Introduction
Did you know that Amazon suppresses millions of product listings every year?
That’s right!
While, Amazon is an online market giant with over 2.5 million active sellers, it upholds strict policies and guidelines to ensure a positive shopping experience for its customers.
But what happens when your product listings get suppressed?
Well, it may not be the end of the world, but it can certainly feel like that when your sales drop down to the minimum. Herein, note that merely creating an effective product listing is not enough. Amazon Product Listings require constant updates and maintenance in order to ensure that it meets Amazon’s requirements and is not suppressed over time.
This blog post will explain what results in a Amazon suppressed listings and how you can fix this issue. More so, it’ll guide you with some best practices to avoid Amazon suppressed listings in the future.
Why Does Amazon Suppress Product Listings?
Listings are suppressed when they don’t meet Amazon’s rigorous standards and are deactivated as a result. This means that your products will no longer appear in the search results and browse functions until you fix the flagged issues.
However, note that Amazon won’t automatically notify you about a suppressed listing. You’ll need to keep an eye out for listing suppressions to fix the issues behind the same.
There can be several reasons why Amazon may suppress your listings. Some of these include:
- No product images or low-quality images that do not meet Amazon’s required standards.
- Invalid, missing, or incomplete information within the product description.
- Attempt to sell an item that’s prohibited on Amazon
- Listing products without a defined category
- Including product titles exceeding the maximum character limit, (i.e., 200 characters).
- Violating one or more of Amazon’s selling policies.
More often than not, Amazon may suppress your listing for some serious reasons which can be hard to resolve. These include:
- You are selling a product flagged as fake.
- Amazon believes you’re trying to sell used products as new.
- You have attempted to sell expired products to the consumers.
- Amazon receiving safety complaints about your listed products.
How Amazon Suppressed Listings Can Impact Your Business?
Amazon suppressed listing can impact your business in the long run – here’s how:
- Reduced visibility:
Amazon Suppressed listings can reduce a seller’s visibility on the Amazon platform, resulting in lower sales rankings and less exposure to potential customers. Lower visibility can lead to lower sales, impacting the bottom line of your business.
- Loss of sales:
When a product listing is suppressed, it becomes hidden from the search results and loses visibility on the Amazon platform. As a result, potential customers are unable to find the product. This can ultimately lead to a drop in your sales and revenue.
- Damaged reputation:
A suppressed listing can negatively impact your reputation as a seller on Amazon. Customers may perceive you as an unreliable, unprofessional seller, for not adhering to Amazon’s policies and leave your page with negative reviews and feedback. This can further impose a challenge for you to regain customer trust and loyalty.
- Suspension of account:
If Amazon discovers a pattern of suppressed listings due to policy violations or inaccurate information, it may suspend the seller’s account. The suspension can result in a loss of all current and future sales and impact the bottom line of your business.
How to Fix Suppressed Listings on Amazon?
Identifying and fixing a suppressed listing is no difficult task. However, the important thing is that sellers regularly need to check their listings to ensure everything is working accordingly.
Adding on, here are some tips to fix Amazon suppressed listings:
- Go to Seller Central and click on the ‘Inventory’ tab, then select ‘Manage Inventory.’
- If you have any suppressed listings, you will find a ‘Suppressed’ button. If not, then congratulations – all your listings are working fine.
- If you find the ‘suppressed’ button, click on it and select the listings you want to fix.
- Go through the listing and look for the highlighted issues. Edit the listings that require more information or select ‘Manage Images’ to add images if there aren’t any. You can find all the suppression and quality issues on the Amazon Product Summary page.
- Once all the issues have been addressed, click ‘Save and Finish’ to exit.
Best Practices to Avoid Amazon Suppressed Listings
Amazon Suppressed listings can hurt your sales and impact your reputation as a seller. Here are some of the best practices you can follow to avoid suppressed listings on Amazon:
- Ensure that your product does not violate any Amazon policies or rules and is eligible to be sold on the platform.
- Stick to Amazon’s character limits, particularly for titles, categories, and descriptions, to avoid suppression due to breaching character limits.
- A good-quality image is important for customers to make a purchase, plus it is also an important requirement by Amazon. Hence, make sure to add at least one or two clear images of your product. This will help avoid suppression due to incomplete listings.
- Select the right category for your products. This will help ensure that your products appear in relevant search results and avoid any confusion for the customers.
- Provide a detailed, clear product description, including UPC and brand information. This will not just help customers make an informed decision but also help in product identification and verification.
What If Your Listing Is Incorrectly Flagged?
Sometimes, even when you think your listing is well optimized as per Amazon’s standards, it can be suppressed due to unintentional prohibited claims. Amazon has guidelines and policies that a seller must follow while creating product listings. These policies are in place to ensure that customers receive the most accurate and honest information about products they’re interested in.
However, sometimes, Amazon’s algorithm may mistakenly flag certain claims or keywords. Depending on the issue, Amazon will either notify the sellers of stranded inventory or performance notifications.
Stranded Inventory
When a listing is identified as stranded inventory, the Amazon Standard Identification Number (ASIN) is removed from the Amazon platform. Nonetheless, it can be found on the ‘Manage inventory’ page as ‘Stranded Inventory.’ Herein, Amazon will provide a reason for the stranded status.
This can be a missing detail or an incorrectly flagged prohibition claim. Sellers can either appeal or fix the issue to reinstate their listings on Amazon.
Performance Notifications
Amazon sends performance notifications to sellers when their product listing is flagged for some performance issues. In this case, Amazon may remove the product page or alert the sellers of an error that needs to be fixed while they continue to sell.
In order to resolve this issue, the sellers need to submit a Plan of Action (POA) including three parts:
- Root Cause (reason for the error)
- Corrective Actions (steps you’ll take to address or fix it)
- Preventative Actions (actions you’ll take to prevent it in the future)
Conclusion:
Having a Amazon suppressed listings can be a frustrating and costly affair for most Amazon sellers. Not only do they lead to loss of sales and revenue but also negatively impact a seller’s reputation on the platform. However, by working with Amazon listing experts and taking proactive measures, you can easily fix and avoid suppressed listings.
This in turn, will help ensure that your products remain visible to the customers. Remember that prevention is always better than cure. Hence, invest the time and effort needed to build a well-optimized listing in the first place to save yourself from the hassle of dealing with suppressed listings on Amazon.
