Starting in October, Amazon began rolling out the new Seller Forums, making it easier for you to connect with other sellers, find answers to your business questions, and engage with Amazon community managers. The new forums simplify navigation, highlight trustworthy information, and provide you the opportunity to personalize your experience. Crafted from seller feedback, these new features can help you learn more about growing your business. We will migrate all US sellers to the new forums by the end of 2022.
What are Seller Forums?
Seller Forums originally launched in the early 2000s, and has grown to become one of the largest online communities of Amazon sellers, with millions of users worldwide. Seller Forums is a place for Amazon sellers to share ideas, give advice, and find answers to help launch and build a successful business in Amazon’s store. Seller Forums is also the only Amazon-affiliated discussion board for sellers, providing a daily opportunity to connect with other sellers and discuss topics specific to selling in Amazon’s store. While anyone can browse Seller Forums, only sellers who create a forums account can post or reply in the forums.
“When Seller Forums was first created, it was intended to be a place for sellers to share advice and discuss the experience of selling in Amazon’s store together,” said Katie Scott, Director of Selling Partner Communities. “You told us that the forums has the potential to be a much more helpful, inclusive, and useful community. So, we set out to understand how you want to use Seller Forums and what improvements we should make to the seller experience.”
We set out to understand how you want to use Seller Forums and what improvements we should make to the seller experience.
4 new features developed based on your feedback
Seller feedback played a direct role in helping our product teams determine which features are most relevant to you. We surveyed sellers, conducting hundreds of virtual interviews to better understand how to improve Seller Forums. Sellers also took part in research studies and worked with forums prototypes, providing real-time feedback that played a key role in developing a more intuitive experience. In addition, Amazon community managers engaged with sellers in the forums directly to ask their opinions.
1. Simpler navigation and search
We developed new and simplified search functionality, allowing you to discover answers and discussions faster than before. Improved navigation allows you to get help and advice from other sellers, as well as Amazon community managers, that can help your business. Additionally, when searching for topics, there are new filters to help you sort results.
2. Voting features
We created new voting features that help you better identify whether posts and answers are relevant. The new voting features allow you to indicate whether a post is helpful, not helpful, or even mark it for Amazon review. When you create a forum topic, you can also mark which response to your question “Has Most Helpful reply.” Paired with the new search functionality, you can now see which discussions the community feels are the most useful.
The new voting features allow you to indicate whether a post is marked as “Has Most Helpful reply.”
3. Amazon responses
Improved navigation and search functionality now make it easier to find threads that have an Amazon response or solution. Posts with an Amazon response are color coded to easily distinguish them from other responses. Plus, you can filter by posts that have an Amazon response.
4. Personalized experience and profile pages
Seller Forums added the ability to customize and prioritize the type of information you receive. You can choose topics of interest, and in your profile settings you can set notification preferences. You can also choose to see more content from topics related to your business by selecting the relevant categories from the profile page. The new seller profile page also provides for additional personalization. You can customize your profile, including uploading profile pics or choosing an avatar, and can chose to share information about yourself or your business.
The number of votes definitely makes a difference. It helps you understand how many eyes are on a discussion and how many people agree. It gives some validity to a forum.
Engage directly with Amazon
The team of Amazon community managers who directly engage with and support sellers in the forums has expanded. Community managers share ideas and tips while ensuring conversations are relevant, inclusive, and helpful for all forums users. Community managers are also active in the forums, especially in the “Engage with Amazon” topic, where they foster conversations and get your feedback on all aspects of selling in Amazon’s store, and provide opportunities for you to network and share best practices. In addition, you will continue to receive useful insights from Amazon leaders through engagement events.
“Our focus is on increasing Amazon’s presence in forums,” said Katie Scott. “In the past year, we’ve recorded a significant improvement in the sentiment of forums posts, meaning the forums has become a more helpful and positive place to be.”
Where to experience the new forums
We’re excited to share the new Seller Forums with you, and we are just getting started. By the end of 2022, we will migrate all US sellers to the new forums, and our team is continuing to launch new features and improvements based on your feedback. For now, you can check out the content on our Seller Forums and stay tuned to updates on the official launch of the new forums.
