Amazon Vacation Mode: How to Use this Feature on Seller Central?
When you have an online business, customers expect to receive their orders at any time. So, taking time off can be a hassle. The good news is that with Amazon vacation mode you can continue to build your online store while you’re away, keeping your business healthy and your customers happy.
That’s right. Amazon helps its sellers to put their listings on hold or to keep selling even while they are away.
Read below to find out how to take the best advantage of this great feature whenever you need to take a break.
Let’s dive right in!
What Is Amazon Vacation Mode?
This is a feature that allows you to put your seller account on hold instead of closing it and, depending on your needs.
There are two ways to use Vacation Mode on Amazon:
1. Orders Fulfilled by You (FBM)
In this case, Amazon vacation mode will let you deactivate your listing on your own.
Just make sure to plan ahead, since it-s not an immediate deactivation. You can expect to wait between 48 to 36 hours before Amazon removes your listing.
If you go on vacation before your listing is removed, you might receive orders in that time frame that you won-t be able to fulfill.
Activating your listings is quick, though. You can do it on your Seller Central account whenever you want.
2. Orders Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA)
If you-re a seller using FBA, you can keep your listings active while on vacation.
This means you can keep sales coming even if you go away or just decide to rest.
The thing is that as customers will continue to purchase from you, it’s a good idea to invest a little time in checking your seller account and buyer messages just to make sure everything is running smoothly.
What to do Before Activating Vacation Mode
Anything successful requires good planning. Therefore, make sure you check all the boxes of your pre-list beforehand to avoid any sort of negative feedback:
1. Fulfill All Your Pending Orders
Deactivating your listings does not automatically cancel pending orders.
Customers expect to purchase online anytime they want. The truth is they don’t even consider that the sellers could be on vacation at all and they might get upset if they have to wait until you’re back to get their products.
Therefore, make sure all pending orders are fulfilled and shipped and inactivate your listings.
2. Leave an Automated Reply
Keep in mind that you can’t disable the messaging option between sellers and buyers even if your listings are inactive.
Amazon also requires sellers to reply to any claim or complain if vacation mode is on. Also, not responding to your customers’ messages can hurt your seller metrics.
Automation is key in this case. Don’t leave your customers unattended, have a default response that is sent automatically while you’re on vacation.
There’s no need to give a lot of explanation. It can be just a brief message communicating to buyers how long you’ll be away and when you’ll be back.
3. Inactivate Listings in Advance
Like we mentioned above, listings deactivation does not happen automatically. Give yourself at least a 2-day window to do this.
Remember all orders must be fulfilled before going on vacation mode.
You could deactivate your orders a few more days in advance, but consider that you might lose sales just that could be easily fulfilled before you go.
During the Inactive Period
Besides tracking your seller account, there are a couple things you should keep in mind when on vacation mode:
Yes, your seller central account should be tracked, but you can appoint someone to do it for you.
Try to log in from a single device. If you try logging into multiple devices your account might get suspended by Amazon.
If you want, you can create and edit listings while on vacation mode. All modifications will appear once your listings are active again.
Keep in mind Amazon still requires you to answer any messages from buyers within 24 hours.
Turning On the “Vacation Mode”
If you’d like to set your account inactive while you’re gone, visit the Vacation Settings page on Seller Central, and follow these steps:
Step 1
Go to the Settings tab on the top right corner and choose “Account Info”.
Step 2
Click on “Going on vacation?” on the Listing Status menu.
Step 3
Select the “Inactive” button for any listings you want to deactivate.
Steps to Turn off the Vacation Mode on Amazon
When you’re back from vacation and ready to activate your listings on Amazon, you just have to follow these steps:
To add your seller listings, select the Active button on the vacation settings page, and then click Save.
All your listings will become active and visible in the search results within an hour.
All these changes are not effective in the case of vacation mode- Amazon FBA.
The listings will remain active for the Amazon listings as Amazon takes all care of the inventory.
Other Ways to Stop Getting Orders
If you’re not going away for a long time, it might not be necessary to change your vacation settings.
Change the Handling Time
Go to the General Shipping settings in the settings tab. You can change the handling time depending on the method you set before. You’ll have to check your listings one by one to see if they’re updated.
If you used an Excel file when you uploaded your listings first, you can just update that file and upload it again.
Set Inventory to Zero
All you have to do is go to Inventory and clock on the Manage Inventory tab, then set the number of available items to zero.
Drawbacks of using Vacation Mode
There’s a chance you’ll make more sales during holiday seasons.
Like Christmas and New Year. So, if you know your business will thrive when everyone is on vacation, it’s smart to schedule your time off some other time during the year. Planning a vacation based on your customer’s behavior can be difficult too, so sometimes it’s just about making sure you get time to rest.
You may lose your margin and still pay for the Amazon Seller fees.
If you have FBA the fees could be really high and you still have to keep track of your orders while you’re away.
Customers Might Not Want to Wait
Going on vacation mode too often can have a negative impact on your customer base and their loyalty, since they won’t consider you a reliable seller, or they’ll just buy from someone else if they can’t find your products.
Final Thoughts
Amazon Vacation Mode is a way to keep a balance between your personal life and your business. You can keep your business on track while you go away or while you take a break from fulfilling orders.
Just keep in mind that you need to keep your Amazon seller ranking, so it’s important that you answer all buyer’s questions within a 24-hour time frame and make sure there are no fluctuations in your deliveries.
This won’t only affect your ranking, but your account might get suspended.
Fulfilling all your orders and deactivating your listings is the best way to go on a trip without worrying about your business, at least for a while.
The post Amazon Vacation Mode: How to Use this Feature on Seller Central? appeared first on AMZ Advisers.