I’m aware we often talk in acronyms and use terms that may be unfamiliar to people new to the e-commerce industry so I thought some explanations might help:

ACOS

Advertising Cost of Sales – a term used by Amazon for their sponsored ads. A percentage that measures the success of an advertising campaign on Amazon. Calculated by dividing the Total Ad Spend and the Total Sales (x by 100 to get percentage).

EXAMPLE

Total Ad Spend: £9173.62

Total Sales: £47351.73

ACoS = 100 x (9173.62 / 47351.73) = 19.37% —> 19%

AMS

Amazon Marketing Services – a service Amazon offers to its sellers that helps to promote a seller’s products directly to their target audience/market. These ads are targeted by keywords, products, and consumer interests, which then help to boost the visibility of the product that is being advertised. There are three options with AMS, ‘Sponsored Products ads’, ‘Headline Search ads’, and ‘Product Display ads’. The seller only gets charged for this service when a consumer clicks on the ad (cost-per-click). The seller’s product is more likely to be displayed to the consumer if they are willing to pay a higher price for CPC.

API

An application programming interface (API) is a computing interface that defines interactions between multiple software intermediaries. It defines the kinds of calls or requests that can be made, how to make them, the data formats that should be used, the conventions to follow, etc.

ARPU

Average Revenue Per Unit. Alternatively known as ARPC (Average Revenue Per Customer).

ASIN

Amazon Stock Identification Number – a unique code that Amazon uses for to identify products, composed of 10 numbers and/or letters. For books, the ASIN is the same as the ISBN, but for every other product, a new ASIN is created.

Business Rule

A combination of Functions and references to product data used to manipulate product data. Typically embedded in a Template.

CPA

Cost per action (CPA), also sometimes misconstrued in marketing environments as cost per acquisition, is an online advertising measurement and pricing model, referring to a specified action – for example a sale, click, or form submit (e.g., contact request, newsletter sign up, registration etc.)

CPC

Cost Per Click – See PPC

ERP

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is the integrated management of main business processes, often in real time and mediated by software and technology. ERP is usually referred to as a category of business management software—typically a suite of integrated applications—that an organization can use to collect, store, manage, and interpret data from many business activities.

FBA

FBA stands for Fulfillment by Amazon. … You send your products to Amazon. They store them in their warehouses. When a customer orders one of your products, Amazon picks, packs, ships and tracks the order for you.

FBM

Fulfilled By Merchant, popularly known as FBM, is when sellers list their products on Amazon and choose to ship products to each buyer by themselves. In other words, sellers are responsible for fulfilling their orders and do not rely on Amazon for the same.

Function

A command used to change data – for example to change the case or replace words and characters. Typically these are combined to form a Business Rule.

GMV

Gross Merchandise Volume (alternatively Gross Merchandise Value) is a term used in online retailing to indicate a total sales monetary-value (e. g. in Dollars or Euros) for merchandise sold through a particular marketplace over a certain time frame.

Overselling

Selling a product you don’t have in stock. Typically caused by inaccurate or slow stock updates to the marketplace. Overselling can have serious and lasting impact on account health metrics.

PPC

Pay-per-click (PPC) is an internet advertising model used to drive traffic to websites, in which an advertiser pays a publisher (typically a search engine, website owner, or a network of websites) when the ad is clicked.

Sandbox

A software platform where integrations can be tested without fear of customers buying something that doesn’t exist or orders going missing. Typically a close copy of the main site but often not entirely identical.

SFP

Amazon Seller Fulfilled Prime allows sellers to display the Prime badge on listings they fulfill from their own facilities.

SKU

SKU (pronounced “skew”), short for stock keeping unit, is used by retailers to identify and track its inventory, or stock. A SKU is a unique code consisting of letters and numbers that identify characteristics about each product, such as manufacturer, brand, style, color, and size.

Template

Templates are used to map data either into the system (Import Template) or to send it to an external system (Output Template). Templates tend to mirror the structure of the file to be sent so an eBay Template will contain those fields to be included in the file to be send to eBay.

WMS

A warehouse management system (WMS) is a software application designed to support and optimize warehouse functionality and distribution center management. These systems facilitate management in their daily planning, organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling the utilization of available resources, to move and store materials into, within, and out of a warehouse, while supporting staff in the performance of material movement and storage in and around a warehouse.