Helium 10 Buzz 5/31/24: Walmart+ Week | Amazon Inventory Analytics

We’re back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10’s Senior Brand Evangelist, Shivali Patel. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, Walmart, and E-commerce space, talk about Helium 10’s newest features, and provide a training tip for the week for serious sellers of any level.

Walmart launching sale ahead of Amazon Prime Day
https://www.axios.com/2024/05/30/walmart-plus-week-sale-amazon-prime-day

Amazon Prime now includes a Grubhub food-delivery subscription
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/30/amazon-prime-grubhub-subscription.html

Amazon gets FAA approval to expand drone deliveries
https://www.axios.com/2024/05/30/amazon-faa-drone-delivery

Amazon expands A-to-z Guarantee in Europe to include property damage and personal injury claims
https://www.aboutamazon.eu/news/customer-trust/amazon-expands-a-to-z-guarantee-in-europe-to-include-property-damage-and-personal-injury-claims

Why Temu’s E-Commerce Model Is a Threat to U.S. Patent Holders
https://observer.com/2024/05/why-temu-poses-a-threat-to-american-businesses-and-patent-holders/

Join us as we break down the latest feature alerts from Helium 10, along with a must-know training tip of the week on how to know who is running ads on your product page and your competitor’s product pages. Don't miss out on the insights that can make you a serious player in the e-commerce world!

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

• 00:45 - Walmart+ Week Announced
• 01:40 - Amazon x GrubHub
• 02:51 - FBA Inventory Analytics
• 04:02 - Amazon Drone Deliveries
• 05:00 - Amazon A-Z Claims
• 05:43 - Temu Counterfeits
• 06:33 - Helium 10 New Feature Alerts
• 07:40 - Pro Training Tip: How To Know Who Is Running Ads On Your Product Page

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Transcript

Shivali Patel:

Walmart+ week dates released. Amazon Prime now including a Grubhub food delivery subscription, and Amazon's new analytics page. This and more on this week's episode of the Weekly Buzz.

Bradley Sutton:

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 new stories that are going on in the Amazon, Walmart and e-commerce world. We highlight the latest New Feature Alerts from Helium 10, and we review a training tip of the week that'll give you serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. Today, our host is going to be Shivali Patel, and so Shivali, take it away and let us know what's buzzing.

Shivali Patel:

First up, we have a news article from Axio stating that, in a strategic move to outpace Amazon, Walmart is launching its Walmart+ week ahead of the annual Prime Day sale in July, signaling an early start to the summer shopping season. Last year they ran it around the same time as Prime Day, but this year they are running it a whole month early, from June 17 to the 23rd. Since, while Amazon has yet to announce the exact date for Prime Day 2024, it is expected to be in July, I hope that those of you who are Walmart sellers have enough inventory in Walmart WFS to cover the increased sales that you'll be experiencing. And for those of you who are Walmart buyers, this year's event extends well beyond product deals to include significant discounts on gas, travel and more, so that's something that you will want to stay on the lookout for. For example, they're doubling their gas discount to 20 cents per gallon at certain gas stations.

Shivali Patel:

Next up, we have this news piece from CNBC, which informs readers that Amazon Prime will now include a Grubhub food delivery subscription. This is definitely an enhancement to their Prime membership program, contributing even more to the ease that it offers its users. The decision aims to attract and retain members amidst the growing competition from Walmart and Target's loyalty programs. Previously, they actually used to offer a year-long Grubhub subscription, but they've now switched that over to free 99. Who doesn't love free 99? And that allows for free delivery on any orders over $12. Additionally, non-prime members can place Grubhub orders directly through Amazon's website and app. This announcement follows Amazon's 2022 agreement to secure up to a 15% stake in Grubhub. That was contingent on performance metrics and, though this might not directly affect sellers, there's always room in the conversation for added perks that Walmart and Amazon give to their Plus and Prime memberships, because, theoretically, the more value that they're able to add, the more that people will stick around on those platforms, leading them to shop for our products.

Shivali Patel:

Moving on, we then have some news directly from Amazon that you can find inside of the news section of your Seller Central account. Some news directly from Amazon that you can find inside of the news section of your Seller Central account. Amazon just launched a new FBA inventory, age and excess analytics page to help sellers analyze their aging and excess inventory. As it says here, the new tool is meant to provide a summarized view of aging trends over time. It aligns FBA sales and aged inventory surcharges with aging inventory, as well as offers other key performance indicator cards like SKUs with estimated excess units, excess inventory recommendations and surcharge summaries. If you click onto the page that it's linked, it provides additional information, such as the page allows for filtering by date range, SKU granularity, such as daily, weekly, monthly, to tailor your analysis, and then an inventory age trends graph, which will help you visualize the aging inventory data, with options to include non-aging units and view fulfilled sales and surcharges and more. Note that this page includes one year of historical data and for more information and access instructions, you can always just head over to your Seller Central News.

Shivali Patel:

Now the fourth news segment is a topic that we've touched on time to time on the Weekly Buzz and there's not too much expansion, but maybe this will change with this. New ruling received Federal Aviation Administration or the FAA's approval to fly longer distances without visual spotters, allowing the expansion of its prime air service, as it says right here. Now why this matters. Amazon aims to deliver 500 million packages a year by drone by 2029, and this authorization marks a significant step in meeting the safety standards in the crowded skies. The company has spent years developing proprietary detect and avoid technology with drones equipped with cameras to scan for obstacles on the ground as well as in the skies, and it's finally set to scale, beginning with more densely populated areas in College Station, Texas, and expanding to Phoenix later this year using next-generation drones. Who knows, maybe soon we'll have drones flying overhead with coffin shelves on the way to project X customers. Amazon also is expanding their A to Z guarantee. Amazon's A to Z guarantee ensures that customers can shop with confidence, offering protection for every single product that is purchased in its stores. This guarantee has actually been in place for over 20 years and it's provided hassle-free process for refunds if customers are dissatisfied with a product's delivery or condition. But as of May 2024, the guarantee now spans several European countries to further include and cover property damage or personal injury caused by defective products. I think that this commitment underscores Amazon's dedication to providing a really secure and trustworthy shopping experience.

Shivali Patel:

Lastly, let's switch over and talk about Temu. So Temu sellers might be copying your Amazon products. As you can see here, it says as an inventor, Temu sellers are a great way to get your Amazon products. Entrepreneur and small business owner with multiple patents, I've experienced firsthand the impact of the economic battle we're fighting against Temu and similar foreign companies undercutting domestic businesses. As a creator, I front row to the behind the scenes e-commerce corruption that typically involves unethical practices and fraud. So things that can occur are counterfeit or unauthorized replicas of well-known brands, including your brands, hopefully not being generated across these platforms, and so you will want to be vigilant about whether or not your products are getting listed, or your images or title bullet points. Whatever the case may be, are they getting duplicated so that way, you can come up with strategies to navigate that. With that, that is it for this week's news.

Shivali Patel:

Moving on to our New Feature Alerts, we have just one for you this week, and that's going to be our Tracked Keyword Widget. The Tracked Keyword Widget is something you can add to your dashboard. It's separate from our Insights Dashboard, as you can see here, when you are on your dashboard page, what you are going to do is click the plus chart icon or button, and when you select that, you'll be given the chart library option, and by selecting that, you'll be able to see it loaded right here. In doing so, you can click add and go down to the bottom and you'll see it load right somewhere on that dashboard so you can access this even if you are a platinum user, and essentially it brings that Keyword Tracker to the main page. You'll be able to toggle organic and sponsored. You'll be seeing all those keywords that you've selected inside of your Keyword Tracker in descending order of search volume. And let's say you have multiple products, you can always select this dropdown and switch into a different product if you would like. So that way, every time you're going into your dashboard you're always seeing your keywords in that spot. Very quick access and you can monitor your keyword ranking. So that way you know if you need to switch up your strategy.

Shivali Patel:

Switching over to the training tip, before we close out, do you guys want to start keeping track of who is advertising on your product page and your competitors' product pages? Run Xray on any product page. I have the coffin shelf open here and it's likely only going to show me products from the variation when I open up Xray, as you can see here. But what you will want to do is click this filters option and then uncheck, mark, hide sponsored products from results. So when you do this and you click apply filters, what you're going to see is it's going to reveal to you many of the sponsored product ads and widgets that appear on the page, allowing you to see who is advertising. You can then use this information in other product targeting campaigns or to determine where to increase bids on your defensive product targeting ads, so that way your products will appear more frequently. All right, guys, that is a wrap. Hope you guys enjoyed this week's episode. We will see you next week to see what's buzzing.