Helium 10 Buzz 2/1/24: New Amazon Image Requirements | TikTok Shop Testing | Walmart Advertising Update

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, interview someone you need to hear from, and provide a training tip for the week.

TikTok Shop links could soon become a lot more common across the social media app.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/30/24055388/tiktok-shoppable-videos-automatic-product-discovery

Amazon continues to increase the speed with which it can get deliveries to customers.
https://www.geekwire.com/2024/amazon-delivery-gets-faster-with-65-jump-in-number-of-same-day-and-overnight-items-in-u-s/

Walmart plans to build or convert more than 150 large-format stores over the next five years.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/31/walmart-plans-to-add-150-more-stores-across-us.html

Etsy’s new Gift Mode is an interactive hub, powered by AI and human curation
https://www.retailtouchpoints.com/features/news-briefs/etsy-debuts-personalized-ai-powered-gift-mode

China’s Temu in US online ads blitz in challenge to Amazon
https://www.ft.com/content/7717fa78-a102-405f-83d5-b8750dc5b6c0

Consult-a-Friend is the latest feature to make shopping on Amazon more social and collaborative.
https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/amazon-introduces-consult-a-friend-mobile-shopping-experience

Walmart suppliers and Marketplace sellers can launch, manage and review performance across their Brand Shop and Shelf pages through the Walmart Ad Center using Shop Builder.
https://advertisinghelp.walmart.com/s/guides?channel=ShopBuilder&article=000011167

TikTok is reportedly planning to open studios
https://www.tubefilter.com/2024/01/30/tiktok-livestream-shopping-studios/

Beware of misleading discounts on Amazon products promoted in news articles with affiliate links
https://people.com/fykee-cordless-stick-vacuum-deal-january-2024-8553406

Lastly, Bradley shares how you can start with Amazon Brazil with just the click of a button and not having to send any inventory there. Also, Bradley shows you how can you use some of the Helium 10 tools in the said marketplace.

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

• 01:00 – Easier to Hijack Listings?
• 03:47 – TikTok Expanding Shopping
• 06:04 – Faster Amazon Shipping
• 07:24 – New Walmart Stores
• 10:26 – Etsy Gift Mode
• 11:22 – Temu Ad Blitz
• 12:33 – Amazon Phone A Friend
• 13:59 – Walmart Shop & Shelf
• 14:27 – TikTok Studios
• 15:29 – Fake Deals
• 17:13 – Follow us on TikTok
• 17:52 – New Feature Alerts

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Amazon has made it easier to hijack your listings. Tiktok is experimenting making everything shoppable. Walmart has new advertising available. You can now sell in a new Amazon marketplace with just the click of a button and no inventory. This and so much more on today’s episode of the Helium 10 Weekly Buzz. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Series Sellers Podcast that’s by Helium 10. I am 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 e-commerce news stories that are going on this week. 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’ve got tons of articles today. Sometimes we’ll have like three, four different news articles. Sometimes we have more than 10. Today is one of those days. Let’s go ahead and hop right into it Now.

Bradley Sutton:

The first one kind of flew under the radar this is actually from Amazon’s dashboard about a week ago and I didn’t see too many people talking about it. But let’s break this down, because I think this may not be too big of a deal, but it definitely should have caused a little bit more waves than I’ve been seeing Now. This is entitled Images from Multiple Selling Partners to be Displayed on Product Pages and it says Effective Yesterday, January 31. Product Detail Pages for Hardline’s Product Types I don’t know what the heck hardline means May display images from multiple selling partners. That wasn’t always the case. More on that later. But look at this next sentence here. It says Each Product Detail Page should have three required images. So now Amazon is requiring three images. It says One with the product on a white background nothing new there. One with the product in an environment. So now they’re requiring a lifestyle image. And one with size and fit information, an infographic, right? Have you guys seen this before, where Amazon is requiring this? Now that’s new, isn’t it Right? It says Previously Product Detail Page is displayed images from one selling partner. All right. So it’s kind of hard. You’re like if you’re the originator of a listing, somebody can’t just go in and replace one image. Usually they might be able to replace all of them, but it’s a little bit harder to do that. Now it says With this change, if required images remember those three image types are missing from the Product Detail Page images from multiple selling partners or Amazon will be added when available. You know we’ve talked about this before in another Weekly Buzz articles and podcasts. Where in Europe this has been going on, where Amazon, if they don’t see like a white background image, they’ll just go in and put their own image. Sometimes All right To remove an incorrect image. It says Please contact selling partner support Selling partner support. I think this should be bigger news than it is. Like. I haven’t been on LinkedIn too much, so maybe this is, you know, causing buzz out there. No pun intended, but I didn’t see it All right. But Two big takeaways here. Number one there’s three required image types white background, lifestyle and Infographics. I never saw that before in Amazon. And then the other thing is, if those are not available, amazon’s just gonna let any random seller, it seems like, throw images in there, or Amazon might throw its own image in there, all right. So what do you guys think? Am I, did I misunderstand this? Or should this be kind of like a little bit bigger deal? Then it is all right.

Bradley Sutton:

Next article is From the verge calm and it’s entitled tick tock test Automatically. Say that five times fast. Tick tock test automatically identifies product in videos and offers purchase links, all right. So I think we announced this, or we hinted on this, in the weekly buzz, because somebody reported on this a few months ago, but now it could be, you know, getting a little bit closer to live. It says tick tock shop links could soon become a lot more common across the social media app. Per Bloomberg All right, there there’s a feature now that they’re testing that automatically identifies products in the platform’s videos Before offering a link to find similar products on tick tock shop. So this could be something that is not even meant to be tick tock shop. But they’ve got this like AI that can scan a Video on tick tock and then be like okay, hey, this blouse, we actually know that this blouse or something similar is being sold by XYZ seller in tick tock shop. You know, would you like to shop it? That’s crazy. Like every single video in tick tock potentially could have a tick tock shop link. That that’s what this article is kind of like, Infiring that it could happen where you know anybody’s doing a video and then every piece of their clothing there’s like a button that says, hey, go ahead and and shop this. Now. I cannot imagine them doing this, because the TikTokers out there would just like really revolt. You know, nobody would want every single video having a shopping link. Plus, they’ve got a lot of work to do. According to Bloomberg, it says they were testing it and it said that it served up a gold ring and fake fingernails On a video of a woman polishing shoes. So their AI Obviously isn’t good. But that being said, how does this affect sellers? Well, all the more reason to sell on tick tock shop. Imagine, you know, just put your whole catalog on there because, who knows when, when tick tock might like identify some product In some random video that has nothing to do with you, but it could link back to your store if it thinks that a product that it sees is similar to the one that you have. So another reason to get on tick tock shop, whether you agree with that move or not.

Bradley Sutton:

Next article is from geek wire and it’s entitled Amazon delivery gets faster with a 65% jump in Number of same day and overnight items in US. That is huge, guys. 65% jump, alright. It says. Amazon announced Tuesday that it increased the number of items delivered in the US on the same day or overnight by more than 65% Year over year in Q4 of 2023. That’s a big year over year increase, it says. Overall, amazon said it reached its fastest global delivery speeds to prime members ever in 2023, with more than 7 billion units arriving the same or next day, including more than 4 billion in the US and more than 2 billion in Europe. Alright, so this is just good news for Amazon sellers. The faster that Amazon delivers products, the better Shopping experience that people get. You know, the more that people are going to shop, the more likely somebody is to leave a good review like I’m overjoyed. Like where I live, I order something and I can get it like in four hours. It’s not like I live in a big city, I’m in the suburb here, so it’s kind of amazing and that makes me feel better about the product, almost because of this fast delivery. So I think this is a definitely a positive news for Amazon sellers out there. Thank you, amazon, for delivering this product fast.

Bradley Sutton:

Next article is from CNBC, entitled Walmart plans to add more than 150 large format stores Across the US. Now this is the first time they’re adding stores in years. Now, Um, it says already about 90% of the US population lives within 10 miles of a Walmart store. Now, Walmart wasn’t adding stores since 2021. But the reason why I’m bringing this up. You might be thinking like, what do I care about a Walmart store? Let me, let me run some. Run some numbers here for you guys. All right, now just imagine that you’re selling products in a Walmart store. All right, so let’s go 150, uh, new stores that they’re doing times. Let’s just say 100 units per store, because you know, like you’re doing supplements or something you may have a Case pack of 50. They probably want to stock their shelves with 100 units. All right, what is that? That’s 15,000 units more a month, two months that you’re selling. But remember, Walmart has more than 4,600 stores. So now let’s take that number as 4,750 stores. They each place an order for 100 units.

Bradley Sutton:

Guys, you are selling 500,000 units of a product to Walmart every month, or every two months, let’s just say, or every three months. If your product retails for 40 bucks, maybe you’re giving it to Walmart for $20. Walmart is cutting a P? O to you for 10 Million dollars for one skew, and this is not something that is far-fetched. I used to work, I’ve told you guys, for a supplement company and I would see Multi-million dollar PO’s come across my desk for one skew Because Walmart has so many stores and they’re only ordering like one box each. So that’s the reason why guys I’ve been telling people for years, sell on Walmart.com. You might think it’s a lot of products that are gonna have a very low number of sales compared to your Amazon, and that might be true not always true. Sometimes Walmart sells more. But when you’re selling on Walmart comm the goal is not to sell you know Five units a day or something right, and you’re selling 50 units a day on Amazon. No, the goal is to try and get the attention of the Walmart buyers, Get Walmart to pick up your product first of all to you know, kind of like as a vendor, so that they buy it and they sell it themselves on Walmart. And then, if your product takes off now, you get in front of the Walmart brick and mortar buyers and that’s where the money is at. You’re not gonna be selling 10 million dollars in Two months of one product on Amazon, for most of you guys aren’t going to. That’s kind of numbers are possible when you get into Walmart brick and mortar. So, guys, if you have not started selling on Walmart now, get your account. Guys, this you know, helium 10 has tons of tools that can help you the possibilities are endless Switching marketplaces.

Bradley Sutton:

Let’s go to the next article from retail touch points is entitled Etsy debuts personalized AI powered GIF mode. Alright, so it’s this new thing that they’re gonna be pushing, especially during Super Bowl, I guess, where you, you, you know buyers can like enter in some details about you, know who they’re trying to buy a gift for, and then Etsy, this Etsy AI tool, is gonna go and find them the quote-unquote perfect gifts for that buyer. All right, so I sell on Etsy multiple. I have multiple Etsy accounts. This is something that kind of gets me excited, because I want to make sure that I have a lot of details in my listings from Etsy, because the more details I have, the more likely it is that my product might be put in. This AI gift Seeker I guess you could call it and, you know, drive more sales to my list. Yeah, any of you selling on Etsy. This should be a good move and a reminder that you need to get your Etsy descriptions pretty thorough.

Bradley Sutton:

Next article is from this other website what is this? Financial times, and it’s entitled China’s team who launches $3 billion US online ad splits and challenge to Amazon. All right now. I’ve been telling you guys this for months, for a year. I don’t consider team any kind of threat to Amazon Personally, but team who is just like spending ridiculous amounts of money Trying to push their products in America. Now, what has been their success? I have this $3 billion Um investment. Well, according to sensor tower, timu has only captured 1% of us e-commerce right 1%. So is this a huge threat to Amazon, which has 40%? I don’t think so, but Timu is definitely trying to spend some money to try and Bridge the gap, but for me, like Timu, is an afterthought. You know it goes Amazon. There’s Walmart, I would say tick-tock shop, you know, maybe Shopify, ebay, etsy though those are all like e-commerce platforms that I would consider before Timu.

Bradley Sutton:

Speaking of Amazon, next article is from Amazon itself, and this reminds me of the old show. You remember that show who wants to be a millionaire, right? And then you could phone a friend when you didn’t know the answer. What Amazon now has that, as of this week, amazon introduces consult a friend, a new mobile experience that lets you ask your friends for advice While you shop. So, while you’re on the Amazon app, you just hit this button as of last week and this is for US, Australia, France, Germany, a whole bunch of other marketplaces where you can like kind of connect with your friends via the app and Then the Amazon listing shows up on their screen and allows them to put emojis on there and like give you instant Feedback on this article. They’ve got some screenshots of how that looks. Um, this is gonna be interesting. It’s like kind of like social shopping, right. Maybe in the past, when you want to get your family’s viewpoint on something, you just hit that share button. Amazon says billions of people use that share button. This is like taking that share button on the Amazon mobile app and taking it to the next level. I’m sure there’s gonna be implications to For the Amazon algorithm, right, like the more people who use this phone a friend or consult a friend probably is gonna mean something too, for potentially, keyword ranking or other things, all right. Um, so kind of a interesting thing to look at how that’s going to affect our sales as Amazon sellers.

Bradley Sutton:

Going back to Walmart, Walmart has Announcement that you they now have brand shop and Shelf, all right. So there’s this check your email. There’s an article or a, an email that Walmart advertising set out that talks about what is the shop builder and what is this brand shelf? All right, brand new kinds of advertising on the Walmart platform that you might find Interesting. Next article is about TikTok. We’ve been talking about this for years how Live shopping in China is so huge. I mean, I remember this one influencer who just like shows products for like two seconds and she makes like millions of dollars in in 15 minutes. It’s insane. But, as we know, live shopping just hasn’t taken off in America. But these online platforms Amazon, others are just like. We’re not gonna give up until we figure it out. So tube filter has. This article says tick-tock is reportedly planning to open a live shopping studio for creators. You guys maybe have seen in China those like live studio factories where there’s like 675 influencers and they all got their the ring lights and they’re they’re showing products left and right. Well, I guess tick-tock is trying to do that here in the state. So I Personally don’t understand why live shopping hasn’t taken off. I think it could be kind of cool. I mean, america invented live shopping, qvc, anybody right you know like why people don’t like online shop or live shopping today. I’m not sure, but tick-tock is like, hey, we are going to give it a try, all right.

Bradley Sutton:

Last article of the day is actually from People.com and this is kind of like a just warning that I want to give to people. All right, this is kind of like a warning I want to give to people that Some of these news articles you see they try and trick you about Amazon prices because they’re using their own affiliate links. Like this is an article I saw, people.com and says a $600 cordless vacuum cleaner Is 83% off of Amazon. Now this is where Helium 10 can actually help you, because I was like raising my initials flag, my BS flag on this, I was like there is no way that this is legit 83% off, right. So I actually went to this listing on Amazon Okay, this vacuum cleaner. And, sure enough, on the Amazon page it says limited time deal, so like they’re doing like some deal of the day or something here, and it says the list price is 599 and it’s 83% off and big red letters and it’s saying, hey, it’s $99 only. So guess what? I ran the helium 10 chrome extension on this page and this is what you guys should do, so that you know is this really a discount and I looked at the price history and I can see that the new price is consistently $129 or $99. All right, it’s complete BS that this is an 83% off Deal. The regular price is always 99. So, guys, don’t get tricked by these fake deals. Use the Helium 10 chrome extension and share the helium 10 chrome extension with your friends so they’re not fooled by this false advertising that some sellers are doing.

Bradley Sutton:

Alright, one thing I wanted to mention, guys Helium 10 has its own TikTok channel now. Alright, so if you guys, please, I want everybody to follow this TikTok channel. It’s helium10_software, helium10_software. Give it a look and give it a follow, like the videos. Help the algorithm out and follow us there. Alright, that’s it for the news this week. Let’s move on into our Helium 10 new features alerts, and this is actually kind of combined with our Helium 10 training tip of the week. I’m going to tell you, guys, how you can sell in a new-ish Amazon marketplace with just the click of a button and not having to send any inventory there. Anybody know what marketplace that is? It is Amazon Brazil. Alright, so Amazon Brazil for many sellers not 100% yet, but it’s coming soon, for 100% is now going to be available for the North American remote fulfillment NARF. Amazon has actually changed in the name and so there’s a way that you can check if you’re eligible and if so, you can enroll just the click of a button. So where you’re going to want to go is in Seller Central and just go to sellercentralamazon.com and then forward slash RAFN, forward slash inventory, forward slash enrollment, and maybe you’re already activated here in the Mexico and Canada. But now you’ll see Amazon Brazil right here. Amazon Brazil, guys, is now going to be active for the NARF or the remote fulfillment. So all you have to do, if the button is active for you, just hit the check mark next to Amazon Brazil and at the very bottom, just hit the button update and boom goes a dynamite. You are good to go.

Bradley Sutton:

We’re going to have Amazon actually on the podcast soon to talk about North American remote fulfillment and what this means for sellers. But basically, for those who don’t know, it means you have your own inventory in Amazon USA, right. And then for Canada, mexico and now Brazil. Once you activate the listings, the listings that are eligible will automatically go live in those marketplaces at a different price in the local currency Mexican Pesos, Brazilian what is the Brazilian, I don’t even know what the Brazilian currency is called or Canadian dollars, right? And basically, if the order, if an order comes through, amazon is going to ship it from your US inventory, you’re not going to have to worry about export duties or importing to the, the FBA warehouses over there, et cetera. So how can you maybe optimize though your listings? Well, this is the Helium 10 new feature alert. Like I said, helium 10, as of this week, now works in the Amazon Brazil marketplace.

Bradley Sutton:

So let me show you an example of how you could start doing research. Let’s say you’re selling collagen peptides, right? So you go into Amazon Brazil and you find you search for peptideos de colágeno. I’m not sure that was a Spanish accent, that’s not really a Portuguese accent, but anyways, you find a good selling one and you’re like, hey, I want to go ahead and see what keywords this product is ranking for in Amazon Brazil. So you would go ahead and just copy the ASIN and paste it into Cerebro and make sure that you choose the Brazilian marketplace, which is the new one in Cerebro, and then everything else. You go ahead and use the same exact process, as you all know and love in Cerebro. And now I could see all of the keywords that this collagen peptides is ranking for organically, all of the keywords that they’re advertising for. It looks like there’s only 52. I can see the search volume. I even have brand analytics data here to see for the Brazilian marketplace what are the top three clicked products week by week. So tons of information here in Cerebro.

Bradley Sutton:

Maybe I want to do a little bit more of a deep dive on related keywords to collagen. Well, guess what tool I’m going to use? I’m going to go into magnet and again I choose the Brazilian marketplace. This is another new tool. Iliumten has Amazon Brazil. I put in Coláquino e Idorizado and then I get thousands of keywords that are loosely related to that keyword of a hydrolyzed collagen in Portuguese. And again I can see the search volume and a lot of other data there as well. Maybe I want to do a deep dive on what is going on in brand analytics for the Brazilian marketplace. Well, I would go to the brand new tool for if you’re a diamond member, Blackbox, aba, top search terms, I would select the Brazilian marketplace and then maybe I’ll go ahead and throw in the ASIN of one of these collagen peptides and I just want to see, all right, hey, which keywords are they one of the top three clicked products on? And what’s the search volume of those keywords? Right, and I can see. Hey, they were top three here in brand analytics for this keyword. Proteína de coláquino, collagen protein that’s a word that we don’t have really in America for collagen peptides. This is why doing research in the language instead of just like blindly translating your listening is so important. In America, the top keyword for collagen peptides is collagen peptides or collagen powder. Here in Brazil, for whatever reason, it’s a keyword that translates to collagen protein. In Spain, I’ve showed you guys, before, the number one, or one of the number one keywords is collagen with magnesium. All right, so different marketplaces have different keywords.

Bradley Sutton:

You can’t just go and translate your listing. Another tool that now works for the Amazon Brazil marketplace is keyword tracker. So if you want to track something in the Brazilian marketplace, go to your keyword tracker, hit add new product and then paste the entire URL that shows that it’s in the Brazilian marketplace, right here, and then put the keywords that you want to track. So, guys, step one check if you are eligible to sell an Amazon Brazil and, if not, try to do it with just one click of the button and then start checking out your listings. Amazon is going to automatically translate your listing, but it might not give you the best keywords that you can research here in Helium 10 for the Brazilian marketplace. So do the research, maybe update your listings a little bit if the perfect keywords Amazon didn’t translate, and then that’s gonna set you up for success in this new marketplace. So keep your eye out for our detailed podcast we’re gonna do in about a month with Amazon themselves that they’re gonna give us a lot more information on how the North American Remote Fulfillment Program works for Canada, Mexico and now Brazil. All right, guys, thank you very much for joining us on this edition of the Weekly Buzz. We’ll see you next week to see what’s buzzing.

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