Weekly Buzz 10/30/25: Amazon vs Walmart: Black Friday 2025 + Q4 Updates You Shouldn’t Ignore

Weekly Buzz 10/30/25: Amazon vs Walmart: Black Friday 2025 + Q4 Updates You Shouldn’t Ignore Speaker 1: Black Friday 2025 is right around the corner. There are new Q4 features to help you and customers drive record sales this holiday season and next-gen delivery is here. This and more on this week's episode of The Weekly Buzz. Speaker 2: How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. This is the show that is our Helium 10 weekly buzz. We give you a rundown of all the goings on in the Amazon, TikTok shop, e-commerce world. We let you know what new features that Helium 10 has and give you a training tip of the week that'll give you serious strategies for serious sellers at any level in the e-commerce world. Today's host is actually gonna be Shivali Patel. So Shivali, take it away and let us know what's buzzing. Speaker 1: Starting off strong, about Amazon just confirmed Black Friday dates. As always, the first Friday after Thanksgiving, which will be on November 28th with Cyber Monday following soon after on December 1st. I bring this up right now because it is literally one of the biggest shopping moments of the entire year. And I'm hoping that you've already been preparing for surges in demand, competitive pricing battles, and aggressive deals from major brands. This does also mean getting ahead of inventory and like the saying goes, your deals in a row. I know it's text in a row, but your deals in a row, especially considering Amazon dominates e-commerce traffic. A recent report actually came out that says platform is capturing about 43% of visits among the top 20 e-commerce sites globally. That means it's attracting 2.7 billion monthly visitors, you guys. In other words, if shoppers are buying online during Black Friday, there's a really good chance that they're doing it on Amazon. Customers are already browsing early offers into Holiday Shop and Amazon is encouraging people to add products to their list, to save to their cart, save for later so they receive alerts when price drops hit. That means early impressions and early positioning matters even more this year. I'm really interested in seeing how things evolve in this new AI-driven era between the Rufus Assistant helping customers compare products and then unlocking personalized suggestions, Amazon Lens that I talked about earlier this year on The Weekly Buzz, and Lens Live allowing visual product matching with simple camera scans. As well as hearing the highlights, turning detailed product content into quick AI-generated audio so it speeds up that decision-making. Everything is just really overall becoming more inclusive and more convenient, which is all the more reason to make sure that your listings are retail-ready, your ads are dialed in, and your inventory is positioned for this holiday race because the traffic and demand are coming. Simultaneously, Walmart recently announced a bigger savings and deeper discounts packaged in this nostalgic wrapper of Who Knew Ville. Who here was a Dr. Seuss fan? Your girl definitely was. Conveying Walmart has what it takes to turn those holiday surprises into Who Knew moments. That's kind of the theme that they're going after. And the facts are that the company is offering up to 60% off of top brands and offering thousands of deals under 20 bucks. We love a good deal. They are bringing major price power to electronics, to home. There's like a whole list up on this screen. If you're watching this on YouTube, you have electronic items, home, fashion, toys, beauty names. Anything you're thinking, there's something on here for everybody is where I'm going with this. There will be three separate Walmart events which are listed on my screen if you're watching this again on YouTube. The first event kicks off November 14th through 16th. The second wave is November 25th through 30th, and Cyber Monday lands December 1st. Walmart Plus members will again receive online access sliding in five hours before the general public at each event. But of course, with an equally strong brick-and-mortar presence, Walmart is also betting heavily on the other sort of convenience too. Shoppers can choose curbside pickup, fast two-day shipping, or express delivery in 30 minutes or less, meaning customers get to check off their gift list In the time that it takes to bake a tray of holiday cookies, so long as you have a Walmart close to you. I'm looking forward to potentially visiting in person to see this whole Who Knew Ville story unfold. I kind of miss standing in line early in the morning to see like what goodies are going to be in there once I get in there. In person, I'm expecting some playful campaigns showing up everywhere where shoppers are already spending time from social feeds to living rooms, interactive digital spaces. This is also really where I want to encourage you to make sure that all of your holiday campaigns are prepared well for that sort of playful feel if you are selling on the Walmart platform. And make sure that you have, of course, enough inventory to withstand three whole waves of events. Now, with all this Black Friday talk, it's only fair that we ought to talk about features that are coming along this Q4. Amazon is linking up with USPS for doorstep returns. They're really rewriting the rules of that last mile. Supply chain dive reports that Amazon's partnered up for pickup on specific items. It's not all just yet, aka no more printing labels at the office or finding which store takes your box for those items. Eligible shoppers can now just hand the package to the mail carrier when they arrive and they're making returns so easy that customers barely need to really open that front door. This actually rolled out over the summer, but we're just kind of starting to see it in more cities. But here is where it gets futuristic. Amazon is now testing smart delivery glasses. Think Tony Stark tech meets your friendly neighborhood driver. I hope you can tell I'm in a mood from these analogies. These glasses use AI-powered navigation and computer vision to guide drivers on foot. For example, you can see this body cam footage on my screen. They can give Walking directions, scan packages, show delivery details right in front of their eyes while still staying fully cognizant of their surroundings. That can include identifying hazards and ensuring that you're actually getting the package delivered to the right place, the right house. Amazon's also added some safety features, for example, wearable controller and an emergency button that's right on the vest itself. It's somewhere on this link. You guys can just click this link and read it for yourself if you'd like. As consumers, this is fantastic, but as sellers, it can be worrisome. If you have a product that lends itself to a lot of testing, making it that much more important that you are ensuring your products are crystal clear about what they're offering to limit those return rates. That means making sure your title, your bullet points, your description, your A plus content, your images, all reflect exactly what your product is about, how big it is, how small it is. Think about it. If you are in the closing category and you know that your customers, even right now, are going back to order a few things and then return. Making sure that that sizing is conveyed really, really well will help ensure that this delivery system doesn't come back to bite you even if it is all about ease and convenience for the consumer. Anyways, to continue on the note of AI without me rambling, you know that moment when you are 10 tabs deep comparing nearly identical products and your brain is just refusing to decide? Amazon heard that collective sigh from shoppers everywhere and they've officially launched a brand new AI feature called Help Me Decide. Help Me Decide is a bit like having a trusted shopping friend who knows your taste better than you do, fingers crossed, and who says, hey, this is the one. You can stop scrolling now. It looks at the products that you've been browsing. It will take a look at your recent searches, your browsing history, as it says right here, and your preferences to help recommend the right product for you with just one tap. It's going to include clear explanations of why a product is right for you based on your specific needs and preference. Instead of just guessing and hoping you click, you will have a very distinctive picture on why that was recommended to you. Maybe you've been shopping for the perfect camping tent. If you've been looking at kids' sleeping bags, sturdy hiking boots, Help Me Decide is going to say, based on your adventures, maybe you go with this warm four-person tent so the whole family will survive, as it says right here. This is the example that they used anyway. Amazon says this is all about confidence and simplicity, less second guessing, less car abandonment, more add to cart with conviction. But for sellers, this is really the key takeaway, which is winning the algorithm now means more than just ranking well. Actively deciding which products are the best fit for each individual shopper. That's going to mean relevance, conversion history, listing quality are about to matter so much more and you'll really want to double down on that shopping experience being curated for the shopper. Okay, I've been talking for some time now. Let me bring on Bradley for a moment here to speak to you on something that is super important because Amazon will not be labeling your products anymore and you'll definitely want to know about this. Take it away, Bradley. Speaker 2: Next up, you guys might have heard in the weekly buzz lately how Amazon is not going to be labeling products anymore. That means you have to put your own barcode labels on, you, yourself, or your factory. A lot of wholesale sellers, they'll just like, hey, let me get a pallet of stuff. I'm going to send it directly to Amazon. Let me just pay them the 50, 60 cents each to put a barcode on it. You can't do that anymore. You've got to figure out how to barcode your products before it gets to Amazon starting in January. I've never asked Amazon to barcode my own products. To me, that's a waste of money. Why would I pay 60 cents when I can either have my factory do it or I have my own warehouse here? I have a thermal label printer here and my first orders, I don't even have the barcode on the product because I like to use the Maldives honeymoon launch strategy where I don't create the listing until it's ready to sell. And so that first order, I don't have a barcode on there because I don't even create the listing. My subsequent orders, they all have barcodes from my factory. But regardless, if you're trying to design a barcode like a sticker for your factory to put on at the time of production, or you just want to have your own unique custom thermal, one that you can just print on your own thermal printer. Those cost like $150 from Amazon. You're kind of limited with the ones that Amazon gives you. They give it to you in a format where it's in a full sheet of paper and it's like Avery labels and stuff. But did you know that Helium 10 has a tool where you can design your own barcodes based on the FN SKU? So it's in portals. Just go to portals and then go to the tool barcode labels. And then you can see here, here's one that my team or my family, I guess I should say, just did. What is it? Last week where here's a Egg Holder. They made a custom name, they made sure it has new, it has the FN SKU, and then here's the barcode. They just print this directly on our printer and within, you know, 30 seconds they've got 100 labels fully printed. Sometimes you might want to go deeper and do some like fancy barcodes. Like you can see this one here is one I made with a logo and, you know, like full details and fancy stuff right here. I made that all right here within Helium 10. We've got your data, we've got your FN SKUs, and then we can generate the barcode, we can put images on it, and then now I can download that As a PDF, and then send it directly to my factory, which is exactly what I did for the coffin shelf. I'm like, hey, use this barcode for the next coffin shelf run. So, guys, you don't have to pay an agency to do this or a special designer. A lot of this you can just do on your own. Make sure to use that within Helium 10 portals. Speaker 1: Thanks, Bradley. So, guys, go test this out. Now, for some news directly from Inside Seller Central News, Amazon is now rolling out fast mobile alerts inside the Amazon Seller app so you can instantly get notified when something needs your attention. That means if an ASIN is at risk of suppression, if you're account health takes a hit, if a credit card expires, or if something happens that just in general could interrupt your sales, you're no longer going to have to wait until you check Seller Central on your laptop. Your phone is going to tell you right away so you can take action before the issue escalates. Now look, we all know how quickly one small warning can escalate into blocked Listings snowball into lost revenue in a frantic coffee-fueled panic. So the fact that you now receive real-time alerts while you're traveling, at dinner, or even just at your desk is a really big deal. So make sure that you guys have this on. There's instructions right here on my page if you're looking at this. You download the app, ensure notifications are turned on in your phone settings, go to the Amazon seller app, select menu, Tap on settings, click push notifications, and then customize as you see fit. You should already have alerts turned on inside of Helium 10, but this is just for those of you that want the extra layer and right as soon as it happens inside of Seller Central. This is going to be really great to make sure that you keep your momentum. Something else they've launched is Enhance Your Listing. Keeping a listing fresh on Amazon can feel a lot like trying to keep up with fashion trends. One minute, your title is perfect. The next minute, shoppers are searching for something entirely different and your conversions dip for reasons you cannot even see. So Amazon just dropped this tool to give sellers a fast way to refresh and optimize the content they've already had live. Basically, when you open any listing from Manage Inventory, there's now an Enhance My Listing button that shows AI-generated improvements based on shopping behavior. Okay, what is actually driving buyer decisions right now? You can accept the changes instantly or tweak them with your brand voice before publishing, but I would still use your best judgment to accept as You really ought to know your niche best. However, I do anticipate that with time, this AI will get a whole lot better at spotting search trends, telling you what to expect to see if you want that click and conversion today, not six months ago when you wrote it, but today. The way I think of this would really be more as a supplementary. You're the brand builder who knows the product best. AI is just going to be that fast shortcut to having a better storefront that hopefully is written for the present time. As a personal listing editor who shows up with a fresh data, cup of coffee and says, hey, I found a few upgrades that will help you make a little bit more money. So if you're a seller preparing for Q4, planning a 2026 refresh, this tool should absolutely be on your radar. Okay, before I cover the last thing I want to cover from Seller Central News, I want to pause for a moment and tell you to go follow our Serious Sellers Podcast TikTok channel. This is brand new, you guys. If you are somebody who's really strapped for time, you want to learn in this space, you want to grow in this space, but you don't have maybe an hour to go listen to a full episode, you literally have no excuse now. You can go follow the TikTok page. We post bite-sized information where you can learn the strategy or learn the breaking news piece. And always stay in the know. If you go like, comment, subscribe, you are entered also into a raffle where Bradley is going to select two random users who did just that. And win a one-on-one consultation with Bradley. That is invaluable. You literally can't put a price tag on it and it could be the difference between where you're at right now and where you could be. So make sure that you go do this. Literally pause this video, pause this podcast that you're listening to. Go follow Serious Sellers Podcast and then come back to me. If you're looking for a link, that link is going to be h10.me forward slash SSP TikTok. Again, h10.me forward slash SSP TikTok. Did you do it? Okay. Amazing. Thank you. Let's dive back in. Tell me if you could see every single metric that matters to your business on one screen, how much faster could you make the right decisions? That's going to be the question that custom analytics is I'm going to help you with. That's the sort of answer it's going to give you. Some time ago, Amazon actually launched this. It's not a super new thing because it was in pilot phase, integrating more than 100 data points into one customizable dashboard. But that's officially launched now and instead of jumping between reports or exporting spreadsheets, you can now organize your most important KPIs into a single view. Monitoring results like improved search functionality, your new visualization options for heat maps, seeing seasonal patterns, funnel diagrams. Yeah, just a lot of different things. I also was reading the forums and I saw that early adopters that this tool saved them. Hours each week in different capacities. So they described it as finally having access to ace level insights that you use to require manual digging, unlocking metrics that they never had been able to combine before without costly external tools. And you can choose metrics from across the entire Seller Central ecosystem, building reports that align with the exact outcomes that you're trying to achieve. I'm not going to cover all of this in super detail, but you can go into Seller Central News and take a read of this. And figure out where it fits inside of your business. So with a clearer picture of your performance than ever before, what decisions will you move faster on? Let me know in the comments. And last but not least, Amazon just shared a major milestone for its global selling program in India. Despite new U.S. import tariffs creating short-term friction, Indian exporters selling on Amazon have now surpassed $20 billion in total exports, you guys. That includes almost $7 billion this year, meaning the original 2025 goal that they had, that I read somewhere around here, was achieved ahead of schedule. Okay, that milestone is massive and In 2024, Pani Path and Karur together shipped around $160 million worth of products, underscoring the rise of smaller manufacturing hubs. Amazon now supports more than 2,000 Indian exporters, a 33% jump in just one year operating across every major Indian state and seven union territories. The US remains the number one destination for Indian sellers followed by UK, Germany, Canada, and why the heck am I bringing this up? The reason I bring this up is if India has anything to learn from, now is a great time to consider business expansion, be it other marketplaces, be it alternative platforms like TikTok, and this is where I pitch you on checking out our tools for TikTok and checking out all the new content inside of our learning hub in Freedom Ticket as it really is there to help you grow in the most profitable way possible. With that being said, that is it for this week. I'll see you next week to see what's buzzing.