#503 - Ad Fees During Thursday Amazon Outage & Walmart Goes Digital! | Weekly Buzz 3/11/26

How will Amazon address ad fees that were charged during the Thursday outage? Gain up to 23% more sales this spring. And Walmart is now rolling out digital labels nationwide over physical tags. This and more on this week's episode of the Weekly Buzz. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the AM PM podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host Shioali Patel and this is the show that is our Helium 10 weekly buzz where we give you a rundown of all the goings on in the Amazon Tik Tok shop and e-commerce world. We let you know what new features Helium 10 has and we also give you a training tip of the week. So, let's get started and see what's buzzing. All right, our first news piece today comes from e-commerce bites. It's regarding what some of you might have experienced on Thursday. Amazon was seemingly down for about 6 hours and a ton of customers were experiencing that classic dog. As you can see inside of this article, if you are watching this via video, one frustrated shopper reported, "I met a lot of Amazon dogs today." Let's see, there was Bailey, Barkley, and Emma, Barney, Bowser, Brandy, Butters, Marge, Canoli, Clancy. A lot of names there. Not going to read the full list, but Amazon told media outlets in a statement that some customers may have experienced issues while shopping due to an issue related to software code deployment. And this didn't just apply for people who were looking to buy. It was also for customers who had already purchased, actually. So, there was one instance where I read about this inside of this article. somebody went to go pick up an item they'd already purchased at an Amazon locker and they were essentially not able to pick it up because the app would just show a spinning wheel. And this wasn't just on the app, it was also on desktop. So, if you were on the Amazon uh page or the app, maybe you experienced something and I'd love to know, did you also experience something like this? And how so? Were you a customer? Did you experience it as a seller? Members of the Amazon Vine review program were unable to post reviews and Amazon's Kindle ebook program. While people weren't able to view the description or even download or get a new book, sellers were impacted due to loss of sales because customers were first of all unable to complete their purchases. And when they would go and visit their listing, so if I went and visited my listing, I would see no listing at all. All right. Some of these listings that previously had the buy box wouldn't have the buy box. You wouldn't be able to add it to cart. And on top of all of that, sellers were impacted not just by the loss in sales that they experienced, but they weren't able to access their listings. They didn't have the buy box anymore if they previously had it. You couldn't add it to cart. And on top of all of those things, you had seller info, product info missing, ad fees still being charged. AWS just in general impacted really terribly prices not showing up just options and then you get suspenseful music it says and then it would go back to an item page with no additional info lots of unavailable things than 404 dogs. People of course took to threads and even that seemed to have some sort of error occurring. Sometimes people would post something and it wouldn't show up or they replied and it said they didn't reply and Amazon seller support seemed to be out of reach. But that tends to happen, right guys? That's part of the nature of being in business. And what's more important than these little setbacks that occur is figuring out how you navigate them. And typically Amazon does a pretty good job. So that leads me into this next article which says Amazon convenes deep dive internal meeting to address outages. they are going and looking into this. They're trying to ensure that this sort of generative AI assisted production change doesn't occur again. They're trying to set up some safeguard practices to prevent further issues as they say, especially considering how many people are impacted and for 6 hours straight. And there has been uh a few instances here and there where something similar has happened. And so they are trying to the best of their ability to meet go into a deep dive of why this happened and what to do to prevent it further. So luckily hopefully that is the last we're seeing of the situation. But of course I'd love to hear is this something you were impacted by as a seller as a customer and how have you pivoted since? Next up let's talk about a new feature alert. You know at Helium 10 we are always trying to innovate. We listen to your queries and implement things accordingly. And we've got some changes to our muchloved listing builder. So just when you go into listing builder from the very top, if you're in create and optimize listings, you're going to select listing builder or inside of your classic view, you'll see it underneath listing optimization. In doing so, the first thing I want to draw attention to that's new is Scribbles history. So many of you maybe are avid Scribbles lovers. If you've been around the block for quite some time, then you might know what Scribbles is. And what you can now do is actually import all that information into listing builder and check out what you've got going on from that tool. Um, something else is let's go ahead and actually click into a listing. I'm going to click into this Manny's Mysterious Oddities Makeup Organizer set. And let's just actually run back to this first tab, which is add keywords for listings. Something else we've recently adopted and this is going to be for our diamond and up users. We've actually consolidated the ABA converting keywords filters that you were seeing before. So before you would have to go in and for your products as well as for your comparison filter, you would have to select okay, I want to see keywords with conversion share greater than or equal to 1%. And then go through and select which weeks. But the truth of the scenario is is maybe you were looking for the same exact time frame and the same amount of conversion share for both of those things for your own products as well as competitors. So we've just kind of tried to unify that experience and speed up the process by saying, "Hey, just put it in once and we're actually going to pull all of that data for you in one go." Very convenient. Then we've got search query performance sales keywords. Before you'd have to select your asens. Now we just go in and select your information, your AS for you. And then you can just focus that way on keywords with my purchase being greater than or equal to one during the month or during the week of and then you can select however many weeks and that way now it's just going to pull that information a whole lot faster. Now the last thing that we've really changed inside of listing builder is when you're in the create listing content tab. That's going to be your last one over where you're actually seeing all those keyword phrases you selected or that this tool just pulled once we inputed in our filters. You're going to see that on the left and then on the right hand side you can go in and actually write out that listing that includes title, bullet points, subject matter as well as generic keywords and then your description. Of course, in doing so before what we used to have is all the key phrases that were being used would highlight green that included root keywords. And that is great. It worked, but it can muddle how many times things are being used in the sense of now you don't know maybe where they're showing up if everything's already highlighted green, right? So, for example, we've got CC cream. Again, I am currently taking a look at a goth coffin shelf gothic makeup organizer set, which is why you might see some makeup related things. Now, inside of my listing, it says I'm using CC cream once. Now, if I went in and just for the sake of this example, if you were watching this on any sort of video platform, let's say I typed in CC cream here as well. Now, all of a sudden, I'm using it twice, right? And you can see on the left hand side, it now tells me that yeah, I'm using CC cream twice. I'm going to select it. It's going to show me the keyword sources. So, this is being pulled from historical top keywords. It's also a top performing organic keyword and sponsored keyword. And when I select it, it's going to highlight green now and show me exactly where in my listing. So in the title and in the bullet points that I have added that. All right. So a little bit more convenient again for seeing where you're using your keywords inside of your listing. And as opposed to having everything highlighted green, now you can be very specific. Hey, you know what? I've used this too many times. It's already showing up. and you can click it to see where it's showing up and then consolidate from there. So hopefully that makes sense. Four different new things being added as an enhancement to listing builder. You've got scribbles history. You've got a more consolidated version of the ABA converting keywords. Search query performance keywords are automatically pulled from your asens that are integrated into your Helium 10 shop because of course that's naturally pulling from your seller central token. And then the last thing is we've updated the way that the highlight system works just so you can more easily see where those key phrases are being used. All right, all this to follow up with. Make sure you guys go download our Helium 10 app. That is also something that we've been working on for some time. You guys were asking where is the Helium 10 app? Well, we've got it back and it's updated. So, you can go in, type in Helium 10 into the search bar. go ahead and download it like I have. What you'll see once you're inside of that app is at the very top, you'll be able to change marketplaces. You have access to Amazon, Walmart, and Tik Tok shop. Now, from your phone, you'll be able to toggle into whichever one you want. You've got profits at the top as well as ads. You can change periods going into last 7 days, this quarter, last quarter, last year, whatever you want. PPC spend, tacos, a cost at the top, performance. You can quickly at a glance see your highest a cost campaigns from your phone. So much better than having to go to a desktop. And of course, as you go through and navigate even further into Ads Manager, you'll be able to filter down, see the status, update the status, turn things off, pause it out, change your budget as you see fit. When I'm underneath the profit section and I scroll down, I'll also be able to see my P&L, check out all those products, any refunds that I might be due. And then going into that second tab, you'll be able to see all the alerts that are there. So go in, see if you've lost a buy box or Amazon's changed dimensions and you can update the time frame as always in learning. We've got some stuff about our podcast as well as our blog. Go in, stay up todate, and that is all the jazz, my friends. All right, moving into seller central. Refresh your product detail page videos this spring. Spring's almost here. Of course, this is a good time, as any to make sure that your listing is up to date. Sellers who add videos to their product detail pages see an average increase of up to 23%. I would love an increase of 23% on my listings. All right, that's a significant boost. So, make sure that you guys give shoppers the confidence they need to go and click add to cart. There's a number of ways that you can create video. Shoppers like to see their products in action, as in what the heck am I buying, how do I use it, how easy is it to assemble, etc. yada yada yada. And being able to visualize it in their own lives gets them going to make that purchase. So, some things you can do for videos is um you've got product demonstrations, show it in how-to videos, highlight key features and benefits, variations, showcase if you got multiple variations or maybe things that even work together. Guys, this is a great way for you to upsell customers on buying things together if you've got a brand and real life applications, of course. So, if you sell some fitness gear, go out and shoot some fitness videos. And once you've got those videos shot, you'll want to go to upload and manage videos in seller central under catalog to add or update. Video management is available to eligible brands and sellers with 3 months or more selling on Amazon, which I believe many of you probably are. Next up, we've got Walmart ads digital price labels to all US stores. I actually didn't know what this was, so I had to Google it. It's basically electronic digital display tags that are replacing traditional paper price tags on shelves and it's just designed to speed up price updates, improve inventory management. Of course, this is something that we like seeing across the board. Better logistics, better shipping, happier customers, and of course, hopefully more sales for us cuz they leave great reviews. It's a cycle, right guys? So, rolling out to all US stores nationwide, you've got some things that this digital shelf label will affect. That includes instant price changes. Anytime you want to change it, it's very fast. Stock to light for inventory replenishment and pick to light order picking enhancing efficiency for associates. So, of course, that's Google. Let's go back into this uh article we were looking at. Walmart said it would phase out paper price tags in favor of the digital ones. So, it's controlled by a centralized system. This was first introduced in Grapevine, Texas location in 2024 and it's been added to about 3,200 additional stores. Obviously, I'm not with the Times because I had to look up what the digital label was. But as it says here, using a device, employees can activate LED lights on a label to identify where items need to be restocked or where items for online orders are located. Now, since I've been yapping for a little bit of time, let's go ahead and pass it over to Bradley, who is going to speak to you about search query performance analyzer. >> Another unique strategy that is important to do, and it's unique in the fact that Helium 10 can do it in seconds. But even if you don't have Helium 10, you can do this in a few hours inside of Seller Central. And that is looking up to one year of your search query performance data instantly. All right. So any of you who have Helium 10, you've already got access to this cuz as soon as you connect, we'll go ahead and download up to a year's reports of your search performance. But what are the things that you want to look at? You want to know, hey, what were the keywords that were driving sales for me? What are the keywords where my conversion rate is better than the market conversion rate? What are the keywords where my click-through rate is better than everybody else's clickthrough rate? These are all important things. But the way you can look at up to a year's worth of data in seconds is by going into search query analyzer. Go ahead and select month of and just select the last 12 months here uh of your account and then go in and choose the product or products. Let me go ahead and type in coffin shelf here and put on my my main product. I select it. I also am going to have AI analysis on. That'll give you some other options here I'm about to show you. And then I just hit apply AI analysis. The first thing it's going to show is all 12 months of search create performance data. All the keywords that have ever come up in any of those months. So I can see here, for example, I can sort by my purchases. And I can see, oh my goodness, I've got 50 purchases for the the keyword coffin shelf. I've got six purchases for coffin box. I've sold for coffin shelves. I've sold for coffin bookshelf, etc., etc. But then if I go ahead and look at the AI analysis, I hit this button, view AI analysis here. Now I could see instantly, hey, what were the best conversion rate keywords for me? What were the market top sales keywords? All right, what were the top search volume keywords? Here in my keyword performance matrix, I can even see, hey, what got me low a cost? All right, because it ties into my my PPC data. Uh I can look at funnel analytics and see, hey, how are things going overall? How how do things progress between the impression all the way down to the purchase for my product? What are some of my highv value low visibility keywords? In other words, where I might not be showing up at the top of search, but I have really good data. Uh the AI summarizes a lot of what you need to look at when you're looking at your search query performance data because sometimes it might be a little bit overwhelming. That will help you u kind of like laser focus on what you actions you need to take. So again, if you want to be able to look at 12 months of search performance data almost instantly, use Helium 10 for that. Even if you don't have Helium 10, well, guess what? Go to Seller Central, go to your search performance, download the 12 different reports, do a pivot table, and put all that data together because it's still important data. And then, yeah, you can maybe use use some outside AIS to give you some summaries, but with just two clicks, you can do that all inside of Helium 10. So guys, a few things that I mentioned on this week's weekly buzz. For example, the listing builder enhancements as well as what Bradley just talked about with the search query performance analyzer. Those things are really exclusive to diamond members. So if you don't have a diamond membership, I do think it's really valuable. And you guys can take 20% off the next 6 months by using the code SSP20. Make sure you use SSP20 to take 20% off 6 months for a diamond. And last but not least, we've got seller reactions to Tik Tok shop changing the stance on shipping and fulfillment. Of course, no buzz is complete without me hitting the trifecta. Amazon, Walmart, and Tik Tok shop. And here, as you guys know, Tik Tok shop had originally said that they were going to make it mandatory for you guys to use a Tik Tok shop plan for shipping. Then they paused that out. I actually covered this in weekly buzz some time ago, but this shakeup has still instigated some conversation of why that might be the case, whether it's going to come back. And the truth is, nobody really knows. Some people speculate that the decision is because they would lose business. Um, some folks it just doesn't really make sense to use Tik Tok shop fulfillment just yet because they're using merchant fulfilled and even though they weren't going away with merchant fulfilled, they felt maybe it was a matter of time. And at the same time, other people uh speculate that it's it's not so much that they would lose business as much as it is. It closes out people who are small business owners. It's a wider audience to keep being able to have the sort of fulfillment that makes sense for your brand. This is no different from that very popular phrase, don't put all your eggs in one basket, guys. This applies for shipping. This applies for selling on one marketplace. you want to branch out, sell in different marketplaces. Maybe Amazon Brazil, Amazon Mexico, Amazon Japan, UK, Tic Tac, Shoppel, whatever floats your boat and makes sense from a profitability standpoint as well as an inventory standpoint. That's what you want to work on doing. Meaning, if it doesn't make sense for you to go out and have a bunch more inventory created for the Walmart platform, well, then maybe you can bulk convert your listings, especially if you're on our diamond plan at Helium 10. We let you bulk convert all of your Amazon listings over to Tik Tok shop within minutes. I'm not exaggerating, within minutes. So, make sure you use the code SSP20 to upgrade if you haven't already. And then bulk convert those listings cuz you can actually set it up in a way that's automated. After you've bulk converted and any sort of placement that occurs on the Tik Tok shop platform, the inventory is going to be pulled from Amazon and automatically shipped out. So very cool, very nifty. And with that, I am done with this week's weekly buzz. I will catch you next week to see what's buzzing.