The Amazon Strategist Show

Amazon Rufus for Sellers: Everything You Need to Know

• The Amazon Strategist Show

Share episode

Meet Will Haire, the Co-Founder of BellaVix, a true pioneer in the e-commerce world. With a wealth of experience under his belt, including driving over half a billion dollars in marketplace sales, Will knows the ins and outs of selling on platforms like Amazon and Walmart. Today, he’s here to introduce you to a revolutionary tool: Amazon Rufus AI.

In this episode, John and Will take you on an exciting journey into the realm of Amazon Rufus, the cutting-edge AI assistant designed to transform your selling game in 2025. They’ll explore how Rufus can optimize your strategies, enhance your listings, and help you stay ahead in the ever-evolving marketplace landscape.

Here’s what you’ll discover:
-The unique features of Amazon Rufus and how it’s shaping the future of selling.
-Tips from Will on integrating Rufus into your business to drive success.
-Insights into how AI is revolutionizing e-commerce and giving sellers a competitive edge.
-Real-world examples of how sellers are already benefiting from Rufus.

Whether you’re a seasoned seller or just starting out, this episode is packed with valuable insights to help you harness the power of Amazon Rufus and dominate the marketplace in 2025.

-------------------------------------------------------------
Connect with Will and ‪BellaVix
Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/BellaVixMarketing
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bellavixmarketplaceagency/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/willhaire/
Email: hello@bellavix.com

Connect with John Cavendish
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jgcuk
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thejohncavendish
LinkedIn: https://hk.linkedin.com/in/thejohncavendish

Know More About Seller Candy
Website: https://www.sellercandy.com
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/SellerCandyPro
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sellercandyamz
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sellercandy/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Never Talk to Seller Support Again.

Seller Candy is the expert operations arm of your Amazon business. We provide outcome-driven support for time-consuming and challenging Seller Central issues so you Never Have to Talk to Seller Support Again! With Agency-Level security practices and an experienced team who’s been through the thick of it, we give sellers bandwidth on demand without the hassle of hiring, training, or managing.

#amazonsellercentral #amazonsupport #ecommerce #amazonbusiness #amazonseller #amazontips #amazonbusiness #AmazonStrategistS...

Speaker 1:

I'm going to say that Rufus and generative AI is going to crush small businesses. While it appears now that it gives a lot of small sellers a lot of opportunity to optimize their listings, what I think it's going to do is it's going to commoditize a lot of those small sellers and take away their ability to be unique, and I also think of how robust AI can be, that it's going to take a really specialized skill in order to optimize for that, and I think that larger organizations are going to be able to afford that talent and be able to elevate their brand versus some of these small sellers.

Speaker 2:

Hello, I'm your host, john Cavendish, and welcome to the Amazon Strategy Show. The show that's all strategy, with no hacks, no silver bullets and no magic pills Just real, practical strategies to grow your Amazon business. Today, I'm joined by none other than Will Hare. Will is the co-founder of Bella Vicks, a full-service Amazon marketing marketplace agency dedicated to direct consumer brands aiming to aggressively grow their sales on the world's largest marketplaces, such as Amazon and Walmart. He's done over half a billion dollars, which is amazing, worth of sales on the marketplaces, or managed and established himself as a leading authority in the industry. So welcome, will.

Speaker 1:

Awesome, john. Thanks for having me here. I'm excited to be on the show to talk about some Amazon, rufus and AI.

Speaker 2:

Yes, I mean you're here to talk about AI, which is really cool because you're the first person we've actually had talking directly about Rufus. I'm super excited to dive deep into it. Just briefly first, can you tell us a little bit about your journey and how you ended up with Bellavix?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, absolutely so.

Speaker 1:

My background's advertising and I've been working inside the agency space for, at this point, over 10 years, and I started out like Google SEO and Google AdWords, which is the gateway into Amazon SEO, and as I worked at different agencies, I went from just working with e-com brands via Shopify and WooCommerce and then eventually evolved into just being the Amazon guy, essentially at the agencies I worked for, and then, over time, I worked at enough agencies where I saw some things I really liked, that worked really well, and some things that I thought could be better, and if I ran my own agency, I would do it this way.

Speaker 1:

And then, in 2018, I decided to take myself up on that offer. So I started Bellavix and I haven't looked back since. It's been a really fun journey. We've worked with some really stellar brands and I've gotten a lot of experience with enterprise level as well as small business. So, across the spectrum and for guys like me who have ADD and it's tough to focus on one thing over and over again Amazon and generally e-commerce changes so much, so it's been a really, really fun journey and I'm continuing to learn so much as the landscape changes.

Speaker 2:

I hope you made yourself a very generous offer back in 2018 and didn't screw yourself on the salary. Yeah, so what we're going to do is we're going to dive into AI and Rufus. So you know, just to intro, I mean, can you explain a bit about what Rufus is and how sellers can benefit from it?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, beautiful. So Rufus is Amazon's AI generative shopping assistant and it's really innovative in the sense of like. If you look at, like Facebook's large language models, like it's huge, amazon's the smallest, related to the rest of those AIs that are out there. But Amazon's AI is solely built on shopping data similar to like, what differentiate it from search. It's the same in Amazon, so it not only understands your shopping habits, your preferences, what you like, it also now has the ability to go through Q&A and, like, contextualize that information.

Speaker 1:

So so what Rufus is? It's a really powerful shopping assistant for Amazon shoppers and it gives them the ability to get personalized recommendations based on their actual preferences and taste. And the advantage for sellers is for us to get our products into this limited space in order to be seen and to be part of that conversation and, ideally, lead to purchases. And I will caveat it that it's a very new technology. Amazon is just trying to figure out how to monetize it, but there's already lots of literature on how to optimize for it, how it constructs information and how it makes its recommendations, so it's really on the forefront right now.

Speaker 2:

I love it. That's super cool. I mean, do you do we have any data that shows like how many people are using it and how many people are actually purchasing through it? Is there any way of tracking any kind of conversion through rufus?

Speaker 1:

no, none. That's the drawback now, and what makes it the wild west is that there's like, literally, amazon's not sharing any, even on the advertising side, where it's like, yes, ads are now showing up in r in Rufus, but we don't have any data on it, so as of now, it's a black box. We're unsure of what that looks like, but you can see from a technological aspect how this could potentially change how people shop and engage marketplaces. So it's new. I know Alexa, for example. We were having a conversation earlier and you mentioned that it's going to change the game and people aren't going to use search anymore, they're going to use Alexa, and it didn't come to fruition. But obviously, with Rufus and AI, it's a little more personalized, it's connected and it's visual, so maybe it'll be here to stay.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think I made a joke at the same time that AI is going to tell us what to buy and that we'll just buy that, and that's kind of what Rufus is, isn't it? But it's like do we want AI telling us what to buy? It'd be interesting to see how people develop in the long term, like I can see you asking for comparisons between products and reviews and stuff. That's super useful. I don't know if I'd want AI telling me what to buy, though, cause you know, obviously, as a human, I think I know best and don't know best.

Speaker 1:

So yeah, I'm not sure and the ethics behind it too.

Speaker 2:

That's a big conversation I mean you're saying the ads appear there. Does that mean sponsored brands are appearing? Sponsored brand ads are appearing in line. How does that work?

Speaker 1:

so I haven't actually seen any of the ads yet, but what I do see inside the dashboard is that it's the ads are now showing up. Where it shows up, it's kind of there's no data on it. What we suspect here, uh, at the bella vix team and kind of what we've been testing, we think that automatic campaigns is how you get your products in there and typically when amazon rolls out something new that's uh, related to sponsored products, the auto campaigns tend to get first access to it. And the other thing we're experimenting with and we you know just no data, so we're unsure but using conversational queries inside our ad campaigns. So instead of just yoga mats, it might be like best yoga mats for travel and you know, using that as a phrase or broad match just to kind of see what kind of traffic and really just trying to index for Rufus and then just testing.

Speaker 1:

So a lot of it. We're just seeing what can get, where it shows up and when can it get in there. But Amazon is not being very transparent with the data just yet. I'm not even sure if it knows or if it has information, all the API connections or whatever it needs to actually report that data. So we're anxiously anticipating some of this data rolling out within the next couple of months, because they tend to roll a lot of these updates around December as the holidays kick off.

Speaker 2:

Cool, I like it. And before we get deeper into that, can you maybe quickly overview the difference between Rufus AI and Amazon's AI-generated gift guides? Yeah, now that so Rufus AI and Amazon's AI generated gift guides.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, now that. So Rufus is like if you're on the app, it's, you're literally the shop assistant. You can click on like a red no, it's orange, blue and yellow little logo on your toolbar, top or bottom, and then you, literally you conversate with Rufus. It contextualizes it, it makes recommendations and it does it on and off. So it uses Amazon's robust data. But it also pulls from the general web. So you could ask it like, what's the difference between a gas and wood fired fireplace? And it'll pull resources for you. That kind of go deeper into that.

Speaker 1:

The AI Shopping Guide is generative. Amazon has a place for it. It's not on the menu, it's on the main page. You can click into it and there's a URL. I think it's like amazoncom backslash shopping guide or shopping dash guide, but that is something that it generates automatically and it's supposed to be customized to you based on your search behavior. So obviously they're sharing the same data set. But this is like there's no thrills. It's like here's a bunch of items on some categories we think you'd like and it's not available in all categories, but you can see, like watches, apparel, electronics are really popular and they're all in there, and then you, you would just go and it also has recommendations based on your shopping habits and it all shows up just like a buyer guide and you can kind of flip through, you can compare items and it's going to make recommendations. But there's no other engagement outside of that and it completely operates in the background. So it's just scraping its database, matching it with your shopping habits and making recommendations for the holidays pretty much.

Speaker 2:

Cool, and is there anything that you can do on your listing whether it's like reviews, q&a participation or badges that would help you maybe get featured in the shopping guides?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, all of the above and that's actually I'm glad you brought that up. So the badges are big because when it shows up Amazon will say, you know, based on Amazon recommendations or this is the best seller or seller's choice. But we also found and we've been able to get products to index inside of Rufus, which has been pretty exciting and the way what we have found and what we hypothesize because a lot of this is not we can't firmly say this is what led to it but the Q&A so it uses conversational. When people search, they're asking some type of questions. So what we have found is like, if you're using the Q&A section and responding to that, that that does get indexed on the back end and that if it's close enough it will pull products into Rufus as recommendations. So the Q&A has been really big.

Speaker 1:

It scrapes customer reviews. You don't have a lot of control over that, but you do ask your customers to leave reviews. It will do offline communities, so it kind of monitors that. So it's pulling information from all over on top of it's contextualized like what's in the listing title. It's contextualized like what's in the listing title bullets, the description and even the alt text associated with the images. So it is analyzing a lot of data and a lot of that you know, luckily, a lot of that data, we have input, so we can tweak things.

Speaker 1:

And I do want to caveat the remainder of this conversation, just so everybody knows like we don't recommend like Rufus is exciting and we're testing it and we're super excited about it, but we're not dramatically changing our SEO strategy. We're not completely optimizing for Rufus because a lot of this is still hypothetical. So what we're doing is we're testing and we're taking small aspects and tweaking it, but, in all honesty, it's exciting but it's not all the way there yet. So, as listeners are listening, I want to make it clear we're going to chat about some stuff, we recommend testing some things, but I don't recommend stripping your whole listing and making it Rufus friendly. It may be a little early for that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah Well, it'd be cool if it was eventually I mean we could get up in front of the curve. But what would be some tips you would give for optimizing your listing, or changes you can make which shouldn't affect everything else, but that might help with your indexing or being featured in guides?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think like the biggest thing. So first of all is like when you are conceptualizing your keyword research, it's good to think conversational so like. So if somebody's searching yoga mat, for example, or think like how they would search for yoga mats, like what's the best lightweight yoga mat for travel, might be an example and so as a bullet that would index for this and do really well, is this yoga mat offers excellent joint support for high intensity workouts, also foldable, lightweight and excellent for travel. So like being able to contextualize how people might search, the questions they might ask and how you can kind of anticipate that and work it into your listings, so through bullets, through your title, is going to be the best way to kind of start getting this going.

Speaker 2:

We love to do the.

Speaker 1:

Q&As, because that's super easy. It doesn't require you to drastically change your listings, monitor them. You can submit your own questions and answer them. Having a fact sheet on your listing is definitely helpful. And those are the two major ways. Oh, and then the images making sure that you have all text and it describes what your image actually is. I have read through Amazon Science that it does have the ability, like the Cosmos update and all that stuff, that it does scrape images. It's able to look at it and understand what's on that image. I'm unsure of how much of that it's actually doing now and able to apply to Rufus, but these are all things to consider. So the biggest takeaway is update your title and bullets. Conceptualize, like contextually, how people might conversate, asking around your product, check Rufus itself, go in, ask questions and see if you can index. And then, of course, doing the Q&As and making sure you're participating on that end and the images.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that makes sense, and you also mentioned about some things you can do for ads. What, what kind of initial things could people be doing with their ads and what kind of budgets would you give them?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, super small budgets, I would say, if you're particularly searching for this, but conversational queries. So I would create some manual campaigns. I'd probably do phrase or exact match and I would do what you might say on a fact sheet. And a great thing you can do is kind of go through your competitors' Q&As, go check websites of your competitors, or even your own, and start putting those as keywords inside of ad groups and just see if you're getting the type of traffic and if it does make sense to continue. And then, of course, monitor Rufus to see if the ads are actually showing up inside there.

Speaker 2:

Oh, that's cool. That'd be very interesting. As Rufus develops and Amazon's AI develops what catches on and what doesn't, isn't it? Because I feel like with AI, at the moment, everyone is testing everything. Yeah exactly, and it's really interesting that what's working in Asia and what Amazon is also trying to do the kind of live selling model which is massive outside of America and is coming into the US now is almost the opposite, isn't it?

Speaker 2:

It's like someone shoving random products in front of you, as opposed to Amazon, you know, telling you exactly what to buy. It's like would you like to buy this? This looks great. You should probably buy this, like with TikTok live and all those types of things like TikTok live selling, which is absolutely huge where I live. It's crazy.

Speaker 1:

That is pretty crazy. So we've done some Amazon live work too. We've had such a tough time getting it to get traction where it made a ton of sense. But I've heard that, I've read into it the live selling, especially in Asia, is used. I wonder, obviously, what that transition, because it will be a little different here, obviously, cultures and everything else, than it is over there. And then, same thing, it's a really good point, it's going to be your exact recommendations, based on what a computer thinks or, uh, what an influencer thinks.

Speaker 2:

So I guess, choose your poison yeah, like, um, the best story, success story I heard a couple of years ago was on tiktok and there was somebody selling dried fish like a snack for like when you're drinking beer in vietnam on uh, on tiktok live, so like I'm sure it's great dried fish, whatever, but anyway, someone just drinking a beer talking about the dried fish and they'd sold 150,000 units for like 10 bucks each in two months. It's like $1.5 million of dried fish in two months through TikTok and imagine the fulfillment headache of sourcing 150,000 units of dried fish. It's an industrial operation moving that much dried fish.

Speaker 1:

Amen to that. It's good problems to have, though I'd rather take those problems than no-sales problems.

Speaker 2:

Oh for sure. But yeah, very interesting. I think there's opportunities in all of this stuff. And yeah, like 11.11 last week, like millions of dollars, like millions of dollars shifted a day through these different live influencers who were just on for four or five hours. It's crazy.

Speaker 1:

I believe it, though. Especially with TikTok shops and stuff taking off, live shopping is definitely a thing.

Speaker 2:

We're getting to the point in the show where we ask for your controversial take. This could be a controversial opinion, debatable opinion related to Amazon or the e-commerce industry. What would you like to share with us? Take so this could be a controversial opinion, debatable opinion related to Amazon or the e-commerce industry. What would you like to share with us?

Speaker 1:

Beautiful. I'm going to stick on the Rufus side and I'm going to say that Rufus and generative AI is going to crush small businesses. While it appears now that it gives a lot of small sellers a lot of opportunity to optimize their listings, what I think it's going to do, it's going to commoditize a lot of those small sellers and take away their ability to be unique in a specific category, and I also think of how robust AI can be, that it's going to take a really specialized skill in order to optimize for that, and I think that larger organizations are going to be able to afford that talent and be able to like elevate their brands versus some of these small sellers. So so that's my take love it.

Speaker 2:

I'm gonna be super interested to see what happens, whether it's gonna be. I mean, it could go either way, couldn't it?

Speaker 1:

so of course, it's gonna be really interesting to watch e-commerce over the next few years and see where things go yeah, it's crazy, but it's like every generation they shop differently, so I'm not surprised that, uh, as my kids get older, how they shop is going to be completely different. They might be like you guys searching a search bar that's so old-fashioned. I have a microchip. You know, who knows?

Speaker 2:

yeah, yeah. Well, I mean the they say the younger generation now isn't into any of the stuff we were into they don't want to get cars they don't want to drink and they don't want to have sex, so I don't know what they're doing.

Speaker 1:

What are the world coming to?

Speaker 2:

Exactly no one's going to reproduce, Basically no last generation.

Speaker 1:

We will see.

Speaker 2:

We will. So if people want to reach out, ask more about Rufus or any of the other things that you do, what's the best way to get in touch with you? Will.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, check me out on LinkedIn. A direct message is fine. I'm pretty active, I post pretty regularly. Or you can email me at hello, at belevixcom, and those are the best places to reach out and find us. And thanks, john, appreciate being on the show.

Speaker 2:

Thanks for coming and hopefully well, this is the first episode about AI, so we hopefully have a lot of listeners listening in learning about Rufus, and if you like this episode, please do like wherever you see us, whether that's on a platform or anywhere else. If you leave a review, it just helps us rank higher. And yeah, thank you so much.

People on this episode

Head Shot

John Cavendish

Host