Would an ASIN be useful for my E-commerce business?

The last few decades have witnessed the growth of Amazon as a brand and a company. Customers today automatically trust packages which are marked as Amazon fulfilled or are from the Amazon Prime catalogues. Amazon also has played a major role in the growth of customers seeking one day or next day delivery items. Most E-Commerce companies today list their products on Amazon and process orders through the site. This helps the E-Commerce business to reach of a wider audience and increase sales.

If you’re someone who is interested in listing their products on Amazon, crucial information you will need to know about the ASIN.

ASIN stands for “Amazon Standard Identification Number”.  Amazon uses the ASIN as a product identifier to keep track of inventory listed and sold on the website.

Just like how books use their ISBN as universal identifiers across the world, Amazon uses the ASIN to segregate, and identify products for processing. However, each individual international site of Amazon requires a separate ASIN. This means, if you are listing the same products on Amazon UK and Amazon US you would need a separate ASIN for Amazon UK and Amazon US.  Amazon requires ASIN for all listed products except books, where ISBN numbers are used.

Sellers who offer customisation in products will need to use multiple ASINs to identify their products. Every product gets a unique parent ASIN with every possible customisation getting a related child ASIN to indicate the customisation of the original product.

ASINs are seemingly random ten digit alphanumeric codes used by Amazon to identify the products listed and process orders. The absence of an ASIN would spell disaster for Amazon, who as a platform are heavily reliant of ASINs for regular functioning.

The easiest way to find out the ASIN for a product you sell, and is already available on your local Amazon through a different seller is to look for their ASIN. You can either browse through product details on the local Amazon website where it will be listed, or simply look at the end of the product’s Amazon website URL, where the last ten digits list out the ASIN. Just make sure you are not looking at a page with a referral code.

However, if your product is completely unique or first of its kind, you will need to create and register a completely original ASIN. However, newly registered sellers have a upper limit on the number of ASINs they can create and will need to earn more through regular sales and good ratings.

If you are a smart E-Commerce business professional, then you would not even need to look beyond your regular inventory management software. Most E-Commerce listing tools automatically fill in the ASIN after the product is added if a listing for the same product exists on the website.

If you are one of the individuals wondering how to create a completely new ASIN, then you are looking at the right place. You can either do it yourself through a process or use an inventory management software.

The benefit of creating and registering a new ASIN is that you would be the first seller of that product on Amazon. This means, more customers!

To register a product for receiving an ASIN, find out the GTIN of your product. This is the standard identifier for your product given by the GSI which could be an UPC,ISBN, or an EAN. The manufacturer usually mentions this on the product. If you are the manufacturer, then you will need to register with GSI US for listing your product on Amazon USA. After paying the GSI fee and waiting a while, you would receive the GTIN from GSI. This enables you to register on Amazon US and request for your very own ASIN. You would just have to log in to your Amazon seller account and create a new product to receive your very own ASIN.

Similarly, a listing tool can help you get your ASIN directly if you enter the proper GTIN for your product. Some listing tools also enable sellers to create listings of products as kits and bundles for shoppers.

Finally, once you have your ASIN, getting which is not really difficult. Congratulations, you are now completely ready to list your product onto the Amazon marketplace.