When it comes to international business expansion on Amazon, most sellers desire a seamless transition. However, some sellers are still hesitant to venture into the Amazon global market due to the perceived procedural complications and burdensome requirements.
In order to improve international services, Amazon has introduced the Build International Listings tool (BIL). This is one of the many Amazon seller tools, such as a repricer, that aims to simplify sellers’ backend activities.
In Brief: The Amazon Build International Listings Tool
To easily and quickly reach global customers, the tech giant introduced a helpful self-service tool called Build International Listings or BIL. The primary goal of Amazon Build International Listings is to assist sellers in maximizing their global outreach.
With the help of this Amazon seller tool, Amazon sellers can streamline the process of creating and updating offers for various Amazon international marketplaces. Based on predefined settings, sellers can update eligible offers and prices in the target marketplaces with the help of the BIL tool.
This particular seller tool, according to Amazon, works within a region with multiple marketplaces, including North America and Europe. Synchronizing inventory across the marketplaces can be automated with the help of BIL, especially “where the offers result in a Pan-European FBA offer.”
Essential Requirements to BIL and Its Dynamics
For sellers who have not tried BIL and want to understand the advantages of the Amazon seller tool, certain requirements need to be met first.
The first requirement is that sellers must be registered as a “Professional Seller” in all the marketplaces the Build International Listings tool will be targeting. Secondly, the seller’s account should also be in good standing in those marketplaces.
Amazon emphasizes the importance of complying with all the applicable rules and regulations for both source and target marketplaces.
BIL Account Type Compatibility
Another additional step to take for sellers to use BIL is to verify whether they have a Unified Account or Linked Accounts. Getting to know the type of account is necessary for sellers with Unified Accounts to use the BIL tool in adding and managing offers in the same region.
Alternatively, sellers with Linked Accounts can utilize this Amazon seller tool to add offers and synchronize price offers across regions.
For example, if you are an active Amazon.com seller with a Unified Account, you can use BIL to select Amazon US as your source marketplace and add offers to Amazon MX as your target marketplace.
Amazon US sellers with Linked Accounts may use BIL to add offers to any of the 5 European marketplaces as the target market, while making the United States the source marketplace.
For easy account type identification, Amazon suggests “to click the marketplace switcher at the top of your selling account and see whether other marketplaces appear”.
BIL Important Operational Requirements
To make sure the BIL tool successfully connects the source marketplace with target marketplaces, important requirements should be met. Sellers should see to it that the product listing from the source marketplace is existent in the target marketplace.
Secondly, for Amazon sellers to create a listing offer via BIL, they should also have an active offer in the source marketplace. What makes BIL convenient to use is that it synchronizes prices of the offer recently added on the source marketplace to those of the already existing items in the target marketplace.
Thus, making this a favorable Amazon seller tool to help sellers fast-track their product listing and optimization tasks.
Tolerable Limitations of BIL
Although the Build International Listings tool is packed with effective features and functions, it still has some limitations. For example, this Amazon seller tool is unable to create listings that are not available in the target market, albeit present in the source market.
However, as a workaround, for product listings in the source market whose ASINs are not listed on the target marketplaces, a manual creation can be used.
Similarly, as detailed on the Amazon Seller Central page, the BIL tool does not automatically remove offers in the target marketplaces, despite the product listing in the source marketplace being inactive.
To know more about the functions that the Build International Listings tool does and does not perform and other features, CLICK HERE.
Room for Improvement
As an Amazon seller tool, BIL still has some room for improvement. While international product listings update is one of the key strengths of this tool, it may fall short in terms of other aspects of its operation, including translation of listings.
Although the BIL tool synchronizes prices across target marketplaces based on the actual product price of the source market, the highest margin for a specific product is not always guaranteed.
With that in mind, using a separate tool for repricing, such as Seller Snap, will be a great complement for your Amazon international expansion.