A Primer To Barcodes
With the advent of so much new technology such as 3D printing and Print on Demand publishing
, and sites such as Shapeways and Lulu putting these technologies in the hands of the general public, its now possible for almost anyone to create and market their own mass-produced products online with no up-front investment. To sell items through either E-bay or Amazons Marketplace you will simply need an Amazon account. However if youre planning on selling items through either the main Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk stores, which will greatly increase your market and therefore your sales, you will now also need a barcode or ISBN in order to so.
A barcode is a unique optical pattern thats readable by machine such as an optical scanner (AKA barcode readers) and used at most retail outlets in order to identify an item for sale and in order to retrieve relevant information such as the price, any special offers, and the date. Most commonly these are formed of a set of parallel lines of varying widths and spacing, but they also come in dots, squares, patterns and some stylistic images. This then allows a store to automatically retrieve data regarding products without having to memories the details of everything in stock and can also be used to flag up problems and issues. This can prevent customers from being charged the wrong amount, lessen the stress on members of staff and help companies keep track of their sales. Most barcodes come with a number along the bottom that can be used in instances where the barcode wont scan (perhaps due to damage to the paper or print), though the use of barcodes and scanners allows for items to be passed through the system far quicker which can be handy when theres a large queue of customers.
Books meanwhile utilise a slightly different form of barcode called an ISBN or International Standard Book Number. This is a multiple digit (currently 13 digit) identifier that is unique to every title (including different editions of the same title) and again carries certain information, such as the language, the publisher, the date etc. This again allows for more efficient marketing of products from booksellers, libraries etc and makes it easier for customers to track down specific titles. Meanwhile magazines will require ISSN numbers.
For this reason you will also need a barcode, ISBN or ISSN number in order to sell your products and books in stores. However while the concept of a barcode might seem to be most relevant for a high-street store, they also provide many advantages for online retailers such as Amazon, who state efficiency as the reason for adopting the system. This then allows them to far more quickly and accurately identify products and so increase the speed of packaging and delivery. With Amazon starting originally as a bookshop, they have always encouraged the use of ISBN numbers which will help customers to search for and identify titles.
Barcodes Limited therefore provide affordable barcodes, ISBNs and ISSNs for new or existing numbers that can be used with Amazon to allow you to get your products seen by a large range of visitors to those popular sites.
by: Rebecca Martinez
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