Amazon has quietly released the functionality to create Virtual Bundles to its brand registered Sellers in the US market – a welcome addition to brands already leveraging the FBA program. This new tool lets brand owners create ‘virtual’ bundles made up of two to five complementary ASINs which are purchased together from a single detail page. This allows brand owners to offer bundles without packaging items together or changing FBA inbound inventory.
Prior to this program, any bundle offers had to be physically packaged together prior to being sent into an Amazon fulfillment center. For many of the larger brands we partner with, the virtual bundling program saves them thousands of dollars in 3PL prepping fees and prevents possible errors resulting from changes in case pack quantities on shipments to Amazon.
If you are not sure how to access the bundling dashboard, here is a link – just make sure you are logged into Seller Central first.
CREATING A VIRTUAL BUNDLE
The dashboard is quite simple to use and is pretty self-explanatory. Choose between 2 and 5 ASINs you want to be bundled, select a “Main Component,” add images, copy, and price, and that’s it! Not much more to it, at least for now…
Choosing component ASINs:
Adding copy, price, and SKU:
And finally, how it appears on the individual component detail pages:
LIMITATIONS & FEATURES OF VIRTUAL BUNDLES
What would any program on Amazon be without inherent limitations? Here are a few of the biggest limits (in our opinion):
- Must bundle brand registered ASINs you own via Brand Registry
- All products must have FBA inventory in ‘New’ condition
- Only currently available in the US
- Bundle pricing must be equal to or lower than the sum total for all individual products in the bundle
- ASINs in a bundle cannot be edited after creation
- Variations are not currently allowed
- Reviews are NOT inherited from any of the component ASINs; bundles have their own standalone reviews
- Bundle sales are not viewed within Seller Central reporting; weekly emails are sent containing a CSV of bundle sales
Despite these limitations, there are still a few things that work as you’d normally expect:
- Deals, coupons, and A+ content are all still applicable for bundles
- Compatible with Sponsored Brands (but not Sponsored Products; an update to come down the road)
- A bundle inherits search keywords from its main component ASIN; can’t combine SEO/searchability of component ASINs
- Bundle returns are based on the individual components (ex. A customer can return 2 of the 3 ASINs in the bundle)
STRATEGIES FOR IMPLEMENTATION
If you are able to use the virtual bundling program, you also have access to Amazon’s Brand Analytics dashboard. Within this dashboard, the “Market Basket Analysis” tool helps identify bundling opportunities by gaining insight on products that are being purchased together by your customers.
We highly recommend using both the virtual bundling and market basket analysis tools to create new product offerings on Amazon and to increase the average basket price on Amazon. We are very excited to see the widespread release of this program and the ability it provides brands to test different product configurations. A full read on Amazon’s published help guid on virtual bundles can be found here.
If you are a brand interested in growing your Amazon sales and improving your channel strategy, contact us today for a free, no-commitment account audit and strategy call with our team.
