Every e-commerce brand aims to maintain its good presence on big-name marketplaces. However, to keep your brand’s presence there, you must ensure that your account is healthy. Unfortunately, a lot of brands find it challenging to balance “good account health” with good business outcomes. While they try everything to stay successful in the marketplace, they still keep the technicalities of maintaining good account health on the back burner.
Read on!
The Checks and Balances
If your brand has a seller account in any of the marketplaces, in your daily run of activities you may tend to overlook the factors that keep your account in good standing and as a result experience a warning, IP complaints, or even suspended listings. These are the red flags that the marketplace sends you when they sense quality issues with your product, find a complaint by any rights owner, or identify duplicate listings.
To stay compliant with all the marketplace’s terms, policies, and metrics. Start off by understanding the technicalities associated with your seller account. These technicalities are certain thresholds that constantly alert you when your account’s health goes haywire. If you fail the compliance test with even one metric, your Account Health Rate (AHR) could fall into the “At-Risk” or “Critical” zone. You must avoid such failures and improve your performance before the issue affects your ability to sell on e-commerce platforms.
Look Out For
The following are the commonly found metrics used by marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay, or Walmart that determine the selling privileges of a brand.
Order Defect Rate (ODR)
ODR is a measure of your ability to provide good customer experiences. Your ODR goes high when you receive negative feedback from customers, the rate of relevant customer claims shoots up, or if there is a credit card chargeback. To have a satisfactory ODR and thus satisfactory account health, you must keep your ODR below the stated threshold by the marketplace.
Cancellation Rate
This metric measures the percentage of total orders canceled by the customers over a certain period of time. In the case of marketplaces like Walmart, you must maintain a cancellation rate below 2% to keep “Good” account health. Doing this will enforce you to fulfill the maximum number of orders, which can enhance customer experiences and boost the ratings on your scorecard as a seller.
Late Dispatch Rate (LDR) and Late Shipment Rate (LSR)
LDR is the percentage of total orders that had their shipping confirmation posted after the expected ship date. It is measured over a particular time frame. Make sure to maintain your LDR below 4%. Otherwise, you could face a warning or account suspension.
Similar to LDR, you should also optimize your LSR. After an order is overdue for shipping by 3 or more days (differs for every marketplace), it is considered as late. All the late orders are divided by the total number of orders in the given time period. This LSR shouldn’t be below the threshold set by the marketplace as it may result in negative customer experiences, which can affect your account health and selling privileges.
Valid Tracking Rate (VTR)
VTR measures the percentage of total orders in a 30-day period that was given a valid tracking number. Customers want to know where their orders are and when they can expect to receive them so you must maintain a VTR greater than 95%.
On-Time Delivery Rate (OTDR)
Amazon, known for its excellent delivery, gives a great deal of importance to OTDR. This metric is the number of tracked shipments that made it to their customers by the estimated delivery date. OTDR performance determines the transit times you can set, which can help you speed up delivery times, provide good customer experiences, and improve conversions. So, make sure to keep it above 97%.
Return Dissatisfaction Rate (RDR)
This benchmark describes a customer’s satisfaction with the return experience. A high RDR indicates customer dissatisfaction. If you get negative feedback, fail to respond to return requests within specified hours, or deny return requests, your RDR will fall as a result of the customer’s rating. To stay out of the marketplace’s radar, it is imperative for a seller to optimize their product return process.
How to Maximize Your Account Health?
You can improve your AHR by improving your seller rating. To do this, you can implement several customer service improvements that could lead to more satisfied buyers. For one, always respond to return requests promptly and refund orders whenever appropriate. Also, list all products with accurate descriptions and high-quality images and constantly monitor listings to maintain accuracy.
You can also improve your seller rating by proactively resolving delivery problems and notifying buyers immediately of delays. It’s also important not to let orders expire and get canceled. For this, you must fine-tune your fulfillment processes, keep track of every order, and keep your inventory updated to avoid out-of-stocks. Finally, always respond to buyer messages within 24 hours. Even if you can’t resolve their concern immediately, simply letting them know you’re investigating their request can improve your reputation and boost your account health.
The Final Step
You can gain several benefits by selling on Amazon or Walmart – but only if you adhere to their rules and maintain your account health within acceptable thresholds. If one or more of your metrics slip below their thresholds, you can bring them back up with help from Ergode.
We will help you submit a Plan of Action (POA) to your desired marketplace and design a strategy to remain consistently compliant with their requirements. Taking care of your account health should be a top priority for your e-commerce brand. To get started without delay, contact us.
