An Amazon Glossary for Beginners

Learn the Language of Amazon

Introduction

Selling on Amazon is like joining a club. There are certain best practices that most sellers use, specific actions that everyone takes, and most relevant for this point, a specific vernacular that is commonly used by sellers and Amazonian’s alike.

While we will not cover all e-commerce and digital marketing jargon, — we assume that you know that CPC = Cost per click, we will dive into brief explanations for the most common terms and acronyms within the Amazon Seller universe.

*Note: While the post will only be sent once, we will continue to update the list so bookmark and check back every month or two.

Advertising

• 7 Day Deal: a 7 day price reduction on a specific ASIN. Deal must be approved by Amazon.

• A+ Content: Below the fold marketing content designed to help brands tell a story about their product and drive conversion.

• ACoS: Average Cost of Sales, measured as advertising spend divided by advertising-attributed sales. This measures the efficiency of your ad (typically PPC) spend.

• Amazon DSP: Demand Side Platform is Amazon’s owned platform to drive traffic to your listings, primarily through display advertising.

• Amazon Live: A live streaming service that allows brands and Amazon influencers to debut products, chat with customers and offer expert advice in real-time, and allow users to interact with products.

• Automatic Targeting: Amazon’s ad format where an algorithm drives matching between products and targets.

• Brand Store: Your home page on Amazon. Only available for brand owners.

• Deals of the Day: A single item or small set of closely related items discounted for one day only.

• Launch Pad: Launchpad is as a supplemental program designed to jumpstart and accelerate your Amazon business.

• Lightning Deal: A limited time, limited quantity deal that Amazon approved to run on the platform. This type of deal needs to be approved by Amazon.

• Manual Targeting: Amazon’s ad format where you manually targeting specific keywords, categories and ASINs.

• Vine: Enroll your products in Vine to generate reviews from Amazon's best reviewers.

Catalog

• Amazon’s Choice: Amazon’s Choice recommends highly rated, well-priced products available to ship immediately.

• ASIN: Amazon Standard Identification Number is Amazon’s internal unique identifier for a listing.

• Best Seller: Refers to the badge that an ASIN will earn for selling the most units within a category.

• Browse Node: Numerical codes to identify Amazon product categories. Nodes are made up of both top-level and sub-categories.

• BSR: Best Seller Rank is Amazon’s category ranking based on units sold.

• Bullet Points: Product attribute appearing on the product detail page that provides information on the item’s key features.

• Gated Category: A category of restricted products locked to sellers without prior approval from Amazon.

• Index Suppressed: Index Suppressed is a catalog attribute. When its value is True, the ASIN is suppressed from Search i.e. it is not discoverable by customers.

• Item Type Keywords (ITK): Item Type Keywords the a means of assigning ASINs to specific browse nodes. It is one of the ways that items are assigned to category browse nodes.

• Parent ASIN: Products with variations (e.g. size, color, or flavor) have a Parent ASIN and Child ASINs. The Parent ASIN is the generic product and the Child ASINs are the specific.

• Star Rating: Your listing’s rating based on customer feedback. Ratings range from 1-5, and anything 4 stars or above is solid.

Fulfillment

• FBA: The most commonly used acronym in all of Amazon. FBA stands for Fulfilled by Amazon and is Amazon’s process of storing, packing, and shipping orders as well as handling returns and exchanges. Simply, think of FBA as Amazon’s 3PL for sellers.

• FC: Amazon speak for a fulfillment center.

• FNSKU: Stands for Fulfillment Network Stock Keeping Unit. The FNSKU is the the unique identifier for a seller’s listing when sold through FBA.

• Inventory Performance Index (IPI):Amazon’s metric to gauge your overall FBA performance over time. 

• MFN: Merchant Fulfilled Network is when sellers fulfill product to the end customer either themselves or through a 3PL relationship. A/K/A FBM or Fulfilled by Merchant

• Return Rate: # of returns / # of units sold.

• SFP: Seller Fulfilled Prime is a method of fulfillment where merchants are able to ship product themselves with the prime badge.

General

• 1P: Refers to a brand that sells directly to Amazon. You can see this on a listing when it is “shipped and sold'“ by Amazon

• 3P: 3rd party marketplace sellers that is using Amazon as a platform. They own the inventory and pay a % commission.

• A-to-Z Guarantee: Amazon’s A-to-z Guarantee protects you when you buy items sold and fulfilled by a third-party seller. It covers both the timely delivery and condition of your items.

• Brand Registry: Amazon’s tool kit to help brand owners succeed on Amazon.

• Buy Box: the product listing page that a shopper will see. There can be infinite sellers of the same item, but only one listing receives the buy box.

• Prime: Amazon’s 2 day shipping program.

• Referral Fee: Amazon’s commission on marketplace sales.

• Seller Central: Amazon’s UI for sellers on their 3rd Party Marketplace

• Seller Feedback: Seller rating based on the feedback of previous customers.

• Seller Support: Customer Service for sellers.

• Vendor Central: The UI for customers who sell directly to Amazon.

Updates

Like most things in digital, this post is a good starting point and snapshot in time. This list is not exhausting and we know that, however we are committed to updating this glossary on a monthly basis to ensure that all of the newest buzzwords are captured and documented.

Like what you read? Please share.

Love what you read? Upgrade to paid.