With the introduction of Amazon Stores in 2018, Amazon made it clear that they wanted brands to see the site not only as a sales platform, but as a brand builder. Regardless of whether a brand is an established household name or an unknown up-and-comer, Amazon Stores offer all vendors the ability to showcase their products and brand story with a unique, custom-created landing page.
Amazon tried to make it easy for customers to find these branded landing pages by offering custom URLs (amazon.com/yourbrand), but ending up on Amazon Store pages was never particularly natural or instinctive for shoppers. To address this, Amazon is now experimenting with the wording on product pages to bring more attention to brand stores.
Customers have always been able to access an Amazon Store by clicking the hyperlinked name of the seller under the product title, but there was never any explicit indication that this was where the link was going to send you. With this simple change of wording guiding customers to a designated, branded landing page, Amazon Stores are set to become a bigger deal than ever.
Why Amazon Stores Are Important
Amazon Stores give brands the ability to control their image and brand story on the world’s largest online marketplace. By offering a curated shopping experience, these landing pages can help boost brand loyalty on the platform and improve customer satisfaction. They’re also incredibly useful for cross-selling between product lines: everything a brand offers can be smartly arranged and categorized to appeal to potential customers in one convenient spot.
If both the brands and the customers are happy, sales increase and Amazon is happy too. That’s why they’re encouraging every brand to create their own customized page and making if free for any seller enrolled in the Amazon Brand Registry, as well as for vendors and agencies. And though the “Get Started” button on their site immediately instructs you to “Register for Amazon Advertising,” they also claim that brands do not need to advertise on Amazon to create a store.
In addition to making Amazon Brand Stores easy to acquire, they’ve also made them easy to design. All of the stores are modular, so it’s as intuitive as dragging and dropping in pictures and text. Brands can choose between three different templates or start with a blank slate to customize their own space without needing to input a single line of code. Each store goes up to two levels deep, letting brands separate and showcase specific product lines apart from the main landing page.
Once an Amazon Store has been created, brands can use the Store Insights dashboard to get a detailed overview of the amount of sales the store has generated and the number of page views it has received, with the option to adjust the date range to better understand sales and page visits over time. The “Pages” tab lets users break down information for each page, ranking them based on performance and showing which page the customer was visiting when they made a purchase. With our clients, we’ve noticed a trend of conversions typically taking place on the brand store home page, as the fewer clicks required to get to checkout generally results in more sales.
Amazon Stores Help Search and Advertising
Amazon Stores are a smart way to leverage traffic both on and off Amazon. When used with Amazon Advertising, Amazon Stores can be set as a landing page for Sponsored Brands Ads, letting brands focus on promoting entire product ranges rather than specific items. This can be great for newer brands looking to increase brand awareness, like B2B companies who don’t already have a strong web presence and are using Amazon as their primary online sales platform.
And thanks to simple, customizable URLs, brand stores can also be used effectively as landing pages for advertising done outside of Amazon, such as email and social media campaigns. One major advantage that Amazon Stores have over many brand websites is that Amazon’s landing pages exist at point of sale, making it easier than ever for potential customers to purchase products.
Included with each Amazon Store is an insights dashboard that helps brands optimize ad campaigns and analyze traffic sources, letting them know which sales came from Amazon Advertising and which came from external advertising. These insights include metrics such as daily visitors, page views, and sales generated by the store.
Examples of Amazon Brand Stores
The top of every Amazon Store requires a banner, but beyond that it’s up to the brand what is included on the page and in what order.
Melnor integrated top-selling products with imagery of the items in use, all of which link to product pages.
Covergirl opted not to focus on specific items, instead breaking the imagery down into product lines that link to different lip, face, and eye products.
For the Ingersoll Rand page, they decided that setting the tone of their brand was paramount, so they used video and motivational text to headline the design before moving on to showcase specific products.
Tips for Brands Moving Forward
Every brand selling on Amazon should already be investing in Amazon Advertising, and for those who are, creating an Amazon Brand Store is free and easy to acquire and implement. But just like Amazon Advertising, simply having a brand page doesn’t automatically mean it’s going to be successful. Here are some tips for brands to get the most out of their Amazon Brand Store.
- Don’t Ignore Content: Every product included on an Amazon Brand Page ultimately links back to a product page. This is where a potential buyer will find the information they need to feel comfortable pressing the buy button. If that information isn’t on the product page, the sale could be abandoned.
- Improve Discoverability: Amazon Advertising is key to driving traffic to both brand pages and individual product pages. Use a variety of campaigns to promote top sellers, products lagging behind, and entire product lines.
- Evaluate and Adjust: Regularly check in on your campaigns and content, and as you glean insights from your metrics, adjust your content to meet consumer needs. Smart campaigns look at sales and traffic data and re-inject that information back into page content and campaign efforts, helping to improve search rankings, page views, and sales.
