Amazon’s Developer Code of Conduct

by Usama Ahmad | Dec 18, 2017 | News & Events

Amazon has recently published a brand new ‘Developer’s Code Of Conduct’ which has significant implications both for us as developers but also for you as sellers.

You can read the full code of conduct here:

http://docs.developer.amazonservices.com/…/DG_CodeOfConduct…

It is quite short but telling. Let me extract the 3 clauses which I think are noteworthy:

• Customers and sellers trust that you will protect information about them. Don’t publicly disclose or share information obtained through MWS (for instance, a seller’s sales revenue or an item’s product description) with any third parties. Do not do this even if you omit or obfuscate the seller’s identity or if you share aggregated seller data without identifying individual sellers.

• Don’t help or allow sellers to violate Amazon’s terms. If you discover that a seller is using your service to violate Amazon terms that apply to the seller, you must immediately notify Amazon and cut off the seller’s MWS access through your service.

• Don’t use robots to programmatically read from (also known as ‘scraping’), or write information to (e.g. creating support contacts), Seller Central or Amazon’s marketplaces

The first clause is important because that puts an end to screenprints and demos using obfuscation. You will notice that ours are literally hand-crafted. No info is obfuscated, but each piece is meticulously replaced by fake data using the browser’s ‘Developers’s Tool’ invoked through the Inspect Element context menu in the browser.

It is further important as it now makes it illegal to provide services like keyword tools, PPC trend analysis, or even product category trends tools or lists (at least, that is how we read it)

The second clause is more significant. If you help a seller to break TOS, you are in Amazon’s cross-hairs. If the developer is in their cross-hairs, where do you think the seller will be?

The third clause is an old chestnut that is easily discounted by both sellers and many of our competitors.

Discuss.

Our First Non-Video Video – You Decide: Will It Be The Last?

by Usama Ahmad | Dec 15, 2017 | News & Events

We at SellerLegend have a big dilemma.

To video or to not video.

Sounds like a simple decision, right? Of course, the answer is to video, surely.

Well, we have several challenges with videoing, which we explain in our knowledgebase like so:

https://docs.sellerlegend.com/…/why-is-there-no-video-trai…/

This is all well and good, but life would be soo much better with videos, wouldn’t it?

Well, here’s a test of a potential mid-way solution which provides us with the agility we need to maintain visual training material, and we would welcome your input.

The tool we use essentially strings together screen prints and commentary and provides a step up from written documentation. But regrettably is not as good as motion video.

So, we’d like your input on the matter. Here’s our first non-video for you to judge.

The tool I mentioned is still in its infancy and does not yet support 16:9 aspect ratio, which is a pain. You’d really want to see the screen prints in … well … full screen. However, we’re assured that that is coming in 1Q18. So we’ll patiently wait.

We have produced a version narrated in English, German, French, and Spanish.

Please let us know whether it is worth us investing in what will essentially result in A LOT of time producing stuff like this.

http://vid.sellerlegend.com/l/e04ojlh7ur-vixue2dgm9

We Are Hiring!

by Usama Ahmad | Dec 13, 2017 | News & Events

Due to our business growth, we are looking for two additional experienced Senior Developers and one Customer Support Analyst.

If you are a Senior Developer and

– Are well-versed in the Amazon MWS and Product Advertising APIs,
– Are an expert on the Amazon Cloud Computing infrastructure (EC2, RDS, AWS, S3, SQS),
– Have a solid foundation in PHP/Laravel,
– Understand machine learning and AI,
– Are a team player, used to work in an international environment where timezones usually work against you
– Can work remotely in a small group of 7 using the industry standard collaborative tools (Slack, Trello, Github and many others)

If you are a Customer Support person and

– Have experience working in a customer-facing role
– Are resourceful, having attention to detail and a readiness to dive headfirst into user issues
– Have genuine curiosity about why things happen and how to fix them, and love getting to the bottom of things
– Have a passion for making sure the customer gets what they need
– Can show demonstrable problem-solving skills, with the ability quickly understand the root of an issue and map out steps to be taken to resolve it
– Can show demonstrable writing skills, with a focus on modifying your tone based on the context (customer’s happiness level, the urgency of the situation, etc.)
– With preferably previous experience with support handing in a startup environment – doing tech support for a product like SellerLegend is very different from working for a run of the mill call centre

Then please get in touch with us at support@sellerlegend.com referencing this post