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▲ Video account focuses on cross-border navigation Last week, Amazon released its third-quarter financial report. Both revenue and profit fell short of expectations during the reporting period, and the main support for third-quarter profits was the acceleration of AWS and the continued strength of its advertising business. In addition, Amazon also stated that its Q4 revenue is expected to reach US$130 billion to US$140 billion, and its profits may fall to the lowest level in history. Amazon's third-quarter performance was weak, with growth slowing significantly, and the army of sellers who contribute advertising fees to Amazon seem to have fallen into a period of confusion. Halloween has just passed, and many sellers lamented the poor traffic during the holiday period, and joked: All the orders have gone to hell! At the same time, the platform has continuously increased its risk control efforts. Following the last QA store closure incident, some sellers have reported that the risks of off-site promotions have gradually escalated recently. Does off-site promotion also have the risk of store closure? It is understood that Amazon's off-site promotion is a traffic-generating operation beyond on-site optimization, which can drive traffic to Amazon stores, improve rankings, and promote order conversions. In fact, off-site promotion is not a violation of regulations and has received official support from Amazon. In July this year, Amazon US launched the “Brand Traffic Incentive Program”. In order to help brands improve the efficiency of off-site traffic, Amazon provides a 10% bonus to sellers who join the “Brand Traffic Incentive Program”. With the current platform's crackdown on reviews, many sellers will choose to improve product rankings through off-site promotion. However, due to certain operations during the off-site promotion, some sellers' accounts are accidentally blocked. Some sellers reported that their stores had conducted off-site promotions, and subsequently received warning emails from Amazon, and sales in their stores were also suspended. The email shows that we have detected that some products on Amazon violate one or more of the following Seller Code of Conduct requirements: - Influence buyer ratings, feedback, and reviews;
- Manipulating sales rankings;
- Artificially increase web traffic.
▲ The picture comes from Zhiwubuyan Coincidentally, another seller also said that the store was operated completely in a white hat manner, and after doing several off-site promotions, he also received the same email. It has been observed that this situation has occurred to many sellers. "My colleague did not violate any rules at all, he just posted outside the site frequently, and then he was blocked." "Recently, I've seen a lot of people's accounts blocked, one reason is that they are off-site, and the other is that they are reviewing." "My store was closed twice in the first half of the year. The first time was because of fake orders, and the second time was because there was a problem with the off-site promotion channel." Some sellers are confused. Isn’t off-site promotion a regular channel? Why is it considered illegal to manipulate rankings by Amazon? This issue has also attracted the attention of many sellers. Sellers have different opinions on the reasons for being blocked. Some sellers believe that the store closure is related to the surge in sales , and has little to do with off-site promotion; some sellers say that Amazon does not have clear and transparent criteria for most "violations", and it mainly depends on luck ; there is also a view that Amazon theoretically supports off-site promotion, and it should be the seller's illegal operations during the off-site promotion that led to the store closure. In the forum, a seller summarized several common situations that may lead to violations: 1. To avoid 100% overlap, after setting the discount, remember to check it in the background. It is recommended to record it in a diary format to facilitate later inspection and verification (100% overlap is very likely to lead to violations) . 2. Avoid having too high sales volume during the off-site period and doing reviews (review violations) . 3. Avoid performing QA or other illegal operations (improper QA operations and violations) while working off-site. (Content from the user @Bezos's younger brother) Finally, sellers need to be reminded that when conducting off-site promotions, they should check in-store promotions in advance to avoid overlapping discounts, which may lead to a surge in store sales and cause the store’s account to be blocked. In addition to Amazon's increasingly stringent platform risk control, the poor sales in recent days have also caused sellers to be distressed. Some sellers even suspect that their stores have been demoted by Amazon due to account closure. Is this really the case? Are stores with “criminal records” demoted by Amazon? A seller posted that his store had been blocked twice in the first half of the year, but was unblocked both times. Now, the dissatisfaction rate of one of its variants exceeded the standard, causing the entire parent traffic to plummet. The variant had no ranking, so it was directly deleted, but it is still difficult to climb back up. Due to the sharp decline in traffic, the seller speculated that this store might have been targeted by Amazon due to its "criminal record" of being blocked , which led to the entire store being demoted, traffic declining, and sales being difficult to increase again. In fact, this seller is not the only one who has similar doubts. Some time ago, many sellers reported that their stores seemed to have been demoted by Amazon and had received warning letters from Amazon. In the warning letter, Amazon stated: "During the investigation, we will continue to adjust the frequency with which customers see the product. It will take approximately 30 days to process these reviews and restore the normal exposure of the ASIN." It is learned that on the Amazon backend performance page, Amazon clearly stated that if the seller's account does not meet the performance indicators, it will put its account at a disadvantage, leading to a significant drop in traffic, reduced sales and other problems. If the performance does not meet the standards, there will be little impact within a month, but if the account performance is still poor for more than a month, Amazon may take some measures such as downgrading the seller's account. According to a seller, a store that has been blocked may be regarded by Amazon as a "high-risk account under observation" , which means that this store will be highly monitored by Amazon. At the same time, Amazon's traffic is assessed in multiple dimensions. The listing weight and the store influence each other. If the store continues to violate regulations, the store's weight will also decrease accordingly. If a seller’s store is demoted, in order to avoid further violations, the seller can actively promote new products or existing products, find ways to maintain conversions, and increase store sales and weight. Perhaps the store’s original traffic can be slowly restored.
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