Connect Shopify to Amazon: Upload Products, Synchronize Inventory & Their Prices as well as Import Orders with Ease
Connecting and exporting your Shopify products to Amazon instantly helps online retailers reach millions of new customers for additional, potential sales. For the Shopify Amazon integration merchants should make sure from the onset most processes are automated. Tools that merely offer one product export from Shopify to Amazon should be avoided because this covers only one of many steps in the entire marketplace management while the total effort remains almost the same.
Besides the product upload, the most important processes include the inventory synchronization between Shopify and Amazon, price synchronization, automatic order import and order status synchronization (e.g. shipping status or tracking code) as well as attribute matching, which is essential for visibility and filterability on Amazon. In addition, since the introduction of the Amazon Value Added Tax (VAT) Calculation Service (Amazon VCS), the automated creation and upload of invoices from Shopify also plays a major role.
In this guide, we show you how to integrate Amazon with Shopify using a shopify amazon plugin. We will go into the processes of marketplace management in detail and introduce magnalister, an Amazon integration for Shopify, which covers all important functions and automates a large part of the processes.
Learn more about magnalister now
Why is it worthwhile to connect Shopify to Amazon?
If you sell products that comply with the Amazon marketplace guidelines, (see list here), selling your Shopify products on Amazon is usually very lucrative. Especially for lesser known online shops, Amazon can bring a sales boost and minimize the capital investment, e.g. for marketing measures, to a minimum.
Be aware that in order to promote your own Shopify shop you would have to spend a considerable marketing budget on advertising, search engine optimization, cooperation and other advertising measures. Selling your products in one of the largest online marketplaces in the world can be a more cost-effective alternative. That is because on Amazon millions of potential customers are looking for products in a targeted manner. Given a good ranking or even the coveted Amazon shopping cart, you can profit enormously from the marketplace’s reach. With our Amazon sales strategies and practical tips, you can check whether you are ready to start on Amazon.
There is another further advantage: Since the marketplace is also available in many European countries as well as in the world’s largest Ecommerce markets such as the USA and Canada, there is nothing that would prevent cross-border trade. With magnalister, international Amazon marketplaces can be individually connected to Shopify and centrally managed from the Shopify backend. You can read more about this here.
A comprehensive overview of the potential of Amazon and the mechanisms of the marketplace can also be found in our comprehensive Amazon beginner’s guide.
Choosing the right Shopify plugin to sell on Amazon
As already mentioned above, a Shopify Amazon Integration should relieve you of large parts of the marketplace management. We will show you the most important functions of an Amazon interface and how the magnalister plugin can save you a lot of work and time.
1. Product Upload: Export products directly from Shopify to Amazon.
You can upload your product listing from Shopify to Amazon with just a few clicks in the setup.
You have to distinguish whether the products you want to sell on Amazon already exist in the Amazon catalogue or whether they should be newly listed. In the Amazon catalogue, all products offered on Amazon are listed within categories and can be clearly identified – e.g. by means of a GTIN, EAN, UPC or MPN. Hence, you need a tool that compares your shop products with the Amazon catalogue.
The solution of the magnalister Shopify plugin for Amazon:
During the product preparation phase, magnalister compares your shop products with the Amazon catalogue using the above mentioned IDs. If your products match, they are automatically assigned to the category specified by Amazon. In addition, product titles, images and descriptions are pulled from the Amazon catalogue during the subsequent product upload. You can check the preparation status of your products in the magnalister plugin at any time.
If you notice that your products are not yet listed in the Amazon catalogue, you can apply for inclusion directly via magnalister. For this application process to be successful, the properties and attributes of your products must match Amazon. Our attribute matching helps you to make this process as efficient as possible (but more about this further).
By the way: With magnalister, you have the choice between uploading individual products or uploading whole categories from your Shopify Shop.
2. Attribute matching: Match product variants and features from Shopify with Amazon
The excellent Amazon product search tool includes numerous filter options. Assuming that an Amazon customer is looking for a T-shirt in blue and in size XL, he/she can enter search preferences directly in the Amazon search field and furthermore narrow down the product selection using the filter function. On Amazon this works swiftly and easily, and that’s why so many sales take place on the shopping portal.
For online merchants, this means that products should be uploaded to Amazon with the right product variations and features. Amazon provides field names and values that usually differ from those of a Shopify shop.
The solution of the magnalister Shopify Plugin for Amazon:
During your product preparation phase, product variations and features from Shopify can easily be merged with those of Amazon. Our plugin automatically matches the Shopify value with the Amazon value. You can either accept the automatically matched values or manually rematch them. This gives you maximum freedom over the assignment and saves you valuable time.
By the way: Amazon attribute matching is only relevant for products which are not yet included in the Amazon catalog and that are requested by you.
3. Price comparison: Transfer prices from Shopify to Amazon
Price adjustments are part of the daily routine for many online retailers. If price changes are not passed on from Shopify to Amazon, a great deal of work is involved unless you implement magnalister. Without magnalister a merchant will need to manually update the price for each individual marketplace product in Amazon Seller-Central. Furthermore, it’s possible that errors with the prices stored in the Shopify shop are not transferred identically to Amazon so using the magnalister plugin eliminates this frustration.
The solution of the magnalister Shopify plugin for Amazon:
With the help of the fully automated price comparison you can export product prices from your Shopify Shop to Amazon. Deviating prices are set via the price or customer group directly in your shop system, where you can choose percentage, as well as fixed price increases or decreases for each of the connected marketplaces in your magnalister plugin.
4. Synchronize inventory: Synchronizing stock levels between Shopify and Amazon
Correct stock levels are one of the most important ranking criteria on Amazon. Imagine your products are displayed as available in the marketplace through Shopify. If a customer orders on Amazon and the synchronization is not correct, he/she may have to wait longer for their items. Amazon does not like this scenario and their engine notices every delay in the delivery of your products. Hence, if you want to enter the coveted shopping cart, this is a no go.
The solution of the magnalister Shopify plugin for Amazon:
Synchronize the inventory between Shopify and Amazon automatically. No matter if a purchase takes place on the webshop or on Amazon – your stock is always up to date. When importing orders, magnalister identifies the webshop product by means of the Stock Keeping Unit (SKU). If a product and SKU are available on your webshop and match the product purchased on Amazon, magnalister automatically reduces the stock of the webshop product. Since the database of your webshop always commands over your data, even ERP systems connected to it can now seamlessly synchronize the contents*.
By the way: There are also retailers who do not want to use the stock feature. Therefore you can deactivate this function in our plugin at any time.
5. Order Status Synchronization: Inform buyers about status changes (e.g. “shipped”)
Nowadays, almost every online shop offers its customers tracking services to query the current status of their ordered goods. Of course, the information whether goods have already been dispatched is particularly relevant here. The customer wants to track his order in the tracking tool of the shipping service provider. Therefore, the tracking code should also be submitted correctly.
What is offered by systems such as Shopify as standard for online shop orders is rather an exception for marketplace sales from the shop system. A reliable status update is an important criterion for Amazon to determine the reliability of shipping. This in turn plays a decisive role for your article ranking on the marketplace.
The solution of the magnalister Shopify plugin for Amazon:
After you have imported an Amazon order into Shopify via our order import feature, you can adjust the order status at any time. Magnalister then automatically submits the new order status, e.g. “shipped” or “cancelled” to Amazon. Shipping company and tracking code can also be submitted to the marketplace and its buyers. By an almost instantaneous submission of the order status you increase the chances of your product being placed in the Amazon shopping cart field, which has proven to boost sales.
6. Automatic order import: Import orders from Amazon to Shopify
One of the most important factors of successful marketplace management is the central order management in the webshop. Only if orders are imported correctly and with the information necessary for further processing, warehouse management is efficient, goods can be dispatched on time, and invoices can be produced correctly. Merchants should therefore make sure to choose an Amazon Shopify Integration that offers comprehensive order import functions.
The solution of the magnalister Shopify plugin for Amazon:
Our order import feature automatically transfers orders from Amazon to Shopify and labels them according to the import source. For example, if you use the service “Shipping through Amazon” (Amazon FBA), an FBA hint is added to the order import to differentiate between FBA and normal orders. The Amazon order number (Order ID) is also imported in the same way, so that orders can generally be better allocated and selected. The imported order also contains details of the shipping service provider selected by the customer and the selected payment method.
7. Invoice upload: Provide invoices to Amazon customers
In the past Amazon treated the provision of invoices for buyers rather sloppy. However, the marketplace has noticed that more and more customers, especially business buyers, are complaining about missing invoices when making a purchase. The marketplace has now provided an initial solution to this problem – the Amazon Invoice Service (also known as Amazon VCS). On the one hand, Amazon offers merchants the possibility to create invoices fully automatically through the marketplace itself and provide them to the buyer. This means that the merchant ultimately doesn’t have to deal with invoicing anymore.
This service sounds tempting, but in most cases does not fit the accounting practice of the online merchant, so Amazon has introduced “VCS Lite”, another service that allows merchants to upload their own invoices to Amazon. Ideally, an invoice is created in the shop system and then exported to Amazon via an interface – this way, you as shop operator have the least amount of work.
The solution of the magnalister Shopify Plugin for Amazon:
As one of the first Amazon Shopify integration providers, the magnalister plugin enables the automatic export of invoices from Shopify to Amazon via VCS Lite. And this even under consideration of the obligatory Amazon sales tax calculation service. The values submitted together with the invoice are checked by Amazon and a correct VAT calculation is provided.
Especially practical: If you do not write invoices directly from your Shopify Shop, you can also let the magnalister plugin create your invoices for you. In order to do this you have access to an invoice creator assistant, that allows you to individualize the invoice form. Magnalister then automatically generates the invoice and submits it to Amazon as soon as the order status in Shopify changes to “sent”.
No matter if you want to provide Amazon buyers with your own invoices, created in Shopify or invoices created by magnalister – both options are provided in our Amazon Shopify plugin.
8. Interface customization: A room for your own wishes
Every shop operator has his own ideas of a perfectly organized marketplace management. For example, do you want to submit individual product attributes, such as the product description, to Amazon in a very specific way? Maybe certain order information is so important to you that you want to display it in your Shopify backend in separate fields? Then you should choose a marketplace tool that offers you scope for customization.
The solution of the magnalister Shopify plugin for Amazon:
With our “Hook Points” we offer online merchants the opportunity to customize our plugin according to their requirements and preferences. To do so, we provide hook point examples in our FAQ. It goes without saying that programming knowledge on the part of the shop operator is required for interface customization. However, our competent support team is available for specific questions and queries and will help you to implement your own solution.
Experience all the features of the magnalister interface in detail in a free on-screen tutorial from magnalister.
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Amazon is only the beginning: Connect your Shopify shop with other marketplaces such as eBay, Etsy, Kaufland and many more.
Amazon is not the only marketplace you might want to consider to sell the products offered in your Shopify shop. Take advantage of the reach and new target groups of the largest national and international online marketplaces yourself! But at the same time, make sure that the organizational structure and processes in your Shopify Shop are as lean as possible, so that you don’t lose track of the many sales channels.
With the magnalister plugin for Shopify you have a secret weapon in your pocket because the magnalister app can connect numerous other marketplaces besides Amazon with just a few clicks, and all that while you still control them centrally in the Shopify backend. Since July 2020, our plugin gives you access to the world’s most famous online shopping portals such as eBay or Etsy. Regarding EU countries, we have the most important national marketplaces like Kaufland, METRO, Ricardo (Switzerland) or Cdiscount (France) in our portfolio.
Learn more about the possibilities of multi-channel sales with Shopify on our interface overview page.
Sign up for the 30 day free trial of magnalister for Shopify with access to full functionality and comprehensive on-screen training
We are convinced that magnalister is the only tool you need to connect new marketplaces like Amazon to your Shopify shop. You can test our Shopify App in a 30 day free trial that gives you access to all the above mentioned functions and thus enables you to sell your first products on the Amazon marketplace (and many others) without any risk.
In addition, we offer each new customer the opportunity to participate in a personal screen training worth 199 Euro – free of charge. You will receive further information after registration.
* The description of each function can vary depending on the connected third-party system (e.g. merchandise management)
