World-class e-commerce marketplaces such as Amazon, Walmart, and others set certain performance standards and policies. To retain the sales privileges and not get suspended on those platforms, you must maintain your account health by complying with the standards and policies.
You must guard against three key risks to your account health that could result in account suspension or deactivation.
Let’s take a look at these risks and how you can avoid them!
Risks to the Health of your E-commerce Account
Most large e-commerce marketplaces provide an account health dashboard where you can review the status of your account health rating (AHR). If at any given time, your AHR falls into the ‘At Risk’ or ‘Critical’ zones, your seller account may be suspended or deactivated.
Three crucial risk factors may result in your AHR falling into these zones. Knowing these risks will help you act early to bring your account back into line with requirements and prevent permanent deactivation.
Risk #1: Failure to Meet the Marketplace’s Performance Standards
Marketplaces set certain performance thresholds that all sellers must comply with to continue their selling activities. Major e-commerce marketplaces like Amazon and Walmart monitor account health by considering the number of unresolved policy violations on your account, the relative severity of those violations, and whether you are able to deliver positive customer experiences via your selling activities. These violations or complaints may be related to product policy compliance, shipping performance, or customer service performance.
To measure and maintain your brand’s performance in these areas, you must optimize performance metrics like cancellation rate, return dissatisfaction rate (RDR), on-time delivery date (OTDR), valid tracking rate (VTR), and order defect rate (ODR). Keep in mind that all marketplaces set their performance standards, and you must comply with all of them to maintain your seller privileges.
Risk #2: Failure to Comply with the Marketplace Retailer Agreement and Seller Policies
When you set up your seller account on one or more marketplace, you will be asked to accept an agreement that legally binds you to abide by the standard terms, conditions, policies, and guidelines. Once you sign up, you must consistently comply with all these retailer policies.
But before you complete the signup, read the contract carefully. Pay careful attention to the fine print, which, unfortunately, a lot of sellers ignore. If you find a condition that your business cannot currently comply with, you can choose not to agree and step out of that marketplace. Alternatively, you can update your business practices to ensure that you adhere to the marketplace’s seller policies before you sign on the dotted line. This second choice might take longer but it gives you seller privileges that remain yours as long as you continue to comply with these policies.
Risk #3: Falling Behind on the Marketplace’s Operational Thresholds
You must always maintain top-level operations to sell on e-commerce marketplaces. Only then you can comply with the required standards for shipment, delivery, returns and refunds, customer service, and customer experiences.
For example, all marketplaces require their sellers to be responsive to customer inquiries, provide up-to-date and relevant information, and resolve customer complaints as soon as possible. Many ask sellers to maintain proper documentation, comply with fair trade laws, and satisfy taxation requirements. Many also mandate that sellers keep their prices competitive and compliant with the marketplace’s price caps.
Finally, you must do your best to prevent complaints about intellectual property violations (from other sellers) and customer complaints about product condition, authenticity, and safety. If you do receive such complaints or violation notices, you must act quickly to address the issue as soon as possible. Most marketplaces have zero tolerance for such complaints and violations so you must take caution to maintain your account’s health and operational continuity.
How to Recover a Suspended Marketplace Account?
But what if, despite all your efforts, your marketplace account still gets suspended?
Account suspension can be an unfortunate episode but it doesn’t have to be a permanent one. You can recover the account and reclaim your rights to sell on the marketplace. All you need is an e-commerce expert who can simplify the reactivation process. However, before that, these specialists will manage your marketplace notifications and track account metrics to keep your account health above the marketplace thresholds. They will research the weak spots in your account health and ensure that your activities comply with the market’s rules, thus lowering your suspension risks. If you do get a suspension notice, they will create a step-by-step plan of action (POA) to get it reinstated and protect your e-commerce business from damaging disruptions and interrupted sales.
Get Started!
Is your account health not optimal?
Talk to the e-commerce gurus at Ergode! We will show you how your brand can make the most of e-commerce marketplaces while following their policies and standards related to account health. And if your account is currently suspended, we’ll show you what broke and how you can fix it. Click here to get started.
