As we reflect on 2024 and look ahead to 2025, we want to start by thanking you for your partnership and the tremendous innovation and customer benefit that we have delivered together. In addition to many innovations in the customer shopping experience, we maintained lower fulfillment fees for all low-priced products, lowered referral fees for low-priced apparel items, and invested heavily in our supply chain services, including the regionalization of our inbound fulfillment network, improved placement and forecasting, and more efficient operations. As you leveraged these new capabilities and adapted your operations, we saw better in-stock levels, more products placed closer to customers, and the fastest Prime shipping speeds to date. Our partnership over the last year was key to driving record-breaking sales for independent sellers in Amazon's store, with even more sellers growing their sales year-over-year.
We also recognize these changes and new fee types introduced complexity, requiring some of you to modify your operations, invest in different packaging, and navigate additional business decisions. With this in mind, in 2025, we want to focus on simplicity and stability, minimizing your operational burden and costs, while continuing to work together to delight customers and drive growth for your business.
While inflation continues to impact our expenses and we made the biggest ever investment in pay and benefits for our fulfillment and transportation employees, we have also continued to make significant progress in lowering our costs to serve by driving innovation, improving efficiency, and removing defects.
As a result, we will not increase US referral and FBA fees and will not introduce any new fee types. We will also lower some fees and provide additional benefits to support new selection growth. Over the coming weeks and into 2025, we will continue to invest in our fee-related product experiences -- including improving your fee calculators and fee preview tools, enhancing the FBA inbounding experience with features that estimate transportation costs and recommend the most cost-effective shipping options to Amazon, and more, so that you can more easily understand and optimize your business.
Summary of 2025 fee changes
Other than these three updates, our US referral and FBA fee types and rates will not change. For a summary of all 2025 fees, go to amazon.com/selling-fee-changes.
We're excited to continue providing you with a great value and are committed to your ongoing success selling in Amazon's store. We appreciate your partnership and look forward to an even greater year of seller success in 2025.
Are you wondering what’s new with the Amazon Seller News experience? As your central hub for critical updates and insights, this revamped experience for desktop is designed to make it easier for you to stay informed. Let’s highlight a few of the updates to make your News experience even better:
Take a few minutes to explore the new design and features of Seller News on desktop, your essential hub to stay informed on the latest and most critical updates from Amazon.
-Jim
Multi-Channel Fulfillment (MCF) fast badges, which display dynamic delivery date estimates, are now available to showcase on your ecommerce site.
MCF fast badges show the estimated delivery date on your product detail pages, and they can help increase conversion and sales.
NXTRND, a sports apparel company that uses MCF, saw a nearly 9% increase in shopper conversion and sales after it added MCF fast badges to its site.
For more information, go to How to enable MCF fast badges.
If you’re part of the seller-fulfilled network, you can update product dimensions and weight for Amazon prepaid return labels through a new returns feature.
This feature will reduce carrier fee adjustments, based on incorrect dimensions, to your Amazon prepaid return labels for return shipments.
If you bought the original shipping label using Amazon's Buy Shipping services, the dimensions from the original label will automatically be used for generating the return label.
To update the dimensions for your products, click SKU attributes in your Seller Central return settings.
For more information, go to Prepaid returns for seller-fulfilled orders.
During Black Friday and Cyber Monday, participate in one of the biggest brand-building advertising opportunities and help shoppers around the world discover your products and deals.
Here is your advertising checklist to use during this holiday event:
1. Optimize for engagement.
Select high-quality, larger-size product snapshots that make it immediately clear for customers what’s being promoted.
Use single-product creative that features simple and neat composition.
Use simple, easy-to-read copy to help clarify promoted products.
Include sharp, vivid visual elements to help your creative pop. For example, color product images, logos designed on colored frames, and high background-to-foreground contrast can make creative more noticeable..
Improve brand recognizability by displaying a distinct logo that is familiar to customers.
Promote your top deals and products through responsive e-commerce creative, which allows you to promote your products using optimized ads.
2. Ensure your store is ready.
Make sure your store’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotional messaging adheres to ad policy: In your brand’s store, promotional messaging is only permitted when used with the Featured Deals store widget.
Use the approved stores layout for the holiday event: Featured Deals widget on top, text banner in the middle, product grid at the bottom.
Schedule a separate store version for Black Friday and Cyber Monday if needed..
For more information on how to prepare for this holiday event, go to the Ads Black Friday and Cyber Monday guide or the Ads Holiday Guide.
We’ve launched a new Image Manager feature, Issue Alert, to help you identify and resolve product image issues faster and more effectively.
You can now benefit from the following improvements:
For more information on technical and content image requirements, go to Product image requirements.
The 2024 Black Friday and Cyber Monday events are valuable opportunities to build awareness with Prime members, promote your top products, and help boost sales.
To get started, go to Prime Exclusive Discounts in the Advertising section of Seller Central.
Be sure to check one of the boxes to choose whether your offer is a Black Friday discount, a Cyber Monday discount, or a Black Friday and Cyber Monday discount.
Prime Exclusive Discounts can be offered on both Prime, (Fulfillment by Amazon and Seller Fulfilled Prime) and non-Prime (seller-fulfilled) offers.
To learn more about Black Friday and Cyber Monday guidelines, click Create discount on the Prime Exclusive Discounts page. You can also watch a video on how to create a Prime Exclusive Discount to help you get started.
We're excited to partner with you again this year and build on the success of Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2023.
Important information about submissions for Prime Exclusive Discounts:
Similar to previous years, our standard returns window will be temporarily extended in anticipation of customers shopping early for the holidays.
Our 2024 Extended Holiday Returns policy requires that items bought between November 1, 2024, and December 31, 2024, can be returned until January 31, 2025, except for Apple brand products, which can be returned until January 15, 2025.
This policy applies to seller-fulfilled, FBA, and Amazon Retail orders.
Although the returns window for orders will be extended, returns eligibility for all orders remains the same.
For more information and to view returns eligibility for each category, go to About our returns policies.
To offer customers fast and accurate deliveries, our Order Performance program policy requires that you maintain a Valid Tracking Rate (VTR) of over 95% for seller-fulfilled listings. VTR calculates the percentage of seller-fulfilled packages that include valid tracking information.
Starting on January 15, 2025, we’ll revise the VTR metric and update exemptions to include new shipping regions and package values.
Additionally, some shipments are exempt from the VTR requirements. Your shipments are exempt if they fall in one of the following categories:
*All values above exclude taxes and include shipping charges.
For more details on how to maintain a healthy VTR, how VTR is calculated, and VTR-exempted shipments, go to Valid tracking rate (VTR).
The fall Seller Forums sweepstakes runs from now until November 22, 2024.
The holidays are busy, but how do you boost your business during slow sales periods? Share your tips on the Amazon Seller Forums post for a chance to win one of ten $100 Amazon gift cards.
To participate in the sweepstakes or read tips from other sellers, go to Seller Forums.
The 2024 Holiday Brand Guide is designed to help you prepare for holiday shopping season—Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and end-of-season deals.
In a survey of 5,000 U.S. consumers, 71 percent plan to shop online on Black Friday, and 70 percent say they will proactively check for deals during Cyber Week.
To help you get the most out of this holiday shopping season, the guide includes overviews and best practices for brand programs, such as A+ Content, Amazon Live Shoppable Videos, Manage Your Experiments, and Brand Analytics. As well as helpful tips to make your listings stand out, best ways to refresh your content, and easiest ways to get the right deal to specific audience segments.
To get started, go to 2024 Holiday Brand Guide.