Bengaluru: Online marketplace Amazon India has expanded the scope of Amazon Service Providers Network (ASPN) by increasing the number of services to 10 from three to woo small sellers to boost their sales on the platform. The services, which include imaging, advertising and logistics, has seen 450 providers listing their business on the services.amazon.in platform to connect with sellers across 75 cities over the past 18 months.

Since its launch last year, Amazon India has been promoting ASPN to increase selection from small sellers and diversify the number of sellers on its platform in accordance with the government’s rule that no single seller can contribute over 25% of the sales on an online platform.

“For us, 2016 has been a great year. Our seller base increased 160% to 1.5 lakh sellers on the platform. From helping sellers on-board through imaging and cataloguing, we have also added services to grow and manage the business,” said Gopal Pillai, Director & General Manager of seller services at Amazon India.

“One of the additional services we have launched is the Sponso red Products Optimization (SPO), a pay-per-click model for advertising, similar to Google ad-words, which is open to all sellers. It is a technology product and requires constant keyword optimisations, changing bids for these keywords and reiteration to see what is working and isn’t,” added Pillai.

Currently, the ratio of brands to sellers using SPO is 1:2 where sellers want to optimise their spends for showing listed products among the top search results. Large brands usually partner with Amazon marketplace to promote their products through brand page creation, banner ads and others as their spends on digital marketing are higher than the average seller.

“We started with paying Rs 10,000 to a third-party service provider for optimising SPO. We have increased our budget to Rs 2 lakh per month this year after six months of using the service. An investment of Rs 2 lakh on the ad spends guarantees sales of Rs 18-20 lakh,” says Karamveerji, a Delhi-based seller of mobile phone accessories under the brand name Cheverone.

This contributes to advertising revenue for Amazon India platform while the transaction between the seller and SPO provider remain out of the purview of the marketplace. However, Amazon helps the service providers design their promotions during the festive and sale season to promote seller participation in the event.

Source: ET Retail