B U I L D I N G Y O U R B R A N D

AMAZON
MARKETPL ACE
WEB SERVICE
FOR BRAND
OWN E RS
What you’ll learn
Amazon Marketplace Web Service (Amazon MWS) is an
integrated web service API (Application Program Interface)
that allows you to exchange data on listings, orders, payments,
reports, and more. With Amazon MWS, Amazon listing, order,
and payment data can be integrated into existing workflows
so that selling on Amazon fits seamlessly with your current
business practices.

Building Your Brand - Amazon Marketplace Web Service for Brand Owners 1
 What
is Amazon Marketplace Web Service?

Amazon MWS allows you to build applications

for your seller account and also for other sellers
to help them manage their own businesses.

Here a few examples of API Amazon MWS is a secure environment

applications that you can develop that lets sellers delegate calling rights to
with MWS: developers using MWS APIs. There are no
fees associated, but you must register to start
• Search products using the MWS APIs. All seller accounts,
• Download orders for fulfillment except for Individual-Selling on Amazon
• Confirm shipment accounts, are eligible to use MWS.
• Schedule and receive reports

These API operations are accessible via a web Eligibility

service interface.
Requirements
All Amazon Services accounts, except for
Individual-Selling on Amazon accounts, are
eligible to use MWS.

Building Your Brand - Amazon Marketplace Web Service for Brand Owners 2
 Why
and when should I use Amazon Marketplace Web Service?

Sellers using MWS often have in-house developers, or are developers

themselves who are interested in automating the processes associated
with selling on Amazon. Integrating with MWS enables sellers to automate
processes and increase efficiency when it comes to selling on Amazon so you
can focus on building your brand.

Amazon MWS provides the For Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) sellers,

following features:
Inventory management
Perform batch uploads of inventory, add
products, check inventory levels, examine
pricing information, and other inventory
management tasks.
Order management
Download order information, obtain payment
data, acknowledge orders, and schedule reports.
Reports management
Request a variety of reports as well as query the
status of these reports, and download them.
Amazon MWS also allows you to:
Create inbound shipments
Automate the process for creating labels for
units you ship to an Amazon fulfillment center.
Check status of inbound shipments
Check to see if your shipment has reached
a fulfillment center and, if so, whether the
shipment has been processed.
Submit fulfillment orders
Integrating with Amazon MWS enables
your customers to submit multi-channel
fulfillment orders at any time. There is no lag
time while you process or batch orders.

Tip
Track and manage outbound shipment
requests: Once orders have left an Amazon
fulfillment center, track shipments and
keep your customers aware of arrival times.

Building Your Brand - Amazon Marketplace Web Service for Brand Owners 3
 T U T O R I A L

How
do I get started using Amazon MWS?
There are three options available to sign up for Amazon MWS:

1 Access your own 2 Use an application 3 Allow a developer

Amazon seller or plug-in to access access to your
account with MWS. your Amazon seller Amazon seller
This option is a good account with MWS. account with MWS.
choice when you sign up This a good option when You should use this option
to use Amazon MWS for you want to use a web if you want to authorize a
your own Amazon seller application to access your third-party developer to
account, when you sign Amazon seller account using access your account with
up to use Amazon MWS Amazon MWS. When you Amazon MWS. When you
with a desktop application, register, enter the developer register, enter the developer
or if you are developing a account identifier for the account identifier for the
web application for other web application you’ll be developer you’ll be using.
sellers to use. Amazon MWS using. The final page of the The final page of the
will assign a developer Amazon MWS registration Amazon MWS registration
account identifier to process shows your Seller process shows your Seller
you. When you make ID and MWS Authorization ID and MWS Authorization
Amazon MWS requests, Token. Use these identifiers Token. Give these identifiers
you’ll use the developer in the web application that to the developer.
account credentials that you use.
are associated with your
developer account, plus
the Seller ID for your seller
account.

Building Your Brand - Amazon Marketplace Web Service for Brand Owners 4
 T U T O R I A L

Example: Accessing your own Amazon

seller account with MWS
1 Go to https://developer. 2 Select “I want to access my 3 The next page has the
amazonservices.com and own Amazon seller account MWS credentials you
click Sign up for MWS. with MWS”, and click Next. will need.

Building Your Brand - Amazon Marketplace Web Service for Brand Owners 5
 B E S T P R A C T I C E S

Amazon Marketplace Web Service for Brand Owners

Using MWS requires some technical knowledge. Keep these best practices in mind as you get started.

Tip 1 Tip 2
Use Amazon MWS Scratchpad to Review processing reports for errors.
test processes and feeds before Amazon MWS deals with errors using
going live. standard HTTP Response status codes.
Scratchpad is an application that enables A message is normally sent with the error
you to easily submit query requests using code to explain more about the error so that
any Amazon MWS API section. You can the problem can be fixed or reported.
indicate the API section, the operation, and
any required and optional parameters from 503 Service Unavailable Error Example Code:
the Amazon MWS Scratchpad user interface.
If you are submitting a feed, you can paste
the contents of your feed in the textbox
under the Feed tab. Amazon MWS Scratchpad
automatically creates a valid request
signature, a timestamp, an MD5 header, and
a User-Agent header, and then submits your
request to Amazon MWS. Scratchpad then
displays the XML response from Amazon
MWS.

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 B E S T P R A C T I C E S

Tip 3
Use XML to integrate your systems
with Amazon’s systems to limit
manual intervention.
Your systems can communicate with our
systems using predefined APIs to post
documents to and pull documents from the
Amazon systems. When working with large
amounts of data, it can be convenient to
send and receive data using XML. Once XML
integration is fully implemented and tested,
little or no manual intervention is required.
Tip 4
To use Amazon MWS successfully,
you need to understand throttling.
Throttling is the process of limiting the
number of requests you (or your authorized
developer) can submit to a given operation
in a given amount of time. A request can be
when you submit an inventory feed or when
you make an order report request. Throttling
protects the web service from being
overwhelmed with requests and ensures
all authorized developers have access to the
web service. Each API has its own throttling
limits.

503 Throttling Error Example Code:

Building Your Brand - Amazon Marketplace Web Service for Brand Owners 7
 T E S T I M O N I A L

“ As a brand owner, we care deeply about

everything that happens on Amazon
with one of our own products: every
piece of customer feedback, every
change to how the listing looks,
every statistic in terms of sales
and keyword conversions, etc. It’s
a competitive marketplace, and
moving quickly to notice and fix any
issues makes the difference between
success and failure. Amazon’s MWS
APIs let us innovate and develop
tools that focused on these brand
owner specific needs in ways that
Amazon’s own more general tools
did not yet cover.
”
Seller: Plugable, Wireless Accessories, November 2016

For more information visit the following resources for additional

details and help with MWS.
• Amazon MWS Developer Guide
• Amazon MWS Scratchpad: Amazon MWS Scratchpad Guide.
• Handling Errors: Instructions on handling errors.
• Throttling: Detailed overview of Throttling.

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