#645 - New Solution Provider Portal, New AI Alexa, & Amazon Lens Features | Weekly Buzz 3/5/25
20:56 Share

New changes to how agencies and service providers can access client accounts, new date change for the latest FBA reimbursement policies, and TikTok and Amazon are expanding new offerings in Europe. This and more on this week's episode of The Weekly Buzz. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. ♪♪

Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm 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 news stories that are going on in the Amazon, Walmart, e-commerce world. We highlight the latest new feature alerts from Helium 10, and we review a training tip of the week that will give you serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. Now, today, our host is going to be Kerry Miller. So, Kerry, take it away and let us know what's buzzing.

So let's go ahead and get right into the first piece of news. And that is that Amazon really shook things up for Amazon and service providers. So if you use an agency, a consultant or software to help run your Amazon business, this update is important for you. So Amazon just announced a major shift in how third party service providers can access services.

seller central. And if they're not compliant, they'll be locked out. So here's the deal. Starting April 10th of 2025, any external tool software or service provider must be registered on Amazon's solution provider portal to keep access. And this is the page I'm going to show you.

So this is the solution provider portal. And by August 31st of 2025, if they haven't fully transitioned, then they're going to be kind of locked out, not going to have access, and there's not going to be any work around. So here's what's changing. So there's not going to be any more direct access for these third party providers to Seller Central or Vendor Central.

So now the solution provider portal is really the only way in. There's also going to be stronger security rules. So Amazon's really tightening who can manage seller accounts and how they access the data. And there's supposed to be better API monitoring and compliance. So service providers are going to have more transparency in how they use Amazon systems

and Amazon will too, hopefully. So why does this matter for you? Well, if you're a service provider, you must migrate to the solution provider portal or you're gonna risk losing access to the sellers that you support. And if you're a seller, you need to make sure that your tools, software, and agencies are all compliant with this because if they're not, one day they might just stop working. So for the service providers, Amazon has actually already started emailing notifications to accounts

connected as kind of like secondary users in seller central. So if you haven't gotten that email, check your inbox because this really will affect you. But I'm curious to know what everyone thinks about that. What do you think about the change to this? Do you think it's better? Do you think it'd be easier for you to add users for, you know, helping as third provider users?

providers, third party providers, I mean. So just want to know what you think. So let's go ahead into the next piece of news, which I'm really excited about because I like to rack up travel points. Okay. For when I sell on Amazon, I use a credit card for like a travel credit card for getting more points. I actually use Amex business gold because you get

actually maybe three or four points per dollar. And then also the Chase Ink for Business, because you get, I think, four points per dollar that you spend on advertising for both of those. So I highly recommend getting those if you haven't. But basically Walmart just announced that they are gonna allow you to use credit cards online.

on the Walmart marketplace. So they now accept Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, Japan Credit Bureau, and UnionPay in addition to ACH. So you can use your card to pay for any fees associated with the Walmart fulfillment services program, such as multi-channel solutions,

and Walmart Cross Border, along with Success Hub tools like Search Engine Marketing, otherwise known as the SEM program, Review Accelerator, and Walmart Connects Advertising Solutions. So all of your advertising, you put on that credit card and rack up those points. So I highly recommend checking that out if you're a Walmart seller and getting those points for your travels. And there's other credit cards you can get cash back and other types of rewards. So if you're not doing that and just paying those credit cards off right away, I think it's a really...

good thing for you to start doing because you'll get a lot of great points. Okay, let's go into the next piece of news. And this is in seller central, the new FBA reimbursement date change. So as you know, we said that March 10th was going to be the day that these new changes to the new policies for reimbursement were going to be taking place, but they actually extended it to March 31st. So the update of fulfillment by Amazon inventory reimbursement policy is now going to go into effect March 31st, 2025 instead of the 10th.

And Amazon made this change to give you more time to manage your costs through the manage your sourcing costs page. So you're going to put in the cost of your goods because they're not, they're not reimbursing based on the retail price anymore. It's the cost. So you can go in there. And since January, they've been gradually rolling this out where you can manage the costs page.

And it should be in everyone's account. It was supposed to be in everyone's account by February 28th of 2025. So if you haven't done that, take care of all of that information so that you have that all squared away and ready to go. But if you also haven't taken advantage of Helium 10's managed refund services, we do actually have a managed refund service

for diamond users that you can basically go in and toggle on. It's only a 15% management fee for this, and you can actually get, you know, a lot more back before March 31st. So I would say do as much as you can to get as much money back before March 31st as possible. And our services will help you to do that. All right. So the next piece of news here is the track and prevent policy.

product return badges. Okay. So this is actually in seller central. It's kind of an announcement in here and it's supposed to help you improve your return rates for your products. And they've actually added this feature and some new features basically to the voice of the customer dashboard. What it's going to show you, it's going to show you a list of ASINs that have the frequently returned badge on the product detail pages. Now,

If you haven't noticed that if you have a product that's frequently returned, it's going to show up on there, especially like I noticed this on women's clothing a lot. And so you'll see like a frequently returned badge. And then also you're going to get a warning for ASINs that are at risk of getting the frequently returned badge and then a three month and a 12 month return rate data.

They're also going to show you the suggested return rate to prevent or remove the return badge. And these insights are going to help you to prevent those return badges, identify product improvements, and compare your performance to Amazon's suggested benchmarks. And they actually recommend that you regularly monitor your ASINs that are marked as at risk to review return rates against any

suggested return rates and address product issues before they lead to really a return badge. So something that you can get ahead of before it gets out of control. And if to access this, you just go to the dropdown menu in seller central, select performance, and then you select the voice of the customer, go to the new column, return badge displayed. And on the right side of the table, you'll see details and you can see the detailed information there. So

Make sure that if you haven't checked that out, check that out. Make sure that you're not getting that frequently return badge. That's going to really hinder your conversion rates. So really important to monitor all of that. All right. And the next piece of news, which is really interesting and it's probably very exciting for people in Europe. Let's go ahead and take a look at this. And this is that TikTok shop is expanding in Europe.

So TikTok is boosting its European operations from now on. Merchants can actually register to start selling through TikTok shop in Germany, France, and Italy. So users of this social media platform in these countries are going to be able to soon place

orders, which is very, very exciting. So at the end of last year, TikTok shop actually became active in Spain, like it says here in this article. And merchants in Ireland can also register, though still only by invitation. And by opening up merchants in Germany, France and Italy, TikTok shop is preparing for its launch in three of Europe's five largest e-commerce markets.

So we had some clues about whether or not this was going to be happening in Germany because they have fulfilled by TikTok launching in Germany as well. So if you are a German seller in Germany, this is a really good opportunity or just any of these countries in Europe. It's a really, really good opportunity to start selling on TikTok in your country. So check it out if you haven't already checked that out. Okay.

Okay, for the next piece of news, we have Amazon haul is expanding globally. Now, what's interesting about this is we've been talking in the last few weeks about how the loophole for taxes has been closed for T. Timu and Sheen and Amazon haul. Basically, if you ship something to the US, there was $800 or less.

It was basically you're not going to be taxed for it, but now it's going to be that loophole is being closed. And so I think Amazon might be taking this seriously and saying, okay, we're going to just expand globally with our Amazon haul program. So let's go ahead and check out this next article about Amazon expanding. Okay. So it says Amazon is eyeing global expansion for Timu Sheen competitor. Okay.

So, and that competitor is Amazon haul, obviously. So if we scroll down here, we can see it says the company intends to launch its discount storefront called haul in Europe later this year, according to two people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because these plans are not

they're actually confidential. So this is breaking news. Recent job postings indicate Amazon is eyeing a wider global rollout. So the launch of Amazon Haul in Europe could come with some challenges. So if we scroll down here, the launch of Haul in Europe could...

could come with some challenges. Amazon would likely use plastic packaging for haul shipments, which could conflict with its sustainable goals in the region, according to one of the sources. The company in its 2023 transition to using only recyclable paper bags, cardboard envelopes, and boxes, in some cases, no added packaging for deliveries in Europe. So that's kind of interesting because they're really like with this program in the US, there really hasn't been any regulation to what's coming in in terms of the actual product.

and just the packaging and all of that kind of thing. So it's interesting because in Europe, Amazon's really kind of focused on this and Europe in general, they have a lot higher restrictions on just the types of products that can be sold. So it could be interesting to see how this rolls out in Europe. So we'll just keep an eye on this and keep you updated on how this rolls out.

I'm curious to know, though, how you all what do you all think about this expanding globally? I think it's something that, you know, in the US, there's been a lot of consumerism of these kind of cheap goods. And I feel like it's this is kind of a movement in the US away from these cheap goods. And now maybe they're trying to expand it to Europe. I don't know. I really like to know what your opinions on that are.

All right, we are introducing Alexa Plus. So la la la la la la Alexa. If you know what show I'm mentioning there, go ahead and put it in the comments. So again, la la la la la la Alexa. Some of you might know what that show is. It's pretty funny, but if not, then don't worry about it. But I would love to know if anyone knows what I'm referencing there. But now we are introducing Alexa Plus, which is the next generation of Alexa.

powered by generative AI. So Alexa Plus is your new personal assistant. Okay, so I'm going to just show you this article. It's your new personal AI assistant that gets things done. She's smarter, more conventional, more capable, and free with Prime. Now, I don't know about any of you all, but I've actually heard a lot of people are using kind of like chat GPT and stuff for therapy. Kind of curious to know if Alexa is going to be kind of the all-in-one like therapist, help you to do all of your, you know, your...

things that you need to get done, help you buy things, make appointments for you, kind of like an actual human assistant would be, kind of interesting to think about. But it says basically that Alexa is turning talk into action. It's also easy to talk to. So the easy to talk to part, I'm like, oh, maybe people are gonna start having conversations with Alexa. It's gonna be more conversational. But they're actually turning her into action. So with the experts that are kind of connected through AI,

It says on here, Alexa can control your smart home with products from Philips Hue, Roborek. I'm sorry if I'm saying those names wrong and more. Make reservations or appointments with OpenTable and explore discographies and play music. They can actually help you order like Uber Eats and Grubhub, play music, order other products. So there's a ton of things on here that you can actually do. Alexa is going to be personalized to you as it says on here.

It's going to kind of fade in the background when you don't need her and then she's going to be right there when you need her, help you manage your home. So a lot of things that Alexa is going to be able to do because of AI. So if you're interested in this kind of thing, maybe just try out Alexa and maybe have some conversations with her. Really interesting to know how much AI is really changing lives today.

by just the interaction with kind of computers. But kind of scary too, because you want to be seeing people interacting with other humans. So I'm kind of really torn on this whole thing. I would be interested to know what anyone else thinks about all of this. Okay, so let's go ahead and get into the next article, which is about Amazon LiveCamp.

Lens. Okay. So Amazon Lens is giving you four ways to shop faster on Amazon Lens. And so these are the four ways. Okay. Let's scroll down to the first way. The first way is you can search with images in your photo library. Okay. So you can have a picture or a screenshot of something that you want to buy and you don't need to describe the product color or shape, anything like that. You can just tap the lens icon in the search bar, tap and upload.

and access your camera roll, select the image you want to use and Amazon Lens is going to show you similar items. Now, it's kind of funny because I saw a jacket on a show that I was watching. It was called like Sweet Magnolias on Netflix. And this girl had this really cute jacket. And I was like, I'm pretty sure I've seen that

on Amazon. So I think I'm going to go ahead and take a picture of that and see if I can find it and see if this actually works. The next thing is you can also, and I'll scroll down here. The next thing is you can click and shop with camera search. So in addition to searching with images in your camera roll, camera search allows you to snap a photo while you're out and about watching TV or reading a

the visual search algorithms do the rest. So you can search directly from your lock screen. Actually, you're actually going to be able to do all these searches from like a widget that you can download. And it shows in this article how to download all of that. So if you haven't, you know, if you want, or if you're interested in that, you can go ahead and download that and you can reference this article for that. And then you can also use a barcode to

to scan and match an exact item. And this is something that we were always able to do with some of our apps. But if you already have an item that you love and you have a barcode, you can just quick and easily scan that and it'll help you find it on Amazon. So if you're at Costco, although Costco has different barcodes on there, so they always change them for Costco for some reason. But if you're out...

Walmart, wherever you can kind of see, you know, if you can find something on Amazon. All right. And this next piece of news is not an article or anything, but you do need to update your emergency contact info on seller central and account health assurance.

And basically, it's really necessary to verify these details for, first of all, to the eligibility of the account health assurance program, which helps protect your account from potential disruptions. And then number two, it also helps you with access to account health specialists that can

contact you and address critical account related concerns before they impact your business operations. So your contact information they say is going to be kept secure and used only for critical account related communications. And what you're going to see is if you haven't done this, you'll see kind of a red bar up at the top and you need to make sure to fill that out because you could get your account kind of suspended or something like that. So make sure that you update your emergency contact details.

All right, and the final piece of news, which is also not an article, but Helium 10 is actually now a Walmart Connect premium partner. So as you might know, we have an ads management solution for Walmart, and now it's been officially recognized by Walmart Connect, and our solution makes sense

faster and easier for you to manage your Walmart ads on a daily basis, just like our solution is for Amazon. So basically within this ads platform, you can adjust your bids very quickly. You don't have to download a ton of spreadsheets and kind of scour over them for over and over. You can create bid rules and automate things so that you can actually manage your business within a few minutes. So it's,

Huge that we're now a premier partner. So I'm very excited if you're interested in checking out our ads for Walmart You can go ahead and check that out in helium 10 Okay. Now let's go ahead and talk about a new feature that has been released in helium 10, which is pretty exciting So I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen. So this is just a coffin shelf listing It's actually one of our competitors and I wanted to just show you how really easy this new solution is and so I'm gonna scroll down and

First of all, I want to point out, it says customers usually keep this item. This is what I was talking about when it comes to the badges. If it's frequently returned, you're going to see that it's frequently returned. So you don't want that badge. So go back and reference what I told you about how to kind of monitor that. But this is our newest thing here for a feature for helium tenants, the eBay price checker. So all you have to do is click on this and it's going to take you directly to eBay and it's going to show you the pricing. Okay. This is important because you want to make sure that, you know, the

price is obviously higher if somebody else is reselling, but it also is going to show you, is somebody else selling my product on eBay without me knowing? And then you want to make sure that the price

higher because the Amazon buy box, you know, they'll basically penalize you if you have your price lower on another platform. So it's $38.95 on Amazon here, $56.66 on the eBay listing here. So that is just a new amazing feature that we have here on Helium 10. And it's definitely very helpful, especially to make sure that you're price checking everything. But also interesting to know if somebody's selling your product

that's not authorized on another platform. And last but not least, it's time for the strategy of the week, which is something that only Helium 10 has to offer and it's available in our keyword tracker. So check out this video from Bradley to find out more. Keyword tracker with boost you can only have with Helium 10. The base form of keyword tracker is the same as pretty much any keyword tracker out there. We're going to check once a day, at least once a day. All right. This is not useless information.

You kind of just want to see, Hey, day by day, what's my rank? You know, most keywords, most products, they're not going to fluctuate too much day by day, especially the higher search volume ones. But sometimes, like I said, there's something called a search shuffle, uh, where based on where somebody is searching, you know, keyword ranks might be different based on what browser somebody is using. Keyword ranks might be different based on just whatever Amazon is doing. It can literally have somebody searching right here in my address and somebody across the street, same keyword.

zip code, same street. They could show a different rank. Well, if the rank is just fluctuating a little bit, like here in one situation, page one position five, another one page one position seven. Is that a big deal? No, but it is a big deal when like here it's page one position five, but then somebody across town is page three position 150. That's a big difference. If you're only looking at one browsing scenario per day,

Even if it's rotating, you know, which Helium 10 does, you might not be getting the whole picture, especially when you're launching. You really want a good picture of what's going on across the country. Also, especially when you are trying to run your sponsored ads, you know, like you want to know, hey, is my bid high enough? Don't just rely on Amazon. Look at where you're showing up in the search results. And so Helium 10 is the only tool where you can actually see ranks and

hourly 24 times a day. The way to do that is by running, turning on boost. So if I wanted to see where am I ranking 24 times a day for this keyword, Halloween decor, I just click on this rocket ship. Anybody has access to this platinum diamond, et cetera. And now 24 times a day in rotating browsing scenarios, different browsers, different addresses, et cetera. It's going to go ahead and check so that you can really see not just like, Hey, what happens when I, when I up, up my, my bid and sponsored ads, but Hey,

Hey, is your rank kind of consistent across the board or, or does it fluctuate a lot? Helium 10 is the only tool that has ever had this. And we have had this for almost eight years. Now it's been like this. So guys, keyword tracking is so important. We all know that make sure that you are using boost on your most important keywords so that you know if your keyword rank is fluctuating or what kind of sponsored position you are getting at the hourly level.

Thank you, Bradley, for that strategy. If you haven't used the boost tool and you are a Helium 10 user, go in right now and go into your keyword tracker and start using it. It's going to be a game changer for all of your future launches. So go ahead and check that out. But thank you again for everyone who has stayed here until the end and has watched our weekly buzz. So we will see you again next week to see what's buzzing. Bye, everyone.