5 Things I Wish Amazon Would Implement (sooner rather than later)

Hey guys! Today, I thought I’d write a quick blog post about some of the features I really wish would be implemented into the Merch by Amazon platform.

I’ve only been on Merch for six months, and already I’ve seen some pretty massive changes. For the most part, I think these changes are better for Merch longterm.

To name a few….

  • Copycats aren’t nearly the problem they used to be
  • Daily upload limits were introduced based on tier level
  • The 60 day no-sale removal rule was implemented

I’m sure there’s a lot more that’s happened, but those are the major ones. With that being said, there’s still some work to be done on the platform.

This post isn’t to complain Merch – quite opposite really. These are “Feature Requests” that I hope Merch gets around to sooner rather than later. Who knows, maybe someone from the Merch team will see this post someday.

Anyway, here they are!

Choosing Default T-Shirt Colors

When uploading designs, I really wish there was a way to choose the default color for our shirts. Having 5 colors to choose from is great – but we have no idea which shirt color will show up on the Amazon listing page when someone searches for it.

And that’s a problem for me.

There’s always that one color that really brings a design to life, and I wish I could showcase that color to shoppers, not just whatever random color Amazon decides to give it.

For instance, let’s say I upload a white text design and it looks awesome in black. It  also looks great in navy & green…but I really want my customers to see it on black first. I really don’t want green showing up as the default image when someone searches for it, even though it looks good in green.

So, what do I do?

Well…sometimes I won’t add green at all. Which is a bummer, because it does look good in green, I just don’t necessarily want it to show up in the listings as green.

It seems like such a simple feature to add, too, so I’m staying positive it’ll get implemented someday.

Choosing Default Genders for Product Listings

This is pretty similar to choosing default colors, but I wish there was a way to choose which gender shirt is defaulted on the listing page. I have a lot of designs that would be great shirts for men AND kids, however, I don’t want the youth size shirt to show up as the default image.

Why?

This is just my theory – but I think customers that see a small kid shirt assume it only comes in “youth” sizes. They don’t even click into the listing to see if it has adult size. I know I’ve done that more than once over the years.

I assume when I see a kids-size shirt that it’s for kids only. I know I can’t be the only one who thinks that way.

Let’s say you uploaded a shirt that could be for men and youth, but your target audience is men. Once it goes live, and search for it, you see Amazon randomly assigned it a youth size. You now have two options; leave it up and hope customers are smart enough to click into it and see who else that design is for, or remove it.

The problem is removing it also removes all BSR (sales rank) associated with it.

So do you remove it, reupload, and not check the box for youth and lose all sales rank? Or leave it and upload a duplicate only for men?

Neither option is ideal in my opinion.

More Color Options

I would love to see two shades of pink, purple, aqua, orange, and maybe even heather.

Okay, so heather isn’t technically a color, but it’s an option on most of POD sites, and I hope Amazon adds it someday.

Ability To Delete Drafts

This one is pretty trivial, but I would love for the ability to delete drafts.

A few months ago, I spent a few days uploading a ton of designs into draft. In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have done that…but at the time it seemed like a good idea.

Anyway, for one reason or another I decided not to make them go live.

I have a few designs sitting in my draft folder right now that absolutely would not pass review. I’ll be completely honest about that. I uploaded them when I first got started… and I didn’t thoroughly check for trademark or copyright.

A few others were uploaded just to see how they looked on a Merch shirt. Now they just sit in my inventory, doing absolutely nothing. Mocking me and reminding me that I shouldn’t have uploaded those in the first place.

The only way to remove drafts right now is to publish them live and then go back to delete. The reason I don’t do this is because I’d use up one of my daily upload limit slots.

So, I just leave them there.

Like I said, not a huge issue at all, but for as organized as I like to be it just irks me a little.

Expand the Product Offerings

I’m glad Merch started with t-shirts, but I’d still love to see other categories in the Amazon pipeline. I can see a pretty huge market for hoodies, coffee mugs, yoga pants or sweat pants, tank tops, or even stickers.

To take this one step further – it’d be even cooler if we could apply our current designs right onto those products. Instead of having to resubmit each design for a sweatshirt, it’d be neat it we had an option to just check a box that says “also apply this design to sweatshirts” or something like that.

Can you imagine how much more we could make almost overnight just by adding sweatshirts?

They’ve integrated with Shopify and Teespring recently, so it doesn’t seem like this is a top priority of theirs anytime soon, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this was implemented someday.

Final Thoughts

I know this post is a little different than normal, it’s just something I’ve been thinking about lately.

These are really impacting sales (that I know of), but it sure would be nice to target my intended audience by showcasing the best color for that design and the gender.

Anyway, I hope you guys are having a great week! What things are you excited for as Merch continues to grow? Let me know in the comments below!

Danny

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Kyle

7 years ago

Hey Danny, nice list. I just wanted to point out that there is a way to ‘delete’ and get rid of drafts. Whenever you want to upload a new design, just click edit on a draft listing, then click back to the upload design part and upload your new design there. Then edit the listing and tailor it for the new design. Just a tip!

Danny

7 years ago

Awesome, nice tip Kyle! I’ll have to start doing that.

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