If you’re an Amazon seller, then at some point you may need to close a listing.
But opting to close a listing for the first time and hitting that confirm button can be a scary moment.
What does close listing mean on Amazon? Can I get the listing back? Will I lose all my reviews?
In this article, we’ll answer all these [potentially stressful] questions. So read on to learn everything you need to know about closing a listing on Amazon!
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What does it mean to close a listing on Amazon?
When you close a listing on Amazon, it means that the listing will no longer be active. Buyers will not be able to purchase the item from that listing, and it will have a status of Inactive (Closed).
The listing will remain in your ‘Manage Inventory’ page so you can always edit and re-open the listing at any time.
Closing vs deleting listings on Amazon
Deleting a listing on Amazon is different to closing a listing.
Whilst closing a listing keeps that listing within your Manage Inventory page for future updates, deleting a listing will remove the listing from your Manage Inventory page entirely.
As such, deleting a listing is a more permanent action to take within your Seller Central account.
When is the right time to close a listing?
There are a few different situations when it might be the right time to close a listing inside your Amazon seller account.
If your listing content isn’t ready
When selling a private label product and shipping inventory into an Amazon warehouse to make use of the FBA program, your listing will go live when stock arrives.
In the undesirable event of not having your listing ready – listing copy, images, and A+ content – when the stock does arrive, you may want to close your listing to ensure it isn’t active on Amazon without this key information.
To maintain rank when stocking out
Inventory management is one of the major challenges for Amazon sellers. Many sellers will at some stage of the journey face a period of stockouts due to the volume of product sales.
When this happens, the biggest concern is the impact on organic keyword ranking for your product.
There are theories that suggest by closing your listing when you stock out it prevents a poor sales history from building up on the listing and as such the Amazon algorithm will maintain more of a product’s ranking when back in stock.
This sales data theory has never been confirmed by Amazon – or any other scientific study – but it is certainly something to consider.
To investigate product quality issues
In the unfortunate scenario that your product shows signs of poor quality – evidenced in a high return rate or bad reviews – you should consider closing your listing and removing some stock to investigate what the problem may be.
Whilst closing product listings will slow sales momentum, it’s not worth taking the risk of attracting more bad reviews on a product
Once you have identified and corrected the issues you can relist the product and begin to drive momentum again.
How long can I close a listing for?
It’s important to note that when closing a product listing that has available stock attached to it, Amazon will move that stock to a status known as stranded stock.
This means that Amazon deems the stock to be unattached to any product listing and will begin to warn you that this stock will be disposed of should enough time pass (usually 45 days or more).
So be sure to only close a listing as a short-term measure. If you need something more permanent, then choosing the ‘delete product and listing’ option may be more suitable.
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When is the right time to delete a listing?
There are some instances where deleting a particular product from your Amazon Seller Central account is a better approach to take than simply closing the listing.
Let’s take a look at a few such scenarios.
If you’re no longer selling an item
If you’ve decided to stop selling an item, then closing the listing is the best way to remove it from your Amazon seller account.
When discontinuing a product in your Amazon business you want to make sure it doesn’t continue to appear on your inventory management page, and deleting the listing will ensure it doesn’t.
To manually force listing changes
There may be times when you are trying to make changes to an aged Amazon listing and Seller Central isn’t playing ball (Seller Central not playing ball? No way! /end sarcasm).
If you are unable to make changes to your Amazon listing live on the front end of Amazon, one effective way to force the changes through is by deleting the listing for 24 hours and then re-adding via a flat-file upload.
This of course means your product will be inactive for the 24 hours in question and therefore unable to generate any sales.
But if you are desperate to make changes, this is an effective way of doing so.
Don’t worry – deleting an Amazon listing from your inventory does not delete the reviews, product details or sales history – when you re-upload the same product with the same identifier (ASIN, UPC, etc) they will all come back.
How to close a listing on Amazon
In order to close a listing on Amazon, follow these steps:
1/ Navigate to Inventory > Manage Inventory
2/ Scroll to the correct ASIN and click the Edit drop-down menu
3/ Select Close Listing
4/ Confirm Close Listing by clicking Continue
Then, once you are ready to reopen your listing simply navigate to that same Amazon listing, click the Edit drop-down menu again and click ‘Relist’.
How to delete a listing on Amazon
The process of permanently deleting a listing on Amazon is very similar to closing a listing.
1/ Navigate to Inventory > Manage Inventory
2/ Scroll to the correct ASIN and click the Edit drop-down menu
3/ Select Delete product and listing
4/ Read the warning message and click OK
By choosing ‘Delete product and listing’ it will remove the product from the inventory page in your seller account.
Remember, you can re-add the product at a later date but you would need to upload the full written content, ideally with a flat-file.
Benefits of closing or deleting a listing on Amazon
As your Amazon business grows and you start selling with multiple listings in your seller account, it’s important to maintain good listing health.
If you are facing some of the issues mentioned above, the ability to either close or delete listings gives you back control.
You can also use these options to avoid long term storage fees and ensure your Amazon seller account stays in good health overall.
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DEAR BEN, THAT’S VERY HELPFUL ON A QUERY TO WHICH AMAZON APPEARS TO OFFER NO RESPONSES ITSELF. HOWEVER, YOU MENTIONED BEING NERVOUS BEFORE YOU HIT THE BUTTON… I AM, AND WHAT YOU’VE SHOWN ADDS TO THE ANXIETY IN TERMS OF THEIR WARNING THAT, REGARDING “PRODUCTS WITH VARIATIONS”, DELETION REMOVES THE VARIATIONS. SPECIFICALLY, I SELL A BOOK IN PAPERBACK AND EBOOK VERSIONS. THE EBOOKS DO FINE FOR MY COTTAGE-INDUSTRY LEVEL (ALL PROCEEDS TO THE RED CROSS, CIRCA £9,000 RAISED SO FAR) BUT THE PAPERBACK ONLY DOES ABOUT TEN A YEAR SO NO LOSS TO REMOVE THEM, WHICH I WANT TO DO BECAUSE AMAZON’S NEW TRACKING MALARKEY ON “SOLID” PRODUCTS LOOKS TO ME AS IF IT WILL CAUSE ME TO BE ENTIRELY REMOVED AS A SELLER, I.E. KNOCK OUT THE EBOOKS TOO, EVEN THOUGH I’VE NEVER HAD A CUSTOMER COMPLAINT IN 10 YEARS AMAZONING. SO IS MY PAPERBACK A “VARIATION” ON THE EBOOK VERSION OR WOULD THE EBOOK CONTINUE ON SALE OK AFTER DELETING THE PAPERBACK? ANY FURTHER INFO/ADVICE ON THIS WRINKLE WOULD BE VERY WELCOME AND APPRECIATED.
Hi Phil, good to hear from you.
You shouldn’t have any problems – you just need to make sure you open the drop-down next to the parent product and only select the child variation you want to get rid of. Then the parent and all other children will remain.
If you are looking to close the listing permanently I would choose the delete listing option. The close option will leave it there in your manage inventory page. Let me know how you get on!
What is this mean, after deleting a product in order to sell it again that I need to do the following? Do I have to create a new SKU?
“You need to upload the full written content,ideally with a flat-file.”
Hi Dimitri. No, you don’t need to create a new SKU if you want to sell the same product. You would just need to create the product again with the same barcode number (UPC or EAN) and it will pull through all the same information that is saved in Amazon’s system including reviews etc. You can do this either via the upload a product tool or using a flat-file.
Good info here. Question for you regarding the decision to close or delete for an ASIN with old skus.
I’m currently working on cleaning up a friends inventory. He has 3 separate listings, all under the same ASIN but with unique skus. Should I close the listing and then delete? If I delete the older listings, will that effect reviews or rank for the new listing that he’s sending all the inventory to?
Thanks
Thanks Matt, glad it’s helped! If I understand correctly and you mean closing then deleting the listing for 2 of the old SKUs, then leaving the one correct one… then no, you shouldn’t have any issues. The reviews are tied to the ASIN (or really the UPC/EAN) and organic rank is similar. Good luck!