Today we are going to talk about connecting Shopify and Amazon. This gives sellers the benefit of reaching new customers on a whole different platform.
Shopify is an e-commerce platform that allows people to start, grow and manage their own e-commerce website. If you are unsure if you want to commit, they offer a 14 day trial that you can find here.
Shane Park from Tailblaze Media says, “As an e-commerce platform, Shopify removes a lot of the pitfalls of opening a shop compared to their competitors. It’s a rock solid platform that works well, has numerous premium themes that can easily be modified without coding, and an app marketplace that can integrate with accounting systems, email marketing platforms, and countless other apps to run your operation.”
One cool thing about using Shopify along with Amazon, Shane Park adds, is that “Amazon doesn’t integrate with Facebook Pixel or Google Analytics, but Shopify can. Being able to utilize those tools—and digital ad platforms like Facebook Ads and Google Ads—allows you to run advertising to your own e-commerce channel and directly which ads result in purchases.”
Prices vary depending on what kind of site you want to run, they give you the option of a basic Shopify for all of the basics for those starting a new business, the regular Shopify for everything you need for growing a business and an advanced Shopify which offers advanced features for scaling your business. All of these plans allow for connecting Amazon and Shopify and we are going to discuss how below.
Requirements for Connecting Shopify and Amazon
Before connecting Shopify and Amazon, you want to make sure you meet these requirements that are pulled directly from Shopify’s website.
You must not be shipping your items/products using FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) or FBM (Seller Fulfilled Prime)
You need an active, paid Shopify account
You must be selling in a supported category
Your store needs to list prices in USD or CAD
Your return policy is as good or better than the Amazon return policy
If you meet the requirements above, it’s time to activate your Amazon sales channel in Shopify. When activating your Amazon sales channel, remember you are still getting charged selling fees from Amazon even if you make sales through Shopify. According to Shopify’s Setting up the Amazon sales channel page, you can add the Amazon sales channel from the App store or you can activate it directly from your Shopify.
Below are instructions on how to access and activate the sales channel on a Desktop, iPhone and Android pulled directly from Shopify’s website.
Listing
When it comes to listing your products, remember that your Shopify items aren’t automatically added to Amazon but when connecting Shopify and Amazon, it does automatically add your Amazon products.
When listing your items on Amazon, you have to wait for Amazon to approve it. It’ll usually only take a couple of hours to go through. If your item gets approved, it will show in the Amazon marketplace and you will have to go to the Amazon sales channel listings in your Shopify to manage it.
Shopify at the moment only allows sellers to create listings for new products in these categories:
Clothing, Shoes & Jewelry
Arts, Crafts & Sewing
Home & Kitchen
Patio, Lawn & Garden
Sports & Outdoors
Health & Household
Toys & Games
Beauty
Electronics
If the product requires approval, Shopify will not allow you to link it until you get approved.
When trying to list your Amazon items on Shopify, Shopify can detect products when you open your Shopify and you click on Amazon. If so, there will be a banner that shows on the top that will ask you to ‘link your existing Amazon listings’.
Connecting Shopify and Amazon
When clicking on ‘Link Products’ you will see your products.
You will then click on browse products that will show up right next to the product
After seeing your products listed, you will click on the products you want to link and click select products.
The next screen will ask you how you want to manage your inventory
Using Shopify’s inventory setting or
Manually managing inventory
Shopify also allows you to add a production time if you need it. (The default is 2 days)
After figuring out how you want to manage your inventory and production time, you can select the variants you’re going to link to your Amazon listing.
Finally, you can click ‘link products’, that will finalize linking your Amazon products to Shopify.
Another added benefit of opening a shop on Shopify according to Shane Park is that “by opening a Shopify store and connecting it with Amazon, you get keep your current processes of adding and managing inventory through Amazon while opening up the ability to fully leverage online advertising platforms and data analytics tools outside of Amazon’s own platform.”
Connecting Shopify and Amazon is that easy! The only hard part is figuring out if you can sell in a certain category, the approval process and figuring out what Shopify plan you want to sign up for. Good luck!
Meet the Author: [wbcr_php_snippet id=”18211″]
[wbcr_php_snippet id=”18212″]
[wbcr_php_snippet id=”18210″]