14 CommentsDo you offer multiple products in your Amazon catalog that complement each other? If you’re a brand owner on Amazon, you now have the opportunity to combine multiple FBA products under one listing offer—without having to package them together.
As we have mentioned in previous articles, Amazon continues to innovate and create new selling tools designed to help brands grow on the marketplace. In late 2020, Amazon released a new feature called Virtual Bundles that will give brand-registered sellers the ability to combine 2-5 current FBA products to be sold as one.
In the past, if you wanted to sell your own custom bundle, you would need to physically package your products together, label them, and ship them into an FBA warehouse. Now, you don’t have to—virtual bundling saves you time and makes purchasing your products more convenient for your customers.
Here’s what you’ll learn in this guide:
- What a Virtual Bundle is and how it works
- Who is eligible for a Virtual Bundle
- The benefits of a Virtual Bundle
- How to set up a Virtual Bundle
Let’s get started.
What is a Virtual Product Bundle?
The Virtual Product Bundle tool lets brand owners virtually combine up to five of their FBA ASINS into a single listing.
Instead of having to physically package your complementary items into bundles and reship them to an FBA warehouse—as you would for a regular Amazon product bundle—you can save time by combining their ASINs through Seller Central. It takes just a few minutes, and far less tape on your part.
How do Virtual Product Bundles work?
Not only do product bundles provide convenience for customers, they allow sellers to increase their average order value. If you notice that some of your products are frequently bought together, virtually bundling them makes purchasing easier, and makes it more likely that customers will buy more products from you. Plus, customers will know they can get everything they need from one seller, rather than hunt for the individual items from a few different brands on Amazon. Pretty cool, right?
- Each bundle must contain at least two and up to five ASINs
Say you own a popcorn brand and sell multiple flavors. You can offer up to five of your best selling flavors all on one listing. So, instead of having to navigate to each individual listing, customers can purchase all five in just one click.
Keep in mind that your bundle inventory will be based on the ASIN with the lowest amount of available stock, so be sure to check your inventory to make sure one ASIN isn’t limiting purchases for the whole bundle.
- Each ASIN must be buyable on its own
This means that each product offered in your virtual bundle must have its own product detail page. That way, if customers just want to purchase the one product, they still can.
- You can include multiple units of an ASIN within the same bundle
Going back to the popcorn example (movie, anyone?), say you want to bundle a caramel-flavored version and a sea salt-flavored version. You can actually adjust the quantity of each individual ASIN to be included within the bundle.
For example, you can create a bundle that includes two of each flavor or two of the caramel and one of the sea-salt, and vice versa.
- Choose your best-selling ASIN as the main component for increased discoverability
When creating your Virtual Bundle, you have to choose one ASIN to be the bundle’s main component. This ASIN will determine the search and categorization of your product bundle, as the bundle ASIN will inherit the search keywords from its main component. So be strategic when you select the main component.
On the detail page of the main component in your bundle, customers will see a “Make it a bundle” widget to let them know they can purchase this product with additional, complementary products.
- Advertising and A+ Content
Currently, Virtual Bundles are only eligible for Sponsored Brand ads, not Sponsored Product ads. Brand owners can also create a unique A+ Content page for the Virtual Bundle.
- Provide your customers with a discount
While it is not required to offer your bundle at a discounted price, it is recommended by Amazon that you do so. According to Amazon, the most successful bundles typically offer attractive discounts.
The bundle price cannot be priced higher than the sum of each ASIN’s price. If it does, you will lose Buy Box eligibility.
Example of a Virtual Bundle
This brand is offering customers three hand soap bundle options to choose from. When you click on one of these options, it’ll bring you to the bundle listing to purchase.
Who is eligible to create a Virtual Bundle?
To be eligible to be create to a virtual product bundle, you must satisfy the following requirements:
- ASINs need to belong to a brand that you own and that is registered in Brand Registry
- ASINs need to have active FBA inventory in ‘New’ condition
- The following cannot be included in virtual bundles: gift cards, electronically delivered products (like digital music, video, and books), and renewed/used ASINs
- Product bundles can be created only in the U.S. Amazon store
The benefits of a Virtual FBA Product Bundle
You can probably guess the benefits of creating a Virtual Product Bundle based on the information above, but let’s break it down further.
Offer value and convenience to your customers
Customers love a good discount. If you can offer them multiple products within your product line in one easy to purchase bundle with a few bucks shaved off the price, that’s a win-win.
No need to pre-package your bundle
This is by far the biggest benefit to a Virtual Bundle—you don’t have to pack, label, and ship the bundle separately to FBA. This eliminates a lot of time and overhead, because it means you also don’t need to create a new listing and purchase a new UPC for the bundle. It’s all done for you in minutes.
You do not need a new UPC code
Speaking of UPC codes, this is a huge benefit. Normally, if you were to create a brand new custom bundled listing, that bundle would need its own unique barcode. Virtual Bundles don’t need a separate UPC. They come with their own SKU, which you can view in the Manage Inventory section of Seller Central.
Customize your bundle listing
After your bundle has been created and saved in Seller Central, you can edit the title, description, price, images, and even the A+ Content description.
Promote your other products
Bundling your best-selling products with others that complement it helps increase your brand awareness and visibility. Make your best-selling item the main component of your bundle to show customers what other products you offer.
How to set up a Virtual Bundle
Remember, you must be brand registered in order to be eligible for Virtual Bundles. As of now, Virtual Bundles is still in beta, so not even every registered brand will have access.
In Seller Central, go to the Brands tab then click on “Virtual Bundles.”
Once you are in the Virtual Bundle portal, you will be able to add in the products you want to bundle as well as your bundle images, title, description, and bullet points.
As mentioned above, Amazon suggests providing a discount to incentivize purchases. When you enter your price, Amazon will show you the combined price without a discount and the difference of your bundle price. If your price is higher than the combined price, you will lose the Buy Box. So make sure that your bundle price either matches or is lower than the combined price of your bundled products.
Once you’re done adding your products and bundle information, hit “Save & Publish.” Soon your Virtual Bundle will be live!
Are Virtual Bundles worth it?
Considering how easy it is to set one up, I’d say yes. It is at least worth testing out to see if your products sell well together.
Are there products within your line that are frequently bought together? Great! Make them a package deal with a discount to provide more value and convenience to your customers.
Test out a Virtual Bundle for yourself and let us know how it goes! Do you have any questions about Virtual Bundles? Let us know down in the comments.
14 comments on “Advantages of Amazon Virtual Product Bundles”