Amazon Seller account problems? Honesty is the best policy.

 

Amazon Seller account problems

When Amazon Seller account problems arise, it’s tempting to tell Amazon what you think they want to hear. Unfortunately, this can mean fake invoices, doctored documents and false statements.

This short-term solution can destroy your account. If Amazon detects falsified invoices or documentation, they will suspend you – and it can be nearly impossible to come back from this kind of suspension.

On the flip side, telling the truth just might get what you want from Seller Performance. In a recent case, one of our clients had multiple major problems with his accounts. Brutal honesty resulted in a super-fast reinstatement.

Here are a few tips:

1. Don’t rush. Yes, it’s faster and easier to doctor an invoice. Instead, take the time to get the real – and right – documentation.
2. Be clear. Sometimes, the reason you’re in a pickle is a good and valid one. Explain it briefly, with any evidence you can provide to back your story.
3. Don’t give in. It is so tempting to lie because you need your products to sell – right now. It’s better to see lower, slower revenue numbers than to take actions that might kill your account.

Emergency: I can’t log in to my amazon account!

 

For Amazon sellers, can’t log in to my amazon account, it’s a nightmare scenario. They try to log in to their seller account, but just can’t. The error might say something like, “You don’t have permission to access this account,” or worse, “This email address is not associated with an Amazon seller account.”

What’s a seller to do?

First and most importantly, take these steps to protect yourself:

1. Make sure two people in your company have the user name and password for your Amazon seller account. This creates redundancy in case someone is sick, on vacation, gets fired or leaves.
2. Beyond those two people, don’t spread around your primary user name and password. Keep it safe.
3. For other users, create sub-user accounts. Give each person appropriate permissions – and only the permissions that they need.

If you are locked out of your account, contact Seller Support. If they can’t help, ask them to escalate to engineering.

Why more Amazon safety ASIN suspensions?

 

Amazon safety ASIN suspensions are multiplying

Amazon safety ASIN suspensions are being received by more and more sellers. Typically, this means that an Amazon customer has complained because:

• A food or topical was open when they received it
• A product malfunctioned in a way that caused a hazard
• A food or topical caused an adverse reaction

Why is Amazon quick on the draw? Oftentimes, sellers of private label and imported products have not done any of the testing you would expect from their national brand counterparts.

These violations tend to happen more quickly than those for inauthentic, used, missing parts and other product quality reasons.

Stale Sellers: Don’t Let Expired Inventory Kill your Account

 

Do you sell items with expiration dates via FBA? If your answer is yes, chances are you’re breaking the rules, and putting your ASINs – and maybe your account – in jeopardy.

Darlene loved to sell limited-edition potato chips with unusual flavors. But it was her third account suspension. Why? Potato chips have super-quick expiration dates.

Same for special-edition Oreos sold by Tim. He enjoyed the super-high ROI for these snacks, and he thought that Amazon FBA promised to sell his inventory first-in-first-out. Somehow expired packages kept making their way to customers, yielding soggy cookies and a wave of complaints.

Most sellers don’t pay enough attention to the rules for expired products.
More importantly, they don’t apply best practices that can ensure a good customer experience.

Why should you care? When an Amazon seller sends expired inventory to customers, Amazon sees that as a behavior right up there with selling inauthentic goods. The item is no longer usable. It is trash – and Amazon want better for its customers.

First, let’s talk about the rules.

Here’s what the folks at the FBA warehouse are going by:

• Inventory needs an expiration date if it is a topical or consumable product (including nutritional supplements) for human or animal consumption. And yes, it needs an expiry date even if there is not a date already on the packaging.
• If an item is in the Health and Beauty category, and it has a “period after opening” symbol, it should be marked to expire 900 days after the date it is processed at the fulfillment center.
• Does it have a sell-by or best-by date? Amazon considers that the same as an expiration date.
• If you ship a food or beverage item to FBA, it must have a minimum remaining shelf life of more than 105 days. Items within 50 days of expiration date when they arrive at the warehouse will be marked for disposal.

Now for the parts that most sellers ignore:

• If a product has a consumption period because of regular use, add that period to the 105 days. For example, if you are selling a 120-day supply of vitamins, they need to have a shelf life of at least 225 days.
• Only one expiration date is allowed per ASIN per shipping box. Don’t mix up expiration dates – it will confuse the warehouse and the process.
• If your item has an expiration date, the date must be printed in a font that is 36 points or larger. It should be printed in the format of MM-DD-YYYY or MM-YYYY. If the date is in a different format on the item’s package, it needs to be covered up with the correct format.
• Case-packs, multi-packs and display boxes must have the expiration date on the box or the bundle, as well as each individual item inside the box or bundle.
• Items that are polybagged or bubble wrapped require the expiry sticker on the outside of the package.

Why bother with expiry stickers?

Amazon claims to treat inventory on a first-in-first-out basis. So in theory, your oldest items should sell first. In reality, this simply does not happen.> In addition, too many sellers rely on Amazon to track its inventory expiration dates. Let’s face it. The Amazon FBA warehouse has too much to do as it is. They are not going to track your expiration dates and reliably dispose of old inventory.

What’s an FBA seller to do?

1. Follow the rules. Sticker every individual item with an expiry date. Amazon asks for large type because it is machine readable. This dramatically improves your chances that old, expired inventory will not be sold to a customer.
2. Track your expiration dates by inbound shipment. Create a unique MSKU for different expiration dates to ensure that old MSKU’s are sold out before new MSKUs are sent in to the warehouse.
3. When your items are within 50 days of expiration, pull them from the warehouse immediately.
4. Don’t expect customers to translate. If a product has a “period after opening” or lot number, do the research. Determine the appropriate date with the manufacturer, and label it accordingly with an expiration date.

What’s an MFN seller to do?

1. If it’s hard to read, add a label. Many sellers in Health and Personal Care assume that MFN shipments don’t need expiration dates. While this is technically true, it can lead to problems. Customers want to know the expiration date. If it’s difficult to decipher, add a sticker with the correct date.
2. If it’s from overseas, add a label. Products from other countries often put expiry dates in DD-MM-YYYY format. This can lead to complaints of expired products. Add a sticker so that customers are not confused.
3. If it has a lot number or “period after opening” date, add a label. Again, reassure your customers. Tell them when the expiration date actually is, so they will not accuse you of selling old product.

Need more strategies to ensure you always sell fresh, usable product? Call on Riverbend Consulting for ideas and advice.

Understanding Machines: An Open Standard For JavaScript Functions

As developers, we always seek ways to do our job better, whether by following patterns, using well-written libraries and frameworks, or what have you. In this article, I’ll share with you a JavaScript specification for easily consumable functions. This article is intended for JavaScript developers, and you’ll learn how to write JavaScript functions with a universal API that makes it easy for those functions to be consumed. This would be particularly helpful for authoring npm packages (as we will see by the end of this article).
There is no special prerequisite for this article. If you can write a JavaScript function, then you’ll be able to follow along. With all that said, let’s dive in.

What Are Machines?

Machines are self-documenting and predictable JavaScript functions that follow the machine specification, written by Mike McNeil. A machine is characterized by the following:

• It must have one clear purpose, whether it’s to send an email, issue a JSON Web Token, make a fetch request, etc.
• It must follow the specification, which makes machines predictable for consumption via npm installations.

As an example, here is a collection of machines that provides simple and consistent APIs for working with Cloudinary. This collection exposes functions (machines) for uploading images, deleting images, and more. That’s all that machines are really: They just expose a simple and consistent API for working with JavaScript and Node.js functions.

Features of Machines

• Machines are self-documenting. This means you can just look at a machine and knows what it’s doing and what it will run (the parameters). This feature really sold me on them. All machines are self-documenting, making them predictable.
• Machines are quick to implement, as we will see. Using the machinepack tool for the command-line interface (CLI), we can quickly scaffold a machine and publish it to npm.
• Machines are easy to debug. This is also because every machine has a standardized API. We can easily debug machines because they are predictable.

Are There Machines Out There?

You might be thinking, “If machines are so good, then why haven’t I heard about them until now?” In fact, they are already widely used. If you’ve used the Node.js MVC framework Sails.js, then you have either written a machine or interfaced with a couple. The author of Sails.js is also the author of the machine specification.
In addition to the Sails.js framework, you could browse available machines on npm by searching for machinepack, or head over to http://node-machine.org/machinepacks, which is machinepack’s registry daemon; it syncs with npm and updates every 10 minutes.
Machines are universal. As a package consumer, you will know what to expect. So, no more trying to guess the API of a particular package you’ve installed. If it’s a machine, then you can expect it to follow the same easy-to-use interface.
Now that we have a handle on what machines are, let’s look into the specification by analyzing a sample machine.

The Machine Specification

    module.exports = {
  friendlyName: 'Do something',
  description: 'Do something with the provided inputs that results in one of the exit scenarios.',
  extendedDescription: 'This optional extended description can be used to communicate caveats, technical notes, or any other sort of additional information which might be helpful for users of this machine.',
  moreInfoUrl: 'https://stripe.com/docs/api#list_cards',
  sideEffects: 'cacheable',
  sync: true,

  inputs: {
    brand: {
      friendlyName: 'Some input',
      description: 'The brand of gummy worms.',
      extendedDescription: 'The provided value will be matched against all known gummy worm brands. The match is case-insensitive, and tolerant of typos within Levenstein edit distance <= 2 (if ambiguous, prefers whichever brand comes first alphabetically).',
      moreInfoUrl: 'http://gummy-worms.org/common-brands?countries=all',
      required: true,
      example: 'haribo',
      whereToGet: {
        url: 'http://gummy-worms.org/how-to-check-your-brand',
        description: 'Look at the giant branding on the front of the package. Copy and paste with your brain.',
        extendedDescription: 'If you don\'t have a package of gummy worms handy, this probably isn\'t the machine for you. Check out the `order()` machine in this pack.'
      }
    }
  },

  exits: {
    success: {
      outputFriendlyName: 'Protein (g)',
      outputDescription: 'The grams of gelatin-based protein in a 1kg serving.',
    },
    unrecognizedFlavors: {
      description: 'Could not recognize one or more of the provided `flavorStrings`.',
      extendedDescription: 'Some **markdown**.',
      moreInfoUrl: 'http://gummyworms.com/flavors',
    }
  },

  fn: function(inputs, exits) {
    // ...
    // your code here
    var result = 'foo';
    // ...
    // ...and when you're done:
    return exits.success(result);
  };
}

The snippet above is taken from the interactive example on the official website. Let’s dissect this machine.
From looking at the snippet above, we can see that a machine is an exported object containing certain standardized properties and a single function. Let’s first see what those properties are and why they are that way.

• friendlyName
  This is a display name for the machine, and it follows these rules:
  • is sentence-case (like a normal sentence),
  • must not have ending punctuation,
  • must be fewer than 50 characters.
• description
  This should be a clear one-sentence description in the imperative mood (i.e. the authoritative voice) of what the machine does. An example would be “Issue a JSON Web Token”, rather than “Issues a JSON Web Token”. Its only constraint is:
  • It should be fewer than 80 characters.
• extendedDescription (optional)
  This property provides optional supplemental information, extending what was already said in the description property. In this field, you may use punctuation and complete sentences.
  • It should be fewer than 2000 characters.
• moreInfoUrl (optional)
  This field contains a URL in which additional information about the inner workings or functionality of the machine can be found. This is particularly helpful for machines that communicate with third-party APIs such as GitHub and Auth0.
  • Be sure to use a fully qualified URL, like http://xyz.abc/qwerty
• sideEffects (optional)
  This is an optional field that you can either omit or set as cacheable or idempotent. If set to cacheable, then .cache() can be used with this machine. Note that only machines that do not have sideEffects should be set to cacheable.
• sync (optional)
  Machines are asynchronous by default. Setting the sync option to true turns off async for that machine, and you can then use it as a regular function (without async/await, or then()).

inputs

This is the specification or declaration of the values that the machine function expects. Let’s look at the different fields of a machine’s input.

• brand
  Using the machine snippet above as our guide, the brand field is called the input key. It is normally camel-cased, and it must be an alphanumeric string starting with a lowercase letter.
  • No special characters are allowed in an input key identifier or field.
• friendlyName
  This is a human-readable display name for the input. It should:
  • be sentence-case,
  • have no ending punctuation,
  • be fewer than 50 characters.
• description
  This is a short description describing the input’s use.
• extendedDescription
  Just like the extendedDescription field on the machine itself, this field provides supplemental information about this particular input.
• moreInfoUrl
  This is an optional URL that provides more information about the input, if needed.
• required
  By default, every input is optional. What that means is that if, by runtime, no value is provided for an input, then the fn would be undefined. If your inputs are not optional, then it’s best to set this field as true because this would make the machine throw an error.
• example
  This field is used to determined the expected data type of the input.
• whereToGet
  This is an optional documentation object that provides additional information on how to locate adequate values for this input. This is particularly useful for things like API keys, tokens, and so on.
• whereToGet.description
  This is a clear one-sentence description, also in the imperative mood, that describes how to find the right value for this input.
• extendedDescription
  This provides additional information on where to get a suitable input value for this machine.

exits

This is the specification for all possible exit callbacks that this machine’s fn implementation can trigger. This implies that each exit represents one possible outcome of the machine’s execution.

• success
  This is the standardized exit key in the machine specification that signifies that everything went well and the machine worked without any errors. Let’s look at the properties it could expose:
  • outputFriendlyName
    This is simply a display name for the exit output.
  • outputDescription
    This short noun phrase describes the output of an exit.

Other exits signify that something went wrong and that the machine encountered an error. The naming convention for such exits should follow the naming convention for the input’s key. Let’s see the fields under such exits:

• description
  This is a short description describing when the exit would be called.
• extendedDescription
  This provides additional information about when this exit would be called. It’s optional. You may use full Markdown syntax in this field, and as usual, it should be fewer than 2000 characters.

You Made It!

That was a lot to take in. But don’t worry: When you start authoring machines, these conventions will stick, especially after your first machine, which we will write together shortly. But first…

Machinepacks

When authoring machines, machinepacks are what you publish on npm. They are simply sets of related utilities for performing common, repetitive development tasks with Node.js. So let’s say you have a machinepack that works with arrays; it would be a bundle of machines that works on arrays, like concat(), map(), etc. See the Arrays machinepack in the registry to get a full view.

Machinepacks Naming Convention

All machinepacks must follow the standard of having “machinepack-” as a prefix, followed by the name of the machine. For example, machinepack-array, machinepack-sessionauth.

Our First Machinepack

To better understand machines, we will write and publish a machinepack that is a wrapper for the file-contributors npm package.

Getting Started

We require the following to craft our machinepack:

1. Machinepack CLI tool
   You can get it by running:
   

   npm install -g machinepack
   

Note: I am assuming that Node.js and npm are already installed on your machine.

Generating Your First Machinepack

Using the CLI tools that we installed above, let’s generate a new machinepack using the machinepack generator. Do this by first going into the directory that you want the generator to generate the files in, and then run the following:

yo machinepack

The command above will start an interactive process of generating a barebones machinepack for you. It will ask you a couple of questions; be sure to say yes to it creating an example machine.
Note: I noticed that the Yeoman generator has some issues when using Node.js 12 or 13. So, I recommend using nvm, and install Node.js 10.x, which is the environment that worked for me.
If everything has gone as planned, then we would have generated the base layer of our machinepack. Let’s take a peek:

DELETE_THIS_FILE.md
machines/
package.json
package.lock.json
README.md
index.js
node_modules/

The above are the files generated for you. Let’s play with our example machine, found inside the machines directory. Because we have the machinepack CLI tool installed, we could run the following:

machinepack ls

This would list the available machines in our machines directory. Currently, there is one, the say-hello machine. Let’s find out what say-hello does by running this:

machinepack exec say-hello

This will prompt you for a name to enter, and it will print the output of the say-hello machine.
As you’ll notice, the CLI tool is leveraging the standardization of machines to get the machine’s description and functionality. Pretty neat!

Let’s Make A Machine

Let’s add our own machine, which will wrap the file-contributors and node-fetch packages (we will also need to install those with npm). So, run this:

npm install file-contributors node-fetch --save

Then, add a new machine by running:

machinepack add

You will be prompted to fill in the friendly name, the description (optional), and the extended description (also optional) for the machine. After that, you will have successfully generated your machine.
Now, let’s flesh out the functionality of this machine. Open the new machine that you generated in your editor. Then, require the file-contributors package, like so:

const fetch = require('node-fetch');
const getFileContributors = require('file-contributors').default;

global.fetch = fetch; // workaround since file-contributors uses windows.fetch() internally

Note: We are using node-fetch package and the global.fetch = fetch workaround because the file-contributors package uses windows.fetch() internally, which is not available in Node.js.
The file-contributors’ getFileContributors requires three parameters to work: owner (the owner of the repository), repo (the repository), and path (the path to the file). So, if you’ve been following along, then you’ll know that these would go in our inputs key. Let’s add these now:

...
 inputs: {
    owner: {
      friendlyName: 'Owner',
      description: 'The owner of the repository',
      required: true,
      example: 'DominusKelvin'
    },
    repo: {
      friendlyName: 'Repository',
      description: 'The Github repository',
      required: true,
      example: 'machinepack-filecontributors'
    },
    path: {
      friendlyName: 'Path',
      description: 'The relative path to the file',
      required: true,
      example: 'README.md'
    }
  },
...

Now, let’s add the exits. Originally, the CLI added a success exit for us. We would modify this and then add another exit in case things don’t go as planned.

exits: {

    success: {
      outputFriendlyName: 'File Contributors',
      outputDescription: 'An array of the contributors on a particular file',
      variableName: 'fileContributors',
      description: 'Done.',
    },

    error: {
      description: 'An error occurred trying to get file contributors'
    }

  },

Finally let’s craft the meat of the machine, which is the fn:

 fn: function(inputs, exits) {
    const contributors = getFileContributors(inputs.owner, inputs.repo, inputs.path)
    .then(contributors => {
      return exits.success(contributors)
    }).catch((error) => {
      return exits.error(error)
    })
  },

And voilà! We have crafted our first machine. Let’s try it out using the CLI by running the following:

machinepack exec get-file-contributors

A prompt would appear asking for owner, repo, and path, successively. If everything has gone as planned, then our machine will exit with success, and we will see an array of the contributors for the repository file we’ve specified.

Usage In Code

I know we won’t be using the CLI for consuming the machinepack in our code base. So, below is a snippet of how we’d consume machines from a machinepack:

    var FileContributors = require('machinepack-filecontributors');

// Fetch metadata about a repository on GitHub.
FileContributors.getFileContributors({
  owner: 'DominusKelvin',
  repo: 'vue-cli-plugin-chakra-ui',
   path: 'README.md' 
}).exec({
  // An unexpected error occurred.
  error: function (){
  },
  // OK.
  success: function (contributors){
    console.log('Got:\n', contributors);
  },
});

Conclusion

Congratulations! You’ve just become familiar with the machine specification, created your own machine, and seen how to consume machines. I’ll be glad to see the machines you create.

Resources

• “Getting Started”, node machine
• file contributors, npm

Yeoman scaffolding tool
Install it globally by running:

 npm install -g yo

Machinepack Yeomen generator
Install it like so:

npm install -g generator-machinepack

7 Ways to Provide Amazon-Style Customer Service

 

Earth’s most customer-centric company. The unofficial creed of Amazon.com. A place where the customer comes first, last and always.

Amazon sets a high bar. In  most situations the customer usually gets the benefit of the doubt. This tendency translates into:

• Acceptance of late returns, past the 30-day window
• A blind eye to used items, opened items and even old, nasty items that are returned for an exchange or refund
• Refunds, concessions and gift cards for even the smallest misstep – or no misstep at all

While it can be frustrating for third-party sellers, Amazon’s customer-focused policies have created a loyal customer base willing to:

• Pay subscription fees for Prime delivery
• Accept a premium for items that are delivered quickly
• Give third-party sellers a willing and able group of millions of potential customers

What does this mean for third-party Amazon sellers?

Amazon expects its third-party sellers to offer the same kind of high-end customer service assistance that it does.
If a seller doesn’t live up to those standards, what happens? Warnings, suspensions and other costly enforcement actions can be the result of:

• A-to-z claims against merchant-fulfilled sellers
• Negative feedback that is ever-harder to remove
• Negative product reviews for private-label sellers
• Fewer repeat sales to happy customers

As every good seller knows, A-to-z claims plus negative feedback creates a high Order Defect Rate. And this can create an account suspension.

Best practices for Amazon customer service

Don’t put black marks on your Amazon account by mistreating customers. Follow Amazon’s lead to provide amazing customer service. This will reduce your risk – and your blood pressure.

1. Answer customer messages quickly. Shoot for an average response time under eight hours. Amazon answers even faster, so a long wait makes customers antsy.
2. Write excellent customer service messages. Chances are, your company receives the same five to 10 customer questions time and again. Create high-quality templates to answer customer questions, and require your customer service folks to use them every time. Ensure the tone is friendly and concerned. And provide the exact information they requested. If you don’t like your customer service messages, hire someone to write templates. (Call us!)
3. Apologize when needed. Don’t hesitate to take responsibility when the customer is unhappy – even if it wasn’t completely your fault.
4. Pay for quality shipping – especially overseas. Not all package delivery services are created equal. Ensure that you choose reliable, high-quality carriers. Cheaper is not always better.
5. Look for trends. Even when your customers don’t reach out to you directly, they are leaving clues about your business. High returns show dissatisfaction with specific ASINs. Bad feedback or negative reviews reveal problems with orders or products. Run reports weekly and uncover the biggest problem areas. Solve two problems a week, and soon your business will be more profitable than ever.
6. Hit the refund button – fast. Don’t make customers beg for refunds. If they are unhappy, just give the money back, if at all possible. This will head off all manner of complaints and customer service problems. Set a price point cutoff. If The price of the item is below X, your customer service team is empowered to immediately provide a refund.
7. Never, ever argue. Customers can be frustrating. And let’s face it – not everybody is honest. Some art trying to get something for nothing. That simply doesn’t matter to Amazon. Treat every customer as a valuable, important person – no matter what

Amazon is refusing to release funds for some suspended sellers!

 

Amazon is refusing to release funds, they are permanently holding funds for some suspended sellers

Amazon appears to have made a recent policy change, where it will permanently attached the funds of some suspended sellers. Yes, Amazon is refusing to release funds.

This has happened in the past in cases of counterfeit or fraud. But now, Amazon is going after sellers who it deems have engaged in a pattern of repeatedly breaking Amazon’s rules.

For example, a client was selling products that Amazon deems “prohibited” for sale on the platform, even though they are legal in all 50 states. Amazon didn’t like the way our client listed the products. Instead of simply suspending him, they also attached the nearly $20,000 in his account – and say they will never give it back.

We are working to get the funds released and will keep the community updated.

The moral of the story? Don’t engage in a pattern of breaking Amazon’s rules. They will figure it out. And now, they might just be a lot more aggressive about ensuring you never do it again.

Rescue your Brand from the Ravages of Amazon’s Vendor Program

 

Is being an Amazon Vendor killing your profit margins?

We are hearing a growing refrain in the Amazon marketplace. An increasing number of vendors are approaching us with the complaint that their relationship with Amazon has turned into a one-sided affair.

These vendors – whether working via the Vendor Central or Vendor Express programs – are working hard to provide the inventory, product quality and responsiveness requested by Amazon. However, in return, they feel like they are:

• Hammered by downward pricing pressure
• Unable to offer product variations they know would be successful
• Frequent victims of stock-outs and lost sales
• Unsupported by promotions and marketing efforts
• Beaten down by the Amazon warehouse, which confuses product variations, fulfills orders incorrectly, receives inbound shipments slowly and inaccurately, and loses or damages large quantities of inventory
• Nickel-and-dimed by mandatory co-op fees, return fees and operational fees

For these vendors, we suggest a new strategy that has the potential to increase sales, while almost certainly improving profitability.

Basic Amazon selling account types

There are three ways a company can sell on Amazon:

1. A third-party seller account, where the company sells directly to Amazon’s customers. Orders can be Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA) or fulfilled by the seller.
2. A Vendor Express account, which is designed to transition third-party sellers to Amazon’s wholesale program. Vendors in this program have extremely limited power. Amazon sets products’ wholesale pricing with an algorithm, and it fluctuates frequently.
3. A Vendor Central account, which is available by invitation only to large and successful brands. Prices and terms are negotiated up-front with Amazon.

How vendors can take their power back

Many vendors have never had a third-party selling account. They were recruited by Amazon for the power and attractiveness of their brands. Others were once third-party sellers, but transitioned to vendor accounts in hopes of an easier, smoother and more profitable experience on Amazon.

For many brands, there is a better way. Either transition exclusively to a third-party seller account, or sell with some combination of third-party and vendor accounts. By going direct to the consumer, with Amazon as more of a hands-off middle-man rather than a wholesale relationship, companies can benefit from higher margins and better control of their catalog of products.

By moving at least some listings to a third-party selling account, vendors can reap incredible benefits:

• Control of their own pricing. MAP won’t be violated, and margins can be protected.
• Ability to list all product variations, which greatly enhances revenue potential.
• Creation of new listings with multi-packs and variety packs. This can result in much higher margins, since consumers will pay a premium, while pick-and-pack fees are lower per the quantity sold.
• Control over promotions and pay-per-click ads to drive additional demand.
• Ability to edit and enhance listings that were neglected by Amazon Vendor account managers.

But isn’t that a lot of work?

Yes, it is. But there is a solution.

Companies like Riverbend Consulting offer Premium Account Management. We handle all of the difficult details that make running a third-party selling account challenging – especially for companies that are accustomed to the wholesale model.

Fist, we focus on profitability:

1. We analyze your catalog of ASINs and determine which are most likely to be more successful sold on your own account, rather than Vendor.
2. We examine opportunities to add successful listings, such as variations, multipacks and SKUs passed over by Amazon.com.
3. We enhance listings, improve SEO and launch pay-per-click campaigns to drive volume.

Then, we take on the day-to-day details of managing your third-party selling account:

• Listing errors and enhancements
• Listing optimization and keywords
• Listing photography
• Ongoing ad campaigns
• Coordination with FBA prep and warehousing
• Inbound FBA shipments
• Inventory reconciliation and reimbursement
• Customer service messages
• Negative feedback removal
• Performance notifications
• Stranded inventory

Useful Figma Plugins And Tools

 Useful Figma plugins that will help you fix all the little slowdowns and boost your productivity. From color management and image assets to SVG shapes and animation. That’s our new guide to Figma.

There are literally thousands of Figma plugins out there. Which ones do you use? How often do you use them? We’ve scouted for some of the useful ones, and we hope that the ones listed below will help you improve your workflow. Whether you’re just starting out with Figma or have been using it for a good while now, this post will give you just enough pointers to make your design process faster and smoother.

3D Views and Perspectives in Figma #

Vectary 3D Elements makes eveything just a little bit more spatial. It’s one of the easier ways of adding 3D mockups to your designs, as well as add layers, wrapping and transforms. You can place your Figma design into a preferred 3D mockup or create your custom 3D element. You can take a closer look at the thorough guide and video about the plugin to get started.

3D perspectives in all kinds and shapes. With Vectary 3D Elements.

Additionally, Figmockups and Clay Mockups 3D include a larger repository of 3D mock-ups, and Fig3D converts objects into 3D models, and you can even group shapes and move them to 3D models together.

Accessibility in Figma #

We all want to design better and inclusive experiences, but sometimes we might be forgetting about just the right color contrast, or a proper tab order. Luckily, there are plenty of Figma plugins for accessibility.

Stark is a full powerhouse on everything accessibility. It includes contrast checking and vision simulators, and it also allows you to reorder your sequences in focus order. It also displays the contrast ratio for any two objects that you select. Alternatively, you can also use Contrast as well.

Meet Stark, an accessibility powerhouse in Figma: with tools for contrast check and vision simulators.

For accessible color palettes, Geenes.app is a reliable and sophisticated tool that allows you to create, maintain, sync and test color palettes and their variations. It’s really difficult to imagine any Figma setup that doesn’t have this plugin installed!

Meet Geenes, a reliable and sophisticated tool that allows you to create, maintain, sync and test color palettes and their variations.

If you need to test how a different font size will impact your layout, Text Resizer helps you to see what exactly happens with increased or decreased font sizes.

Text Resizer helps you see what exactly happens with increased or decreased font sizes.

Animation Editor in Figma #

It shouldn’t be a big revelation that creating animations in Figma doesn’t really require sophisticated external tools like Adobe After Effects. With Figmotion, you have an advanced animation tool right at your fingertips. You select a frame, add an animation, and then navigate the timeframe via a time handle — with the option to update easing, keyframes and anchor points.

Figmotion, an advanced animation tool right at your fingertips in Figma.

If you’d like to dive a bit deeper into animation with Figma, a guide to adding animation to your designs in Figma shows the entire workshop, and various options you have, step-by-step.

Annotations Made Easy in Figma #

How do you usually handle annotations when working with Figma? We came across two annotation kits that make communication on a design a lot smoother and less prone to misunderstandings.

One of them is Annotation Kit 2.0: A variety of sticky notes and measuring lines and tools make it easy to add context and annotations for your team members as you’re working.

The A11y Annotation Kit focuses on accessibility considerations that designers might want to share with developers when handing off a design. Whether it’s adding callouts for elements, indicating focus order, or specifying keyboard interactions, the kit translates some of the often cryptic WCAG wording into easy-to-use stickers that you can use to highlight key parts of the page. All components are pre-filled with the correct CSS or HTML elements.

Annotations With Redlines in Figma #

Annotating a design with detailed measurements and specs to help the developers in charge make sense of it all can be a time-consuming process. Redlines is here to change that. The plugin helps you quickly measure and plot dimensions of any selected object. All you need to do is select one or more layers, customize the redline settings, and choose a redline option to plot.

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Auto Rename Frames and Layers in Figma #

When it comes to organizing your design files, Rename it has got your back. You can batch rename your frames and layers. You can also rename multiple layers at once by applying custom filters. If you want to convert the layer name case from uppercase to lowercase or even camel case, you can use %* with a combination of letters to convert.

Rename-It is quite self-explanatory, allowing you to rename multiple layers and frames at once.

Avatars for Design Mockups in Figma #

Sometimes we need to plug in a bit more than just text strings, and perhaps we need a few more options for our avatars. That’s where UI Faces can help.

Thousands of avatars available straight from Figma: UI Faces.

All avatars are collected from various sources (they are always provided), and they can be filtered by age, gender and emotion, but of course you need to check the source and the license before actually using it. Additionally, take a look at User Profiles.

Brand Logos Embedding in Figma #

Perhaps you’d like to display some brand logos in reviews or testimonials, so how would you go around finding all the right logos? BrandFetch helps you easily insert brand assets into your design without leaving your Figma window. The plugin has a large library of (literally) millions of logos available at your fingertips. There is also a searchable database for you to find what you are looking for.

An encyclopedia for brand logos, Brandfetch.

Charts Embedding in Figma #

Your design process just got a bit less stressful. With Chart, you can create various charts using real or random data easily. The plugin supports copy and paste from Excel, Google sheet, Numbers and it also can sync with Google Sheets and remote JSON. Alternatively, you can also import CSV and JSON files.

Embedding charts is quite effortless with Chart.

Another plugin with a similar but slightly different title is the Charts Figma plugin. With it, you can create dashboards and presentations or pretty much any other type of data visualization. The plugin generates editable charts in your Figma design from simple bar charts to more complex heatmaps. You can also find a detailed guide on how to use the plugin.

Design and embed charts into your Figma with Charts Figma plugin.

Clean Up A Messy Frame in Figma #

Perhaps you’ve dropped a few dozens of icons in a frame, so how would you arrange them in a sensible order? Obviously, we wouldn’t do such a task manually. That’s where LilGrid can help.

Creating order out of chaos: LilGrid organzes items in a grid.

The little helper takes elements and arranges them into a grid automatically. You just need to select what you’d like to organize, hit “Organize to Grid” and the tool takes care of the rest, rearranging only top-level elements on your page. Obviously, there is a one-step undo if you need to restore the initial state.

Clean Figma Projects Before Handoff #

Hidden layers, single-layer groups, X and Y positions that aren’t quite pixel-perfect — the Clean Document plugin takes care of little flaws like these so you don’t have to. A great little helper to polish up your Figma project before handoff.

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Content Placeholders in Figma #

With the Content Reel plugin, you can design layouts quickly and easily by using text strings, images, icons and avatars from the same tool. You can search or browse through the already provided set of data, then add them to your designs or create from scratch.

The plugin also lets you create your own text strings, upload up to 20 images, and make your workflow easier and smoother by pinning your frequently used content on your home screen.

Content Reel helps when you need to plug in content into your designs.

You can also run a Random Name Generator to populate random names into your mock-up.

Color Palettes in Figma #

Understanding gradients, palettes, color theory and psychology are essential to creating pleasant visual designs. Figma has plenty of plugins that take a bulk of this work off your shoulders.

Color Palette provides you with a perfect color palette for your projects. You can choose from a huge library of palettes or search for a specific color code, name or number to apply to your design.

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Palette by Dustin Mierau is useful when you want to generate a color palette from images. This plugin uses machine learning to help you generate a color palette that will best fit your project. You can select up to five shapes and the plugin will help fill in the shapes with colors fitting for your palette.

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When designing around an image, making the right color choice is easier with the Image Palette plugin. It uses any image that you select and generates a color palette from it by selecting the five most prominent colors from the image using a median cut algorithm with a high level of accuracy.

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With UI Gradients and Web Gradients, you do not have to create or select gradients one at a time, but instead, you can add several gradients to groups, texts and frames with just a single click.

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Curve Your Text in Figma #

With the Arc plugin, you can curve your text upwards, downwards, or even into a circle. The plugin adds an additional toolbar for controlling the bending — it’s another question though how developers would implement it.

Arc plugin allows you to curve your text.

Design Tokens in Figma #

Another Figma plugin you might want to add to your toolkit comes from Lukas Oppermann. If you’re tired of the hassle that working with design tokens usually brings along, the Design Token plugin does the job for you: styles and tokens are exported and sent to a GitHub repository and tokens are automatically converted using style dictionary. No need for you to leave Figma. A real timesaver.

Design Systems With Figma #

Imagine you’re making a change in your project’s design system, and it’s immediately cascading through your Figma project. The Design System Manager plugin for Figma makes it possible.

The plugin lets you define or update themeable design tokens in one single panel, manage selected layers grouped by style, and populate a design with real text or image content. To bring your project to life, you can programatically access the design tokens from the GraphQL API or you export them in the format of your choice (CSS, Less, Sass, JSON, YAML, Js, Swift, and Android are supported). A smart solution that makes dealing with design systems a lot more practical.

Device Mockups in Figma #

The quality of your presentation as a designer is almost as important as the design itself. With over 700 device mock-ups scenes, Mockuuups Studio helps you create mockups for products, visual content, or marketing materials with ease and efficiency. You can watch a thorough walkthrough video on how to use it.

With Mockuuups, you can place your frames into 700+ device mock-ups, without leaving Figma.

Usually mock-ups only look nicer when a device is displayed in a human’s hand, and that’s where All hands mockup generator can help. It includes a large and diverse collection of hands of all shades, shapes and sizes. Select a frame, choose a hand and your designs will be imported into the mockup, all within Figma. You can review the full collection of hands as well.

Human hands are usually better than plain device mock-ups: All Hands Mock-up Generator gets the job done well.

Exporting Figma to HTML, CSS, React #

HTML <> Figma allows you to export your Figma designs to an HTML prototype. You can select individual layers, or enter an URL you’d like to import, and the plugin will import actual styles immediately. There’s also a Chrome extension that captures a web page and imports it as editable Figma layers. In the background, it generates a page.builder.json file which has all the CSS properties of the current page.

Mostly quite reliable: HTML < > Figma allows you to export your Figma designs to an HTML prototype.

There are some limitations though as not all element types and CSS properties are supported. Also, it’s worth keeping in mind that all fonts have to be uploaded to Figma or fallback fonts will be used. Still, the plugin is open-source, has a large community around it, and the creators are actively maintaining it.

Alternatively, there is also an HTML Generator that supports Google Fonts, has dedicated export options and generates HTML, CSS, image assets and SCSS code and Figma To HTML. And if you need something more sophisticated, Anima creates prototypes and converts them to HTML, CSS and React code — without any dependencies. In fact, you can create interactive prototypes, responsive designs and reusable React components out of the box. (The plugin has a free tier, but you will need to sign up for the $31 tier to export the code).

More after jump! Continue reading below ↓

Navigation is often too complex and difficult to use. Let’s fix that! In Designing The Perfect Navigation, Vitaly will explore 100s of practical examples of better mega-dropdowns, hamburgers, carousels, modals and filters. Online, and live. Aug 31 & Sep 1, 2021.

Jump to the workshop ↬

Exporting Figma to Vue.js #

If you want to remove some of the friction that turning a Figma prototype into a working application can bring along, Klaus Schaefer’s open-source plugin Figma-Low-Code is for you. It lets you use Figma designs directly in Vue.js applications.

This low-code approach does not only reduce the hand-off time between designers and developers as well as the amount of front-end code, but also ensures that the Figma design stays the single source of truth. The idea is that you design the prototype in Figma, then use the plugin to add data and method binding. Once you’ve done that, you can use your favorite code editor to implement business logic, and — ta-daa! — your application is ready for deployment. Changes you make to the Figma file are automatically propagated to the web app.

Email Templates in Figma #

There aren’t many people who are very fond of building HTML Emails, but when designing one, we better use some handy little plugins to make the developer’s work a little bit easier. In fact, there is a detailed guide on designing emails in Figma that covers the entire workflow of shipping brand new email designs from scratch.

HTML Email Workflow, from start to finish — a thorough guide to designing emails with Figma.

If you are looking for responsive, production-ready HTML emails for Figma, Emailify will give you dozens of configurable content modules, allow you to customize your text, images, styles and auto-layout settings amongst other features, with no other APIs, apps, or websites required.

Emailify includes dozens of configurable content modules for HTML Emails.

If you aren’t frightened of the idea of HTML Email code being generated for you, Email Templates & Code works with the Marka plugin to actually produce HTML code. You can have customizable emails with designs for newsletters, marketing email and blog-style templates. Also, there are plenty of customizable designs there as well.

Perfect File Structure in Figma #

We all know that it can be hard to think of Figma file structure when you’re completely absorbed in getting all those little UI details right in the design you’re currently working on. However, if you keep file structure in mind right from the very beginning, you can ensure that handoff will be buttery smooth. And you’ll save yourself a lot of cleaning up work once the deadline comes closer. Luis Ouriach published a helpful best-practice guide for structuring your frames in Figma — with consistent naming conventions, descriptive components, and consistent spacing.

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Fonts Preview in Figma #

Switching between typefaces manually can be a little bit tiring, so obviously there are Figma helpers for that. Better Font Picker and Font Preview help you select fonts with a preview.

Font Preview allows you to preview fonts in Figma. No big revelation, but helpful nevertheless.

Google Fonts Pairings for Figma #

If you use Google Fonts, Google Font Pairings can come in handy, too. You can get started at Figma’s Google Fonts page. Each of the fonts comes with a tiny type specimen to get a decent preview of the style and feel of the typefaces used.

Google Fonts Pairings with some lovely type combinations with Google Fonts.

Icons Embedding in Figma #

Having a wide collection of every possible icon out there in one place is arguably one of the best plugin ideas ever. Figma has plugins that contain icon sets in several styles for any type of design project.

Icons8 provides you with a large collection of consistent icons without having to leave your Figma board. It has a library of 120,000+ icons with over 32 popular design styles, searchable and categorized collection, all available in PNG or SVG.

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Iconscout allows you to insert millions of high-quality icons, illustrations, and 3D into Figma. In a designer mode, you can pick your favorite designer and photographer and access their resources directly without searching in the entire library.

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Illustrations Embedding in Figma #

Illustrate with a vector software, then import it into your design, right? You don’t have to do it all the time as Figma comes with plenty of illustration plugins.

With Blush, you can create or mix-and-match illustrations customized to your projects. You can also generate random compositions; plus, new illustrations are being added every week. SVGs and high-resolution images are available on a paid plan.

Mix-and-match illustrations to meet your needs, with Blush.

For lovely icons and illustrations, take a closer look at the Free Popular Illustration library, which includes high quality free illustrations released under a Creative Commons license.

Free illustrations for everyone, with the Free Illustrations Library.

If you want to add a human illustration to your website, Humaaans provides you with already pre-made illustrations of funky and hip people. You can browse from a gallery or search for a specific niche or category.

Humaaans features a large library of pre-made illustrations of people.

Additionally, you can use Storyset with 100s of illustrated concepts available as off-the-shelf illustrations. You can also edit the styles, colors, and background. Plus, you can also animate the illustrations.

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Copy-Paste And Sync Google Sheets in Figma #

Quite often, copy-pasting data from Google Docs into Figma is quite time-consuming and frustrating. Google Sheet is a handy plugin that speeds up the import of your Google Sheets to Figma. Once you install it, you can fetch and sync data from your Google Sheets. There is also a documentation with all the fine details on how to set up a proper sheet structure and how Figma layers should be named to avoid extra work — as well as some examples for you to get started.

Less hassle with the Google Sheets plug-in — plus, you can fetch and sync data from it as well.

Interactive Components And Variants in Figma #

A few weeks ago, Figma launched a beta version of their Interactive Components feature that allows you to create interactive elements that automatically switch between variants (a button changing from hover to a pressed state, for example). What might seem like a little detail, turns out to reduce the amount of frames and connections you usually need to prototype input fields like checkboxes or toggles tremendously.

To dive in deeper into the new feature, Steve Ruiz summarized what it is capable of and what can be achieved with it if you think outside the box (a Minesweeper or Battleship game running in Figma, anyone?). Another great read: Rodrigo Osornio explored the advantages and possibilities which Interactive Components brings along for micro interactions such as input fields, loaders, different kinds of buttons, dropdowns, and subscribe components.

Speaking of components: Luke Cardoni shows how he managed to create a single, content-adaptable, fully customizable, and easily maintainable component with 3,360 variants that serves every possible combination of settings for text input. A mammoth project that illustrates the benefits of Figma’s Variants feature.

Layout Grid in Figma #

We often rely on grids to create design systems where every single interface component is properly aligned. So it shouldn’t come as a big surprise that there is no shortage in layout grid plugins for Figma. Grids Generator allows you to apply a family of various grid style configurations to layouts. Guide Mate is slightly more flexible: it provides shortcuts for commonly used grids and a way to add a custom grid should you need it.

Guide-Mate provides shortcuts for commonly used guides and a way to add custom guides.

Once you have a grid in place, you might want to snap your components to it. Snap to Grid not only creates a custom grid, but also arranges elements on the grid by organizing each object automatically. When the plugin is running, the canvas elements will snap to the grid when moving and scaling. Andreslav Koslov shows how this plugin works in a 3-min video. You can also use keyboard shortcuts Alt + Cmd + P to snap all objects to grid when Figma is online.

Snap To Grid not only creates a custom grid, but also arranges elements on the grid by organizing each object automatically.

Maps Embedding in Figma #

Downloading maps for your project does not have to be a long process because Mapsicle by Chris Arvin can help you to easily insert maps into your Figma designs. The plugin allows you to set your map to a particular location, latitude and longitude which you want for your designs, and voilà, it adds just the right snapshot into your design.

Mapsicle allows you to embed actual maps into your design.

However, if you needed a SVG map of a particular country or region for your design, the Vector Maps Plugin can turn out to be very helpful. You can literally browse for countries or regions and insert them directly into your Figma design with single click. The maps can also be downloaded as SVG or PDF via https://vector.mapcraft.biz/constructor/.

Name Conventions in Figma #

We’ve all been there: When you’re in a rush, naming conventions are a detail that often doesn’t get the attention it deserves. And before you notice it, you end up with a mess of different formatting styles for your page, frame, component, and layer names.

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The Namespaces plugin puts an end to the chaos and neatly names your assets following a scheme that makes sense. Also great to unify different naming conventions when working on a shared file together with others.

Of course we all want to be well-organized, but sometimes we might be just a little bit distracting when naming our frames. That’s when Figma Exporter can help. It lets you select the naming convention you want for your exported files: kebab-case, snake_case or camelCase. The rest will be done automatically!

Figma Exporter takes good care of the names for your frames.

Notepad for Quick Notes in Figma #

If you ever wanted to have a dedicated space in Figma to take notes, ideas and comments while working, Notepad by Dustin Mierau is probably what you were looking for. Notes are automatically saved with your documents and are available to other editors. In a way, you can use Notepad as a shared space for documenting your project with your team. As a side note, you need to reopen Notes to see changes made by other editors if you are working collaboratively.

Taking notes for Figma projects, in Figma, with the Notepad Figma plugin.

Patterns In Your Figma Designs #

Everything is slightly better with patterns! While creating basic patterns is usually quite straightforward, creating custom patterns might be a tricky and intense process, and that’s where Figma’s patterns plug-ins save the day.

The Pattern Hero plugin makes inserts your custom elements into a grid and repeats them to form a pattern. You can repeat or shuffle the patterns, create instances and also work with several templates. If you need to make a pattern, this is a good option to use.

Simple patterns are quite easy to create Pattern-Hero.

Alternatively, Hero Patterns is a collection of SVG background patterns. To create a unique set for yourself, you can mix and match different patterns to come up with a desirable pattern.

You can create more custom patterns by mixing and matching Hero Patterns.

There are way more patterns plugins in Figma, so you can get anything from confetti patterns to trippy generated graphics and geometric shapes.

If you need to set up some sort of a dot grid pattern in your mock-up, Dot Grid will automate the task for you. With the tool, you can easily generate beautiful dot grids to serve as guides throughout your design process on Figma with customizable grid width, grid height, dot size, gap, and dot colors.

Dot-Grid generates dot grids (how surprising!) based on your choice of grid width, height, dot size, gap and dot colors.

Photos Embedding in Figma #

You don’t have to leave Figma to get custom photographic assets for your project. Of course, Unsplash is everyone’s go-to page for high-res images and now it is a plugin on Figma.

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Remove Backgrounds in Figma #

Remove backgrounds allows you to pretty much do just that: remove backgrounds of images easily. No need to manually edit the background of images before adding them to your design. A caveat: you will need a remove.bg account to use the plugin.

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Responsive Design And Testing in Figma #

Not many people resize boxes for living, but as designers, that’s pretty much what we have to do every now and again. In Figma, Breakpoints is one of the many plugins for testing responsive design. It provides a resizable instance of a frame, and works without the plugin window — so everyone on your team can explore the responsive behavior of the frame without having the plugin installed.

Breakpoints is one of the many plugins that create a resizable instance of a frame.

Alternatively, you can also use Responsify, which allows you to select any frame and set custom device sizes, so you can preview what the website or app will look in that particular view. Responsive is similar, and it allows you to test specific edge cases of your responsive layout by clicking on the input frames in the plugin. Nothing groundbreaking, but handy!

Responsify allows you to select any frame and set custom device sizes.

Reverse The Order Of Layers #

Automating small, tedious actions is always a good thing to save you precious time and stay focused on what really matters. When it comes to reversing the order of multiple layers, the Reverse Layer Order plugin could become your new best friend. Just as its name implies, it will reverse the order of two or more layers within the same parent. All you need to do is select them and run the plugin.

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Shapes And SVG in Figma #

Creating basic shapes is easy. However, creating complex shapes might take valuable time that you can’t really afford to lose when working on a project. Figma’s plugins all around shapes and SVG can make your work easier, with a variety of shapes to choose from.

Blobs helps you improve the aesthetics of your design. With blobs, you can create and add organic shapes into your Figma designs using two parameters: complexity and contrast. You can also control how unique a shape is as well as the number of points it has.

Blobs generates organic shapes, and plugs them right into Figma.

Need waves? The Get Waves plugin helps you generate SVG wave patterns for your designs. It can be quite useful when working with charts, graphs or designs with crests and troughs. You just have to choose a curve, adjust the complexity and randomize.

Getting waves into your design with Get Waves Figma Plugin.

If you are trying to create a wave and curve pattern for your design, the Wave & Curve plugin by Andreslav Kozlov can help you generate waves in various patterns. You can also choose the direction of the waves either Top and Bottom, Top, or Bottom.

Wave & Curve generates waves in various patterns.

Finally, To Path helps you put things on a path and can work with texts, shapes, objects, and components. To curve text around a path (a circle, for example), you can install the plugin, then remove circle opacity, select text, and circle, and then use the plugin to link both objects and watch the magic happen.

When you need to place objects on a path, To Path can feel quite magical.

Some other features of the plugin include repeating shapes along any path, editing the original shape or text and reflecting changes in real-time (while the plugin is open), and editing the path afterwards, and again, watch the linked objects change.

Turn Your Designs Into A Slide Deck #

So you have a Figma design that you want to present to a client, your boss, or your team? Pitchdeck is here to help you do just that. The plugin turns your design into animated slide decks or, if you prefer, exports it for PowerPoint, Keynote, or Google. PDF export is also supported, as well as a number of handy features like webcam overlay, video embeds, speaker notes, and more. It’s even possible to record your presentation as a video with microphone audio.

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Table Generator in Figma #

Although designing data tables can be quite time-consuming, the Table Generator plugin makes this easier by helping you automate dealing with tabular data. All you need for table generation is to copy and paste the data (currently in CSV format).

If you need to deal with table, Table Creator Plugin might be quite a helper.

Alternatively, you can also use Table-Paste to paste data from an Excel spreadsheets into styled table rows, or Table-Creator to create resizabled custom-styled tables. A little bonus: you can also update all tables anytime your design changes.

Templates For Wayfinding in Figma #

First, there’s only one person on the Figma project board, then another one joins in, and soon you’ll see the cursors of designers, developers, project managers, content designers, researchers, and many others spread across the screen. You’ve probably experienced this scenario before. But did all of these people actually find the information they needed? Did they have to dig around or was it easily discoverable?

The team at Shopify took these questions as an occasion to rethink the structure of their Figma playground and ensure it meets the diverse needs of teams across the company. Apart from sharing the process in an article, they distilled their findings into a project index template that you can download and use right away. A handy little helper to give everyone involved in your project the context they need, when they need it.

Text Replacement in Figma #

Sometimes you’re in a situation where you need to replace a piece of text in your Figma mockup. No big deal — well, unless that piece of text appears in multiple instances across the design. A fantastic little time-saver for those occasions is Content Buddy.

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Instead of having to look up all instances, components, frames, and groups one by one and changing the text manually, Content Buddy does the heavy lifting for you: It provides you with a list of each unique text content in your design so that you only need to select the items you want to replace and enter the new replacement text — once.

Tracing Images in Figma #

Convert any white and black bitmap images to vectors using the Image Tracer plugin. This plugin saves you the time you’d manually trace with the pen tool or use Illustrator to convert to vectors. On running the plugin, you will see a console on the window with options to help you make edits to your taste.

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Typographic Scale in Figma #

You’ve been there before. You need to look up the right values for a typographic scale of your design, but you don’t have them at hand? Marvin Bruns’ Typescales and Scaale allow you to generate harmonious, responsive typographic scales, based on your choice of ratio — without leaving Figma. As always, you start with a base-value, font-size increments and decrements from that size, and a multiplier.

Better typography with reliable typographic scale: Typescale helps you out when you need it.

Ah, you need to be able to set a custom scale, too? Sam Smith’s Typescale does that for you (yep, it’s a different plugin with a similar name). Also, Textyles generates text styles with a font preview, and if you need to generate vertical rhythm by using a modular type scale, grid, and auto-layout, Heading-Helper has got your back, too.

Finally, Font Scale is helpful when you want to keep the proportions between your body text and headings the same, whether it’s on-screen or paper. Jeremy Church’s Type-Scale is an inspiration for this plugin.

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Upload Images From Mobile in Figma #

We all have been in the situation before where you need to place something on Figma, perhaps just as a sketch or brainstorming session, so you would take a picture, send it to yourself via email, and then paste it in.

Mobile-Upload allows you to upload photos straight into Figma.

With Mobile upload it’s no longer necessary. With the plugin, you can take a picture with your phone upload it directly to Figma. This is quite useful for notebook sketches and brainstorming sessions.

Utility Plugins in Figma #

Have you ever lost resolution when bringing a large image into Figma? Or been frustrated at not being able to input a spacing value for your layers? Or maybe you’ve been unable to resize a frame independently of its contents? Yuan Qing Lim, product designer at Shopify, developed nine useful plugins that solve issues like these.

Utility Plugins for more effective work in Figma.

With the plugins, you can move layers with pixel precision, reisze frames without also resizing their contents, copy a component, insert unblurred large images (beyond the 4096 pixels limitation) and make quick and precise selections.

And if you need a bit more guidance or inspiration, Louis Ouriach has created a best practice advice on how to structure frames in your files to ensure handoff is as smooth as butter.

Wireframing and Prototyping in Figma #

When you are just planning your design, it might come in handy to use wireframing tools to just get a sense of what you are going to design in the first place.

For wireframing in Figma, no conversation will escape the mention of AutoFlow. The plugin allows you to select objects and it will automatically draw an arrow to connect them. A great little helper to display and explain ideas!

Autoflow makes it easy to draw user flows.

Wireframe provides a large set of wireframes, for user flow, prototypes and basic structures. The wireframe components are divided into categories. All files are SVGs, so you can easily edit them for your needs.

Everything for wireframing: Wireframe Figma plugin.

However, sometimes after creating a design, you might want to go back to the wireframe to iterate a bit more, or perhaps create a slightly different flow for your design. Wire Box can be useful for these situtions. It converts your designs from high-fidelity mock-ups to low-fidelity mock-ups, so you can then focus on the overall architecture rather than the fine details of the UI.

When you need to go back to the wireframing whiteboard: Wire-Box.

Finally, you can also use oblique for creating quick shadows, 3D depth and visual perspective, and Wireframer Figma plugin to generate placeholder text for wireframes with just one click.

Conclusion #

In this article, we explored a myriad of Figma tools, plugins and resources that you can use to make your design process easier. There is still a lot that we have not covered but you can explore them on the Figma community here or share your favorite ones in the comments below!

Further Resources

• Free Figma Resources, Tools and Templates
• Speed Up Workflow With Figma Plugins
• Community recommendations for Figma Plugins