Crafting links to send customers to your product Display Pages (Super URLs)
Okay, I’m going to assume that you are selling on Amazon (Fulfillment By Amazon or Merchant Fulfilled). If you are, there are times when you want to send customers a link that will take them to your product display pages so they can buy from you. Building links that Go To YOUR Amazon Display Page isn’t all that difficult, but it isn’t talked about much and it is not at all obvious. I’m going to give you a short tutorial. There is a lot more but this is a start.
What is Amazon FBA?
Before we start, let me talk about FBA for a minute. For the uninitiated, Amazon FBA stands for “Fulfillment by Amazon.” This is a program where you buy products you want to sell. You list the products on Amazon. Amazon sends you a set of labels with bar codes. You place the labels on the products (obscuring any existing bar codes) and tell Amazon you are ready to ship. They tell you where to ship the products. If you have multiples, they will almost always be sent to multiple Fulfillment Centers around the US and Canada. You pack your items in boxes. You can use Amazon’s account with UPS (which is much less than we usually pay). They will send you packing labels to put on your boxes. You drop the products off with UPS and you are done. The customer service, sales, picking and packing, returns and everything else is handled by Amazon. You can send them hundreds of an item and you only pack and ship once.
Listing on Amazon
One of the steps I mentioned was “listing your product on Amazon.” There are two different ways
- If you are shipping a brand new item that no-one else has ever sold before on Amazon, you need to create a new Display Page. This involves taking pictures, creating a Title, writing Bullet Points, writing a Description and a host of other details.
- Selling something that is already being sold on Amazon is a different process. You find the existing display page and basically piggy back on that page. this means that there is only one page in Amazon displaying the product. There may be hundreds of sellers who have the product to sell, but there is only one set of pictures, one title, one set of bullet points, etc. There is a Yellow BUY button on that page and only one seller at a time is attached to that Buy Button. (It is in a box and is common called the “Buy Box”.) How you become the person who “owns the Buy Box” is a topic way beyond this post. It does rotate among different sellers (if more than one meet a set of criteria. Most of these criteria are known.)
When the Product is Found Using the Amazon Search
At any given time if a buyer searches for the product and finds the product Display Page, the seller who currently owns the Buy Box has by far the greatest chance of making the sale. That is the way the system works.
What About When You Send a Link to Someone to Buy Your Product?
If you just send them to the display page, the person who currently owns the Buy Box will probably get the sale. Even if you tell your buyers how to search through th”Other Sellers”, there is a good chance that they won’t and you will lose the sale.
Important Stuff
This is important. You are very likely going to be trying to drive traffic to Amazon to buy your products. You will end up doing this from a website, a blog, a Facebook page, a Pinterest Pin, and on and on and on. The bottom line is that is important to create a link that will drive them to a Display Page where You Own the Buy Box.
Crafting the Link
Let’s start with some vocabulary.
ASIN: Amazon assigns a number to every unique product. This is called the Amazon Standard Identification Number or as it commonly referred to: The ASIN. The Amazon Standard Identification Number (ASIN) is a 10-character alphanumeric unique identifier assigned by Amazon.com and its partners for product identification within the Amazon.com organization. If you look in the “Details” section of a Display Page, you will always see the ASIN number.
Display Page: I’ve been talking about these, but let’s be sure we understand. There is a page created for each product with an ASIN number. The pages all have the same basic format. In newspapers or magazines we would call these an “ad.”
Seller Id: This is a number that is unique to one seller. If you sell on Amazon, you have a seller ID.
Display Name: This is the name that buyers see on Amazon that indicates who is selling them the product.
Keywords: Buyers on Amazon search for the products they want to buy. They enter words that they think best describe the product they want and then sift through the results to find the exact product they want to buy. We’ll talk more about these in a minute.
The Basic Link
To get to the Display Page you create a URL that goes to Amazon.com and add “/dp/” The “DP” stands for Display Page. For example: At the time of this writing I ame selling a book call “10 Rules to Break and Ten Rules to Make.” The ASIN for this book is0963266764. So here is the basic link to that Display Page:
Directing Your Buyer to the Display Page Where YOU Own the Buy Box.
Do This by Adding your Seller ID to the URL
If we change the URL and add your Seller ID to the URL, your buyer will see your copy of the product.
The link will look like this
http://www.amazon.com/dp/<ASIN>/ref=&m-<YOUR Seller ID> (where you replace <ASIN> and <YOUR Seller ID> with your values).
To take you to my copy of this book (assuming it hasn’t sold and I’ll jack up the price to see that it doesn’t – for a while)
The arrow points to my Display Name (Paradise for Dog Lovers). A customer clicking this Add to Cart button would be buying my copy and this is obviously what we want if we sent them here from with a link.
Where do I get my Seller ID? is the Obvious Question.
There are a couple of ways, but here is the easiest that I have found.
Step 1 – Log into your Seller Central Account.
Step 2 – Click of the Inventory Tab and then Manage Inventory
Step 3 – Click on the link to one of your products. (Note if you are selling a New or Used copy before you click).
Steps 1 Through 3
#1 – I am signed into Seller Central
#2 – I clicked on the Inventory Tab
#3 – I clicked on Inventory Management (under the Inventory Tab)
#4 – I clicked on the link to one of my products.
Step 4 – You will see the product Display Page, but you may not own the Buy Box – Select the “Other Sellers list appropriate for your copy (New, Used, Collectible)
Click on the Other Seller Category Where Your Copy of the Product Should Be
Step 5 – Scroll through the sellers until you find yours.
Step 6 – Click on your Display Name.
You will go to your About Me page. at the top, in the URL is you Seller ID
Craft the URL with the ASIN and Your Seller Id
http://www.amazon.com/dp/<ASIN>.ref=&m-<YOUR Seller ID>
Advanced Tip Adding Keywords to Your Link
Amazon registers the fact that someone arrives at your product using certain keywords and then buys. They take this to mean that your product is what customers are searching for when they use those keywords. When you send people to your Display Page you can also get credit for keywords that you would like to rank on. You add the keywords to your crafted URL using this format.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/<ASIN>/ie=UTF8?m=YourSellerID>&keywords=keyword1+keyw0rd2&tag=AffiliateID
Note: Amazon keeps track of the fact that people arrive on your page using certain key words and then buy. This tells them that people searching for a certain keyword like your product and BUY YOUR PRODUCT. That is critical to them. I also added the affiliate ID parameter. You can leave the ?tag=xxxx off if you aren’t selling with affiliate.
There you have it. A URL that sends a customer to YOUR Display Page AND Gives You Key Word Credit.
Until Next time, you have a Great Day! Oh Hale Yes!
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Hale Pringle – Hale Yes!
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Email: Hale@HalePringle.com
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P.S. If you are working to move your business online and it all seems overwhelming, I can help! My team and I are currently working with best “Earn Money Quickly From Home” Program I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen them ALL!) I strongly urge you to take a look at http://HalePringle.com/ds. You can also take a look around http://HalePringle.com, especially the resources menu option. You will see that I specialize in list building, am a Certified Trainer with Ann Sieg and am an award winning blogger. I’ve also written three books on AWeber (AWeber: Quick Start) and over 20 others. You can email me or give me a Skype call. I’ll give you the benefit of my years of experience and many thousands of dollars in training and searching the rabbit hole called Internet Marketing and especially selling physical products online.