Looking to simplify your Amazon Journey? Whether you’re a seasoned Amazon seller or just getting started, navigating through Amazon’s product policy compliance process can be a tough nut to crack. If you’ve been struggling with Amazon product listing compliance and approvals, we’ve got you covered!
This article provides an easy 7-step guide to help you smoothly sail through the Amazon product listing approval process and get your products listed without hassle.
Ready to make your products go live? Let’s get started!
A Step-by-Step Guide To Amazon Product Policy Compliance
- Identify Your Product Category: Meeting Amazon’s policy compliance standards is the first step to getting your product listings approved on Amazon. To ensure your product listings meet compliance standards, it’s important to familiarise yourself with Amazon Product Compliance Requirements for the specific category you need your product to get listed in.
Determining the product category before listing it is essential to help your products reach your target audience by ranking high through direct browsing.
- Understand Amazon Product Compliance Requirements: Different product categories also have different compliance requirements, such as documentation, licensing, and rules.
For example, food items require an FDA and FSSAI license, batteries need a safety data sheet, supplements require lab reports, and drugs and medication require an FDA certificate, along with shelf life and expiry dates, proper packaging, supplier invoices, and labeling specifications for each of these categories.
Understand and manage compliance requirements for different categories using Amazon’s Compliance Reference Tool in Seller Central. These tools can be effective in checking which documentation and certificates are required for different categories.
To learn more about compliance requirements for specific product categories, sellers should refer to the “Restricted Products” page on Amazon Seller Central. This page outlines which products are prohibited, require pre-approval, or have special regulatory or safety requirements, helping you avoid listing violations and ensure your products meet Amazon’s standards.
A few such products include:
- Enroll with Amazon Brand Registry: This important step is often overlooked by sellers as it is not mandatory but extremely important for product listings to meet compliance standards.
Getting your brand approved, trademarked, and enrolled in the Brand Registry Program doesn’t only unlock access to enhanced brand protection and tools but also helps in easy listing approvals and Amazon Product Policy Compliance.
Registering with the Brand Registry Program is highly essential and helpful in the post-approval phase for a listing to meet compliance standards.
From trademark registration to protecting your brand, Krolog does it all!
Click here to get yourself enrolled in the Amazon Brand Registry.
- Submitting Product Compliance Documentation: Submit the required Amazon Seller Compliance documents, certificates, licenses, and test reports to adhere to Amazon’s policy and guidelines for your specific category.
The Manage Your Compliance dashboard on Amazon Seller Central allows sellers to upload required documents and certificates, such as safety reports, test results, or compliance declarations, and track the status of their products. It helps ensure that listings meet Amazon’s regulatory and safety standards, preventing potential removals or suspensions.
In case your listing gets blocked, you may review the reason and follow the instructions to resolve it, or, get in touch with a registered Amazon Service Provider to get your listing restored.
- Maintaining Accurate Product Listings: Once your listing gets approved, it is important to comply with the listing, image, and content guidelines. You may manage, edit, and adjust pricing for your listings through the Manage All Inventory dashboard.
A few important things to keep in mind under this step include:
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- Accurate labels are crucial to avoid listing suppression or removal. Ensure there are no logo or brand name discrepancies and everything matches wth the registered trademark.
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- Make sure the images accurately represent your product and comply with Amazon’s image guidelines, which include the main image must be presented over a plain white background.
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- Images should be a minimum of 500 pixels on their longest side for site display and 1000 pixels for zoom.
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- JPEG (.jpg or .jpeg) is preferred, but TIFF (.tif), PNG (.png), and non-animated GIF (.gif) are also accepted.
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- Images must be clear, unpixelated, and without jagged edges.
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- The product title, bullet points, and description must be within the given character limits of 200, 250-255, and 500 for sellers and 250-255 for vendors, respectively.
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- The listings must be free from claims, along with listed or gated keywords. However, listings can be supported with alternative words.
This is also where step 3 comes into play. Registering with Amazon Brand Registry allows sellers to use A+ and EBC content to enrich their listings with multimedia content that helps customers interact better with the listings and triggers conversions.
Note: Include the main text from certificates or badges in the image’s alt text to make your A+ content more accessible and searchable.
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- Pricing and Competitive Analysis:
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- Pricing Strategy: Ensure prices are competitive but avoid price gouging or price fixing, which violates Amazon’s Fair Pricing Policy. Use automated repricers within set boundaries.
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- Competitor Analysis: Monitor top competitors for pricing, keywords, reviews, and fulfillment methods. Tools like Helium 10, Jungle Scout, or Keepa help track trends.
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- Compliance Standards: Adhere to Amazon’s Marketplace Fair Pricing Policy, MAP (Minimum Advertised Price) agreements, and FTC guidelines. Avoid deceptive pricing, for example, inflated list prices or false discounts.
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- Account Health Compliance: Your job doesnt end with getting your product listed, it’s a long journey and listings require ongoing monitoring and optimization to keep them relevant, updated, and compliant.
Conducting regular audits to look for potential issues and accidental violations, updating listings as needed, and paying close attention to customer complaints, feedback, and reviews helps identify product eligibility issues or safety concerns, which are highly essential to be addressed in order to avoid account suspension or listing suppression.
Amazon Product Policy Compliance is the key to ensuring successful product listings. Now that you know the A-Z of product compliance documentation, you can confidently launch new products and maintain optimal account health without worrying about penalties, suspensions, or listing suppressions.
Should you need more information regarding listing compliance or Amazon Seller Central, reach out to us at www.krolog.com, the expert Amazon Service Provider, that can help you unlock sustainable growth and success on your Amazon journey.