Having a brand store on Amazon is an opportunity for companies that want to protect their brand, increase visibility and online sales.
In this article we will explain in simple steps how to create an effective and appealing brand store on Amazon.
The brand store is the brand’s shop window on Amazon, and it is the only space where it can boast its exclusivity and showcase itself consistently with respect to its omnichannel communication.
Having a brand store on marketplaces is crucial for increasing brand awareness and maintaining control of one’s brand.
Marketplaces today are truly large virtual shopping centres that put brands and merchants directly in touch with their customers.
Making the most of the Marketplace experience is a huge opportunity for brands to learn more about their ‘customer base’ and to implement online and offline strategies with the aim of increasing sales.
On the Marketplace side, the trend is to simulate the physical retail shopping experience more and more closely, using tools and technologies (video, augmented reality, design tools, etc.) that fill the gap between the physical and virtual experience.
Amazon, as leader in Italy with 35.2 million users, equal to 92.4% of the total monthly users of ecommerce sites/apps, is always implementing new services with the aim of putting the consumer at the centre of the sales process, and at the same time providing useful information to vendors and sellers who want to improve their performance.
The main tools made available free of charge by Amazon are A+ Content (or A+ Pages) and Amazon Store (or Brand Store).
We recommend having a brand store to:
- Well-known brands: To exploit their Brand Awareness by enhancing the presence of their products on the Marketplace, through the representation of the Brand’s strengths and historicity;
- Emerging brands with a wide range of products: To have an organised showcase to guide customers towards the right products to buy;
- Brands designed for eCommerce: To support the creation of the Brand Identity, indispensable for growing Awareness among customers who will buy their products;
- Brands whose products are associated with or inspired by ethical ideals: To tell the story, aspirations and initiatives the brand promotes, and focus on differential aspects of the history and/or production of its products.
Basic requirements for having a Brand Store on Amazon
As mentioned above, the Store is a free tool that Amazon makes available to Brands that have some requirements:
- Having a Vendor or Seller account on Amazon;
- Being registered with their Brands on Amazon’s Brands register1.
Skills needed to handle a store on Amazon
The Amazon brand store does not require coding skills, nor any special graphics skills.
Of course, attractive graphics help to capture the flow of visitors and make them stay longer on the page, but, as we’ll see, this is not the key aspect.
For building the brand store, Amazon provides design grids, which help to organise the content, and widget modules that help to keep the page dynamic and up-to-date.
The main widgets are:
- Offers Widget: The Store Generator allows you to add an Offers Widget to display offers and coupons in your Store. The Offers Widget will automatically populate with all ASINs that have an active offer. Offers must be created in advance in order to be displayed in Stores.
- Shoppable Images: Shoppable Images link life-style images directly to the product’s sales page, providing a concise preview that is displayed when the mouse moves over the image.
- Background Videos: Background Videos are videos played in a loop (2 to 20 sec duration) that allow the salesperson to actively engage shoppers by enhancing the brand story. It is recommended to concentrate relevant information in the first few seconds of the video and to communicate an image of the brand that reflects reality as closely as possible.
Therefore, organising the grids and creating a goal-oriented structure that takes full advantage of the widgets and facilities provided by the editor is the main aspect in designing a Brand Store.
Defining the main objectives of the store
Before organising the grids and creating the structure of the brand store, it is essential to establish which objective(s) we want to achieve:
- Highlight best-selling products and/or products on promotion through which to direct traffic to ‘slow mover’ or lesser-known products;
- Driving sales by anticipating customers’ questions, explaining technical aspects of the product that are difficult to express through a simple sales page;
- Exploiting Brand Awareness to expand sales;
- Giving visibility to a new product line or model.
For example, in the first illustrated case we recommend:
- To use shoppable images on the home page that together represent the best-selling products and those for which you intend to push sales;
- Create a page dedicated to promotions, in which other products can also be included under attractive claims such as ‘product of the month, selected for you….’;
- Create thematic pages which, in addition to the best sellers per category, make it easy to display other similar products.
Organizing the Navigation Menu
The navigation menu bar is automatically generated during the creation of Amazon Store pages, but the order of the menu elements can also be changed later.
The navigation should be simple and structured to increase the visibility of offers and to facilitate product selection.
The objective must be to help shoppers move quickly through the content.
Having a store of at least three pages improves performance. In fact, Amazon reports that stores with more than three pages record 83 per cent more time spent by shoppers and 32 per cent more sales attributed per visitor.
In addition, having category pages and additional ‘subcategory’ pages allows Amazon store monitoring tools to more accurately track users’ browsing route and highlight key areas of interest.
Useful to keep users’ interest high are the thematic pages and those aimed at occasions and festivities, both calendar pages (Christmas, Easter, Valentine’s Day,…) and those linked to promotions (Prime day, Black Friday, Cyber Monday,…).
These are the pages that mainly need to be updated.
On average, stores updated in the last 90 days have 21% more recurring visitors and 35% more sales attributed per visitor2.
It is useful to know that temporary versions of the Store can be created, for which ‘live on’ and ‘live off’ dates can be set in advance.
Fear not! When the temporary version stops being live, the previous version will automatically replace it.
Furthermore, the various versions of Brand’s store remain stored so that they can be updated and reused as needed.
WHAT NOT TO FORGET ONCE THE STORE IS ACTIVATED
1.To request the creation of a customized Url.
When you launch your store, a long URL is automatically generated. We recommend that you request a customised URL, in which the name of your brand is included.
You will be able to share your Store URL on social media, blogs or website.
2.To request activation of the by-Line
The by-line, depending on how the brand profile has been created on the brand register, may be automatically associated with all products of the brand as soon as it is activated.
The by-line is displayed within the product page usually next to the title and redirects directly to the brand store generating organic traffic.
Therefore, it is essential to ensure that all products are associated with the by-line, otherwise its publication must be requested.
3.To activate Sponsored Brand campaigns
You can activate Sponsored Brand ADV campaigns on your home page or any subpage. It is recorded that advertisers who take advantage of this tool register an average increase in impressions of 36% in the following month, compared to those who do not take this action3.
4.To monitor browsing data periodically
All Brand Store data can be filtered by period, tracking the number of visits and sales, the type of traffic to the store, the number of pages viewed by visitors.
You can use this information to improve your sales strategies and ADV campaigns.
Contact us for free consultancy and start selling on online marketplaces!
Edited by Maria Vittoria Saja
Head of Catalogue, BrandOn Group
