It may be a surprise to you that often, Amazon sellers make more sales in Q4 than they do in Qs 1,2 and 3 combined. With Q4 being so pivotal for the entire year's success, proactivity is key. That’s why - believe it or not - preparation for this busy time of high traffic, visibility, and order fulfilment levels, ideally needs to start in Q1. Yes, Q1. Prepping in advance leaves you with ample time to ensure that all the other all-important components to selling on Amazon have been taken care of.

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Want to get ready for your biggest ever end to the year? Read on to find out more on the three key areas you need to have prepared for a smooth-sailing and successful Q4.

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1. The product detail page

We'll be covering these parts in more detail later in the series, but regarding preparation, it's important that listing optimisations are done early. You need to go into Q4 knowing all the constituents of the PDP are as good as possible. Besides, what better way to reap in sales than by the means of strong organics?

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Not sure whether the content across your product detail pages are up to scratch? Test it!

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Seller Central has a great built-in testing tool called Manage Your Experiments (blog incoming) to help you make data-driven decisions on each section of the PDP. Bear in mind that each experiment takes approximately 10 weeks for enough data to be gathered (or use 'significance' if you're unsure of the length), so it's worth starting testing early in the year, especially since you can only test one part of content at a time on each ASIN.

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2. Inventory management

Fulfilling orders using FBA is great and relatively straightforward. Once you ship stock into a fulfilment centre, Amazon pretty much takes care of the rest. Oh, and not forgetting to mention that everything shipped from FBA will have the all-important Prime badge. However, completely relying on FBA at such a highly pressured time of year like Q4 is far from wise. The last position you want to be in is trying to source a good 3PL partner last minute because there are receiving delays at fulfilment centres or similar.

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Might we suggest a back-up plan? Before Q4 rolls around, make sure that you have already sourced and tested a good 3PL partner.

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It's also good practice to have an MFN SKU, as well as an FBA SKU on any given ASIN anyway. If your product is priced below £20 (the super saver delivery threshold), non-Prime members will have to pay the FBA non-Prime shipping fee of between £0.99 (SnL) and £4.49 per unit. If there is an MFN offer with free delivery, conversion is likely to be better for non-Prime shoppers. In the UK, we can recommend Yeovil Storage Limited (who are able to fulfil for SFP too!).

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3. PPC

In a similar vein to your product detail page, make sure you try all campaign types (Sponsored Product, Sponsored Brand, Sponsored Display and Sponsored Brand Video), and do a lot of testing on match types and keywords before Q4.

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With Q4 being peak season, cost per click is usually significantly higher because sellers are competing more aggressively during the high traffic periods. Before Q4 arrives, you should have established which keywords, targeting types and campaign types convert best for you, to ensure efficient ad-spend. Keep your eyes peeled for a PPC-specific post on our blog very soon!

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Now we’ve reached the end of this article, we hope you now have a greater idea on what needs to be done, starting in Q1, to get ahead of other sellers and ensure a successful year, culminating in your biggest Q4 ever!

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If you'd like to speak more about getting ready to have the best possible 2023 on Amazon, please click on the 'Let's talk' button at the top of the page!

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