Amazon Has it’s Own Lingo…Let’s Dive Into the Amazon Seller Terms You NEED to Know
To succeed as an Amazon seller, it’s essential to understand a variety of terms that are specific to the platform and e-commerce in general. Here are the top 25 terms that Amazon sellers should be familiar with:
- ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number): A unique identifier for products on Amazon.
- FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon): A service where Amazon stores, picks, packs, and ships products on behalf of the seller.
- FBM (Fulfillment by Merchant): Sellers handle storage and all aspects of order fulfillment themselves.
- Buy Box: The box on a product detail page where customers can begin the purchasing process.
- Seller Central: The interface used by merchants to market and sell their products directly to Amazon customers.
- A9 Algorithm: Amazon’s search algorithm that ranks product listings.
- ACoS (Advertising Cost of Sale): A metric used to measure the performance of Amazon Sponsored Products campaigns.
- PPC (Pay Per Click): An advertising model where sellers pay a fee each time their ad is clicked.
- BSR (Best Sellers Rank): A number that represents how well a product is selling in its category.
- Prime Eligibility: Products that are eligible for Amazon Prime shipping.
- SKU (Stock Keeping Unit): A unique code assigned to a product by a seller to track inventory.
- Conversion Rate: The percentage of visitors to a product listing who make a purchase.
- CTR (Click Through Rate): A metric that measures the number of clicks advertisers receive on their ads per number of impressions.
- FNSKU (Fulfillment Network Stock Keeping Unit): Amazon’s unique identifier used for products that are being fulfilled by Amazon.
- MOQ (Minimum Order Quantity): The minimum number of units a supplier requires for an order.
- Private Label: Products manufactured by one company but sold under another company’s brand.
- Retail Arbitrage: Buying products from retail stores and selling them on Amazon for a profit.
- Dropshipping: A fulfillment method where a store doesn’t keep the products it sells in stock. Instead, when a store sells a product, it purchases the item from a third party and has it shipped directly to the customer.
- EAN (European Article Number): A barcode standard, a 12- or 13-digit product identification code.
- MAP (Minimum Advertised Price): The lowest price a retailer can advertise a product for sale.
- Wholesale: Buying products in bulk from manufacturers or distributors and selling them individually.
- Amazon Handmade: A store within Amazon for artisans to sell their handcrafted goods.
- Lightning Deals: Time-bound, promotional discounts offered in limited quantities.
- Inventory Management: The process of ordering, storing, and using a company’s inventory.
- SEO (Search Engine Optimization): The practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your product listings through organic search engine results.
What is the difference between an ASIN, FNSKU, SKU and UPC?
Amazon has a lot of different ways to identify products. Sometimes they can confuse people as they are foreign terms you may not know.
- ASIN’s are the main identifier that Amazon uses to identify a product on Amazon. You can easily pull up an Amazon listing using the following in the URL of your browser: https://amazon.com/dp/[ASIN]. By replacing [ASIN] with the product’s ASIN you are looking at, you can easily pull up the page.
- SKU: These are YOUR unique identifier for each product. These may be also called a MSKU. This is a product level identifier that will help you keep track of your products. Read more below about reasons to have different SKUs for a product (ASIN)
- FNSKU: When using the Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA), Amazon will track each sellers inventory separately. If you and 10 other sellers are selling the product, the FNSKU is a unique identifier assigned to a specific SKU and shows it’s ownership to your seller account specifically. This prevents your inventory from mixing with other sellers inventory
- UPC: This may not be a term you are familiar with but you know them quite well. The UPC (Universal Product Code) is the barcode on products you buy everyday. This is the barcode that gets canned at the grocery store.
When should you use a different SKU?
There a few reasons you may want to may want to use a different SKU:
- Different vendors – you may purchase the same product from different vendors and want to track them separately in case there is an issue with one batch of products
- Different expiration dates – When selling perishable products you will want to track dates to ensure expired products are not sent to your customers.
- Pricing – depending on how you calculate your financials, some sellers like to put their purchase price in the SKU to understand their financials. This is not recommended and we recommend you use a software like Fusion Financials to help track your profitability
Key Takeaways
Understanding these Amazon seller terms can greatly enhance a seller’s ability to navigate Amazon’s marketplace effectively. Amazon has some different Amazon seller terms compared to places like Walmart and Ebay but many of them overlap. There only a few that really make the platform different and are terms you really need to know. Hopefully the list of Amazon seller terms were helpful. Let us know if you have more! Check out our fully free course on learning to sell on Amazon.
