now If this was your product and you know you’re only selling in US and Canada and all of a sudden you see active listings like this is showing, plus the stock of the inventory of the products, now you know what your product is. Your listing is being hijacked in other marketplaces and somebody else is selling your product, or maybe a facsimile of your product, and you might need to take action. So that’s one thing that I think everybody should do with your own listing. Let’s say you’re on your own listing.

Bradley Sutton:

Another under the radar thing is kind of a hidden technique. Scroll down here to right underneath, where the Helium 10 BSR widget is All right, and underneath here you’re going to see it says calculators and you’re going to see revenue calculator and sales estimator. For this one you have to click on Revenue Calculator and then click back on Sales Estimator. And when you do that, this new secret widget comes up and I like it because it has the item dimensions and the package dimensions right here. Now how is this beneficial? Like, for example, this collagen peptides? Obviously it’s not something that you fold or expand. You know the product itself is going to be really similar to the size of the package, right, and sure enough. You see that here Helium 10 is telling you the item dimensions is 7.3 by 4.4 by 4.4 and the package dimensions 7.2 by 4 by 4.4. So obviously it’s a little bit wrong. You know how can you have the package dimensions a little bit smaller than the item, but you’d be happy if you saw that here. Where is this very crucial? Well, what if you know that your package should be about the same size as your item, but your item dimension length is 7.3, but all of a sudden the package length is something like nine inches or 10 inches.

Bradley Sutton:

Well, now you know that Amazon must have probably remeasured your product and you didn’t know about it. And you could be wasting hundreds of dollars a week, if not more, on extra FBA fulfillment fees because Amazon has the wrong dimension. So this is kind of like a cool way to just use Helium 10 to see, hey, does my package dimensions make sense compared to my item dimensions? Or do I need to dive a little bit farther and then now go to Helium 10 Alerts to see, hey, when did Amazon change my package dimensions? I need to get some money back from Amazon. So there’s a couple under the radar things you know everybody always talks about Cerebro, Magnet, Black Box, Xray, but these are a couple of things here in the Chrome extension that I bet a lot of you weren’t using, and I hope you can get some use from it. All right, guys, thank you very much for tuning in this week. Don’t forget to tune in next Thursday to see what’s buzzing.

Enjoy this episode? Be sure to check out our previous episodes for even more content to propel you to Amazon FBA Seller success! And don’t forget to “Like” our Facebook page and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to our podcast. 

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Want to absolutely start crushing it on Amazon? Here are few carefully curated resources to get you started: 

• Freedom Ticket: Taught by Amazon thought leader Kevin King, get A-Z Amazon strategies and techniques for establishing and solidifying your business. 
• Helium 10: 30+ software tools to boost your entire sales pipeline from product research to customer communication and Amazon refund automation. Make running a successful Amazon or Walmart business easier with better data and insights. See what our customers have to say.
• Helium 10 Chrome Extension: Verify your Amazon product idea and validate how lucrative it can be with over a dozen data metrics and profitability estimation. 
• SellerTrademarks.com: Trademarks are vital for protecting your Amazon brand from hijackers, and sellertrademarks.com provides a streamlined process for helping you get one.