Amazon is the world’s biggest online marketplace, with over 300 million active customer accounts. It racks up billions of monthly views across its global websites, making it a logical and powerful growth opportunity for ecommerce brands.
While the upside is enormous, so are the risks. Too often, brands dive in without understanding how Amazon really works. They assume it’s just another sales channel, when in reality, it’s a highly complex ecosystem with its own rules, systems and quirks.
We’ve seen brands of every size trip over avoidable mistakes in their Amazon journey. Some of these errors can be fixed with time, effort and expertise. Others are baked into your setup from day one, and once you get them wrong, the damage is nearly impossible to be undone.
That’s why getting the setup right from day one is essential. That’s also why having a partner like Amplifi – our in-house Amazon growth agency – can make all the difference.
Let’s break down the most common pitfalls ecommerce brands face when they start selling on Amazon, why they matter, and how you can avoid them.
It sounds boring and technical, but barcodes are the foundation of how Amazon catalogues products. Amazon uses barcodes (GTINs, UPCs, or EANs) as the unique identifier for every product. If you don’t get them right, your Amazon journey is off to a rocky start.
GS1 is the global, official provider of barcodes, yet many sellers who are new to Amazon buy barcodes from cheap resellers, thinking they’re saving money.
The problem with this is that reseller barcodes may already be tied to other products in Amazon’s system. If that’s the case, you’ll never truly own your listing, and Amazon may even merge your product with someone else’s, which would be a logistical (and reputational) nightmare.
Amazon operates on a strict one-to-one barcode system: one barcode equals one product listing. If your barcode isn’t legitimate, Amazon sees your product as an imposter. That leads to messy catalogue issues, delisting and wasted time (and money).
Another hidden landmine is what happens when you change a product and assign it a new barcode. To Amazon, that’s a brand-new listing. That means sales history, rankings, visibility, reviews, and ratings all disappear. Years of effort can vanish overnight because of a poorly timed product update.
Yes, there are workarounds. FBM (Fulfilled by Merchant) and SFP (Seller Fulfilled Prime) sellers can sometimes tweak listings without losing everything. But if you’re FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon), you’re locked into a stricter system; your physical product barcode must match the listing barcode exactly. If it doesn’t, Amazon will force you to relabel or rework stock before accepting it.
Amplifi spends a lot of time helping brands fix barcode messes, but this is one area where prevention is far better than cure.
Too many brands underestimate how powerful, and essential, Amazon Brand Registry is. To access it, you need a registered trademark for your brand name. Without it, you’re missing out on key tools that can protect your business and supercharge your growth.
Brand Registry unlocks features like:
Without Brand Registry, you’re locked out of these tools and forced to compete on price alone.
Another pitfall is setting up your product brand name incorrectly. If you use something other than your trademarked name, you’ll run into headaches later when you try to enrol in Brand Registry. That can mean time-consuming appeals, duplicate catalogues, or even being locked out of your own brand on Amazon.
Amazon isn’t just another sales channel. It’s a highly specific ecosystem with its own operational quirks. Many brands walk in assuming that what worked on Shopify or their DTC store will translate neatly, but that’s rarely the case.
Inventory planning is harder than it looks. Send too much stock into FBA without demand forecasting, and you rack up storage fees (and it’s costly to get stock returned to you). Send too little, and you stock out, which tanks your organic rankings. Unlike your own warehouse, Amazon penalises poor inventory management with lost visibility.
Amazon has strict prep and packaging rules. Products that don’t meet requirements get rejected, reworked, or delayed. Even worse, bad packaging can lead to negative reviews from customers which directly hurt your sales performance. We’ve seen brands underestimate packaging requirements, only to have thousands of units rejected at the warehouse.
Amazon is hyper-sensitive to pricing discrepancies. If your product is cheaper on your own website or another retailer, Amazon may suppress the Buy Box or bury your listing. Many brands don’t realise that consistency across channels is critical to keeping Amazon happy.
Think of your Amazon listing as your salesperson. If you don’t set it up properly, you’re sabotaging yourself before you even start.
Amazon search isn’t Google search. The way customers type queries, the ranking factors, and the competition are all unique. 70% of Amazon customers never click past page one of search results. If your listing isn’t optimised for how customers search, you’re invisible. Too many brands just copy and paste website copy into Amazon listings, which doesn’t reflect Amazon’s search behaviour.
There’s an art and science to Amazon listing content. Titles need to balance clarity and keyword density. Bullets should be benefits-led, not just feature dumps. Images should be optimised for mobile shopping and meet Amazon’s strict guidelines (57% of Amazon traffic comes from mobile devices). Skipping these fundamentals leaves your product struggling to convert.
Amazon buyers live and die by reviews, with over 90% of customers reading reviews before buying. Review velocity (how quickly you gather reviews) impacts organic ranking, but you must grow reviews compliantly – Amazon is ruthless about fake or incentivised reviews. It’s not just about getting stars; it’s about building trust that accelerates organic ranking.
Amplifi has helped countless brands take listings that were basically invisible and transform them into high-performing, ranking machines — but it always starts with strong fundamentals.
Amazon Ads are powerful, but a money pit if you don’t know what you’re doing. Many brands burn through ad budgets because they treat Amazon PPC like Google Ads or Meta Ads. It’s not the same. Our clients came to us with common issues:
Keyword targeting mistakes - Amazon Ads thrive on precise keyword targeting. If you’re not running structured campaigns with exact, phrase, and broad match types, you’re wasting spend.
No clear strategy - Running ads without a strategy is like turning on a tap and hoping water flows in the right direction. You need to understand the role of each campaign: are you driving awareness, protecting your brand, or capturing competitor traffic?
Ignoring organic and paid synergy - The biggest misstep is treating ads in isolation. Amazon’s algorithm rewards sales velocity. That means your ad-driven sales directly influence your organic rankings. Brands that don’t connect the dots end up paying more than they should.
“These pitfalls are exactly the kind of things our clients need to be aware of. Almost every brand I speak with has either made one of these mistakes already or is at real risk of doing so, which could cost them thousands. The more conversations I have, the more I realise how common these challenges are. That’s why agencies like Amplifi are so valuable — they help brands avoid expensive missteps and set themselves up for long-term success.” - John Upton, Ecommerce Account Manager, Amplifi.
The good news is not everything is set in stone. While some pitfalls (like barcode errors) are irreversible, others can be corrected once you’re live.
That said, fixing issues takes expertise, time, and often a lot of trial and error. Many brands learn the hard way that “just testing” on Amazon is an expensive experiment.
Amazon is a high-stakes channel. Get it right, and it can unlock exponential growth. Get it wrong, and you can lose money, momentum, and credibility fast. The challenges aren’t insurmountable, but they require a deep understanding of Amazon’s systems, quirks, and opportunities.
That’s where Amplifi comes in. We’ve helped brands:
We know which mistakes can be fixed, which can’t, and how to set you up for long-term success.
Selling on Amazon doesn’t have to be a minefield. With the right partner, it can be the growth engine you’ve been looking for. If you’re thinking of starting on Amazon, or you've already launched but aren't seeing the traction you expected, get your free audit with Amplifi today.