With the release of Amazon's newest endpoints via the SP-API, Zentail has revamped its listing experience in order to maximize the published rate of listings and minimize the time to market for new items. This article will review the basics about the SP-API, major differences for sellers, and what it means for Zentail users.
What is the Seller Partner API (SP-API)?
The SP-API is a broad set of new ways a seller partner can communicate with your Amazon account. Included in that, Amazon upgraded the backend schema and taxonomy which means the attributes available to sellers are different. A major implication of this is that the item set up process and requirements for sellers has changed.
Things to Know about the SP-API
Faster Data Syncing: With the capacity for near real-time updates, Zentail has taken this as an opportunity to optimize the types of messages sent, and how that data is sent to Amazon. Instead of inventory updates being relayed within 1-15 minutes, Zentail can now reflect those changes within seconds. This further reduces the risk of overselling or inventory mismatches.
New Listing Requirements: Along with improved functionality, Amazon has released an updated taxonomy focused on improving the customer experience, listing quality, and ultimately, GMV. You can learn more about this later in this article.
Improved Security: Stronger security protocols ensure safer data transfers, providing better protection against potential breaches and safeguarding sensitive information.
More Robust Reporting: The new API offers comprehensive reporting features, helping ecommerce sellers track performance metrics with greater detail and optimize your operations more effectively. This includes insights into the status of listings, which Zentail has used to revamp the Listing Status feature.
New Listing Requirements
With the new SP-API, Amazon has also updated its taxonomy and has released a new set of Product Types. There are over 1,600 unique product types, which is three times more than they had previously. In Zentail you may see these labeled as the "Amazon Listing Product Type" and is what defines what product data is required on Amazon, including required attributes, attribute types, and valid values.
All SMART Types have been automatically mapped to a valid Amazon Listing Product Type in Zentail.
Along with the new product types, Amazon has also:
Created new attributes
Changed what attributes are required per product type (often increasing the number of attributes)
Edited the type of some attributes (ie text, true/false, select)
Changed the valid values for some attributes
Listing Experience in Zentail
In order to maximize the published listing rate and improve on the time to market for new items, Zentail has iterated on existing features as well as developed new features that are now possible with Amazon's recent changes.
Listing Prep
Listing Status
Custom QuickEdit views, highlighting attributes with errors
Listing Prep
Listing Prep allows you to proactively understand what data is required by a marketplace to publish your listings. It includes additional tooling like a valid values export, and custom QuickEdit views to support the quickest workflows for new listing creation and the fastest time to market for new items. You can access the Listing Prep screen under the "Listing" section of the top navigation bar.
Learn more about Listing Prep.
Listing Status
The Listing Status page provides a report on which SKUs are published, unpublished, or suppressed. It also helps users understand why some SKUs may be unpublished or suppressed and what actions should be taken to have them published.
A few noteworthy features of this page include:
Custom quickedit views can be generated to view each segment of SKUs and fix impactful errors.
Zentail pulls in the error messages from Amazon that don't always show up with feed message (like reasons why listings may be suppressed).
You can download a file that includes all SKUs with any error, along with supplement information to help resolve the error.
Learn more about Listing Status.
Custom QuickEdit views
As outlined in the prior sections, Zentail auto generates custom quickedit views for your products. These QuickEdit views will include all relevant attributes for the SKUs you've filtered for, along with any current error messages for those attributes
These attribute error highlights can be toggled on/off on QuickEdit by opening the Advanced Filters section and finding the option to Highlight Errors For Integrations.
