amazon services Europe Listing Creation
- June 8, 2024
- Amazon
Table of Contents
IMPORTANT
Before starting any development activity, make sure to have followed all the
steps reported in the Register your Integrator Account guide that you can
download from this page.
Introduction
The possibility of creating new listings is a capability that every solution integrated with Amazon should provide to guarantee the best Seller experience.
Developing a high-quality Listings Creation functionality requires knowledge of a number of key aspects, both from the business and the technical side of Amazon.
This guide assumes a basic knowledge of MWS, as well as the main differences between the two file types (Amazon Feeds), used to push data to Amazon systems:
- Flat Files: A tab-delimited text file. One different file per categories and per Marketplace XML_Documentation_Intl here [PDF]
- XML files: One product feed for all the categories for all the Marketplaces. Five XML feeds (Product,
Inventory, Price, Stock, Relationship) to create a Product XML_Documentation_Intl here [PDF]
In this document, unless explicitly stated, we refer to XML technology.
In order to develop an effective Listing Creation Capability in your application you should have knowledge of Amazon’s business and technical requirements for listing products. For each of them you should:
- Follow Amazon’s Design & Development Best Practices
- Create a User Experience in your solution which will easily guide Sellers according to your design
This manual will guide you through these concepts.
**Validate your XMLs
**
XMLs must be validated against the XSDs.
You should always validate your XMLs against Amazon
XSDs
before
submitting them to Amazon. You can use a public parser (e.g. DOM, SAX) to
verify that your XMLs match against the schemas.
Keep also in mind that this validation is a necessary but not sufficient
condition to guarantee the correctness of your XMLs. Different normative
across countries could lead to differences in listing characteristics in terms
of mandatory fields and values admitted within the same field.
You should double check:
• Whether a field is mandatory in the sheet Data Definition of the Excel
FlatFile of the given category of the given country.
• Which are the valid values of a field in the sheet Valid Values of the Excel
FlatFile of the given category of the given country.
Example
You need to list a Product in the “Food And Beverage” category on the
Italian Marketplace using XML.
By looking at the F oodAndBeverage XSD you can see the valid values for
the tag ProductType
<xsd:eleaent nade=”ProdoetType”›
There are the only four
That would mean that if you try create a product via XML in the
FoodAndBeverage Category of the Italian Marketplace by using a value not
present in this list
(e.g.
HardLiquor is a valid value for the
You should map in your database all the Valid Values present in the XSDs, but
then surface to your application interface only the valid ones according to
the specific Marketplace and Category where your Seller wants to create their
listing.
Seller Experience
Sellers first select the Marketplace and the category and your application
shows the mandatory fields and proposes the right valid values.
Referring to the previous example, if the Seller has selected to list a
product of the FoodAndBeverage category on the Italian Marketplace, your
application should present a dropdown menu for the mandatory item ProductType
only with “Beer” “Beverage” “Spirits” and “Wine” as possible selectable
values.
**Surface Errors
**
Sellers should be able to fix autonomously as many listing creation errors as
possible.
You should design your application in order to check always the quality of
XMLs submitted to Amazon, especially the XML Product Feed. Errors in the
Product Feed can lead to subsequent errors in other feeds, like the
impossibility of associating an image to a product since the listing creation
failed first.
You should always download and check the FeedProcessingReport, through the
getFeedSumbissionResult
operation
of the Feeds API.
Visit this
page
for
details and a diagram to help your design.
Your application should always map the Listing Creation errors reported in the
FeedProcessingReport and surface them to the Seller interface. Seller
Experience
If an error occurred while creating Listings, your application clearly
shows the error message on the interface as well as the way to fix it. Both of
these pieces of information are present in the FeedProcessingReport.
The Seller can take action, fix data and resubmit their request. In this
MWS_Integrators_FER_UK_V1.0_R.V274895049 you
can find information about the most common errors.
**Manage barcodes exception
**
In Order to create a new Product on Amazon, Sellers need to provide a Barcode
as StandardProductID.
You need to take into consideration three cases:
Case 1:
The Seller uses the barcodes The Seller must identify each product they
want to list with the StandardProductID
There are only two exceptions to Case 1:
Case 2:
The Seller sells products manufactured without Barcodes:
a. The Seller needs to request an Amazon Barcode
exemption for the given brand (e.g. BRAND_ABC )
b. If Amazon accepts the request, the Seller will receive an email that
states: “Your exemption has been accepted, use PARAMETER_1 to identify your
products instead of the StandardProductId
c. If Amazon does not accept the request the Seller will not be anyhow able to
list products without StandardProductID
Case 3:
The Seller is the producer/brand owner:
a. The Seller needs to register their brand to the
Amazon
Brand Catalogue
(e.g.BRAND_XYZ)
b. If Amazon accepts the request, the Seller will receive an email that
states: “Your brand registration has been accepted, use PARAMETER_2 to
identify your products instead of the StandardProductId
c. If Amazon does not accept the request the Seller will not be anyhow able to
list products without StandardProductID
In case 2 and 3 Sellers are entitled to list their product without
StandardProductID, therefore your application should be able to manage
smoothly these cases, and accept XMLs with a slightly different structure.
In case 2.c or 3.c, your application should be able to filter these products
and exclude them from the upload to Amazon.
Before uploading the Product to Amazon, your application should manage the
three cases as follows
Case 1:
Your application should always require in input the
Also consider whether to integrate an API to verify that the barcode has been
properly issued by the BarCode Authority. Amazon does not provide such a
functionality; you can use public Internet resources.
If there is an error, give Sellers the opportunity to correct the barcode and
try again to submit the product.
Case 2:
The Seller sells products without EAN Codes and they have an exception
approved.
The Seller will send you the product with:
a.
b.
See the following snapshot where PARAMETER_1 is the
**Check image quality
**
Images must meet quality requirements
You should always check the quality of the images provided by the Sellers.
Images must be publicly accessible on the Internet and your solution must feed
Amazon systems with only their URLs.
Sellers must provide your solution with images that meet the Amazon quality
criteria.
We suggest you to implement a preliminary control of the images in your
application to check the technical parameters (File type, Size, Dimension
Resolution) and present an error when quality is not met, before submitting
the Image feed to Amazon. Visit the style
guide
for
details.
Your application should be capable of detecting these records with defective
images and excluding the related SKUs also from the other XML feeds until the
Seller fixes the issue.
Seller Experience
If the Seller creates a listing with an image that does not meet the Amazon
quality criteria, they will receive an error on the interface that explains
what criteria is not met and an invite to change the image and re-submit the
request.
**Manage Variations
**
Products within the same family must be consistent
In case of Variations (Relationship between Parent and Children element),
the parent SKU must be considered only a logical element for grouping
children, it should not have specific attributes like size, color, price, or
quantity and is not buyable.
In order to establish a relationship of variation between two products you
should:
• Define in the Product Feed which SKUs are parents and which are children,
populating the
• Define in the Relationship Feed which SKU is child of which parent SKU
An important element to create variations is
Variation theme
|
Product Attributes
---|---
Color
|
ColorName
Size
|
SizeName
ColorSize or SizeColor
|
ColorName and Size Name
The value input for
NB: it is sufficient an error of one of the SKUs of the family and this
will prevent the creation of the entire family.Example of a Parent Clothing
Product Feed
Example of a Child Clothing Product Feed
Example of their relationship feed.
Note that you should create one message for each children SKU and not one
message for the entire family.
Drive data quality
High-quality categorization data will benefit the product searchability
Your application should permit your Sellers to input as much information as
possible to improve searchability and guarantee the best search experience for
the Customer.
Browse nodes & Refinements:
A Browse node is a code that identifies to which node of the Amazon category
tree a product is associated.
Your application should map each product to the leaf node of the Amazon
catalogue tree in order to guarantee the most accurate association.
We suggest you to implement a Browse node association functionality by using
the XML
BrosweTreeReport
downloadable
via Reports API. In this way, you will be able to surface to the interface of
your application the Categories and Subcategories present in the report and
guide your user to Select automatically the right Browse nodes.
Alternatively, you can consider mapping the browse nodes in your application
by importing the report in Excel format, known as the Browse Tree
Guide.
For each Browse node, Amazon suggests certain Refinements, specific category
attributes that will furthermore increase the searchability of the product.
Your application should be capable to surface these fields depending on the
selected Browse node and invite your users to populate those attributes.
Titles
It is highly recommended that product titles follow the Amazon style
guidelines according to your product category. You should
implement a logic in your application that creates and validates titles by
concatenating the user input.
Bullet points
A bullet point is a brief descriptive free text, called out via a bullet
point, regarding a specific aspect of the product.
You should give Sellers the possibility to include up to five bullet points
into your interface to let them specify this information. Note that according
to the ProductType certain bullet points can be added automatically.Search
Terms
A Search Term is a word or phrase that best describes the product.
This will help Amazon locate the product when customers perform searches on
the site.
You should give Sellers the possibility to include up to five search terms
into your interface to let your user specify this information.
It is highly recommended that product titles follow the Amazon style
guidelines
according
to your product category.
Seller Experience
Following an example of a Seller who wants to list a bottle of Champagne on
the UK Marketplace.
The application permits the Seller to select in sequence the following
categories:
Grocery/Beer
Wine & Spirits/Sparkling Wine & Champagne
Champagne and the application
The application shows and associates the browse node 359889031.
The uses inserts:
SKU
Barcode
Title
Brand
Description
2 out of the 5 possible Search Terms
1 bullet point.
But can also select two refinements from dropdown menus:
Color (the users selects “white wine”) Sweeteness (the user selects “extra
brut”)
On confirmation the Product XML should look like the following
Match against existing products
Amazon does not allow duplicates products on the catalogue.
Your application should implement a logic to manage smoothly product
mismatching edge cases.When a Seller creates a new listing for a product
already present on Amazon, but provides a key attribute of that product
different than the one already on the Amazon catalogue, you will get an error
code 8541 or 8542 in the processing report. These errors are also known as
matching errors.
Your application should be able to parse the processing report, detecting
matching errors and propose an interface to the Seller, highlighting these
conflicts of information.
You can also consider implementing an additional functionality to highlight in advance to the Seller any potential matching conflict by retrieving all the information of an existing product through the Products API.
NB : You can force the matching by retrieving the ASIN code from the
Product API and create the listing using that ASIN as
While this easy listing practice works in the majority of cases, we suggest not do proceed like this since it could ultimately create in the Seller’s catalogue a different product than the expected one (e.g. when the Seller provides a valid EAN code, but of a different product).
In this case we suggest you at least to surface to the application interface
the product you are about to match and let your user confirm that it is
exactly the product for which they want to create a listing. If the product
API returns more than one ASIN for a single barcode, we suggest you to surface
the item with the lowest
Seller Experience:
The Seller submits a new listing and, on feed submission termination, the
application informs whether one or more attributes they provided conflict with
the Amazon catalogue, highlighting them and proposing the value present on
Amazon.
The application gives the Seller the possibility to fix the issues and re- submit the product.
Should the Seller be sure of the correctness of their data, conflicting with
the data on Amazon, the application refers them to cut a ticket to Seller
Support to require an adjustment of the Amazon catalogue.
– Only if your application implements the preliminary check –
When the Seller inserts the EAN code, the application displays all the information of that Product in case it is already on the Amazon catalogue. The Seller only confirms they want to add their offer to that product.
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