Fixing listing issues

Fixing listing issues

When you push a product to Amazon, Amazon inspects it against the rules for that product type in that marketplace, and it will tell you what it thinks. Sometimes it refuses the listing outright. Sometimes it accepts the listing but tells you it would like more. Both of these come back into the app as listing issues, and this page is about reading them and clearing them.

Listing issues are normal. Amazon's catalogue rules are strict, they differ by product type and by country, and almost every merchant hits a few on the first push. They are not a sign that something has gone wrong with the app.

Where issues appear

The app surfaces issues in three places, at three levels of detail.

The Issues badge on Product Sync. In your product list, any product Amazon has complained about carries an Issues status badge. This is your quick scan of the catalogue.

The Amazon issues & warnings card on the product detail page. Open a product and this card gives you the actual text Amazon returned, issue by issue. This is where you do the real work, because it names the specific attribute or rule that failed.

The Sync health card on the Dashboard. This rolls everything up into healthy, warning and error counts across your listings, and lists the problem items (up to eight of them) with Re-check, Re-push and Open actions right there. It is the fastest way in when you have just pushed a batch and want to know what landed.

Errors and warnings are not the same thing

The distinction is worth internalising, because it tells you how urgently to act.

An error means Amazon rejected the listing. Nothing is live. Your product is not for sale on Amazon and will not be until you fix the error and push again. Errors always need action.

A warning means Amazon accepted the listing and it is live, but Amazon would like more from you. Warnings usually concern attributes that are recommended rather than required for the product type. A listing with warnings sells. However, warnings are worth clearing anyway, because the attributes Amazon nags about are frequently the ones its search and filters use, so an incomplete listing tends to be a less discoverable one.

The common categories

Nearly everything you will see falls into one of four buckets.

A missing required attribute for the product type

This is the most common issue by far. Every Amazon product type has its own required attribute set. A t-shirt needs things a hard drive does not. The app fetches Amazon's schema for your chosen product type and validates against it, and anything missing surfaces here.

The message reads: "Missing required attributes: {fields}. Provide them via Shopify data or Field mapping (Product Sync settings)."

That message tells you the fix. Either put the value into Shopify where the app already expects to find it, or use Field mapping to point that Amazon attribute at somewhere else you keep the data: a different Shopify field, a metafield of your own, or a static value that applies to every product in the push.

A missing or invalid product identifier

Amazon usually needs a globally unique identifier to know which catalogue entry you are selling against. That comes from your Shopify barcode, and the app infers whether it is a UPC, an EAN or a GTIN from how many digits it has.

If the barcode is blank, or has the wrong number of digits, or is simply not a real registered code, Amazon rejects it. The fix is in Shopify, on the product's variant, not in the app. If you genuinely do not have barcodes for your products, you will need either to buy legitimate GTINs or to apply to Amazon for a GTIN exemption for your brand.

Image requirements

Amazon has firm rules about the main image: it must show the product on a plain white background, it must fill most of the frame, and it must meet a minimum resolution. Marketing images with text, borders, watermarks or lifestyle backgrounds get rejected as the main image, even though they are fine as additional images.

By default the app sends your Shopify featured image as the main image and the next eight as additional images. If Amazon rejects your main image, either change the featured image in Shopify or use Field mapping to point Amazon's main image at a different source.

A product type mismatch

Sometimes the listing is accepted, but into the wrong part of Amazon's catalogue, or Amazon complains that the attributes you sent do not belong to the type you declared. This happens when the Amazon product type chosen for the Shopify category is not really the right one.

The fix is to correct the type. Product type is set per Shopify category and per marketplace, and it applies to every product in that category, so correcting it once corrects the whole group. See Amazon product types.

The fix workflow

Whatever the issue, the loop is the same.

  1. Read the issue on the product detail page. Amazon's own text is shown, so take it literally. It names the attribute.
  2. Fix the source. Either edit the product in Shopify (a missing description, a wrong barcode, a bad featured image, a blank vendor), or change where the app looks for that attribute using Field mapping, or correct the Amazon product type.
  3. Re-push. The fix does not reach Amazon by itself. Push the product again so Amazon receives the corrected data.
  4. Re-check. This pulls the latest status back from Amazon so you can see whether the issue has cleared.

Why the status says Submitted

Amazon does not accept or reject a listing while you wait. It queues your submission and processes it in its own time, which is usually a couple of minutes and occasionally longer.

That is what the Submitted badge means. Amazon has your data and has not finished with it. It is not an error, and it is not a hang. If a product sits on Submitted, give it a few minutes and then use Re-check to pull the current status from Amazon. It will resolve to Listed if Amazon was happy, or to Issues if it was not.

The practical consequence is that pushing and immediately expecting a green Listed badge will disappoint you. Push, do something else, come back and re-check.

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