Starting a business on Amazon is a significant decision for any brand owner. While Amazon provides incredible exposure and access to a global customer base, some brands hesitate due to potential challenges. Concerns range from fears of brand dilution and intense competition to navigating Amazon’s fees and policies. Brands often worry about losing control over pricing and customer engagement, as well as the risk of their products getting lost among countless similar offerings. Despite these concerns, the opportunity to tap into Amazon’s vast marketplace often outweighs the risks. Fortunately, many of these risks can be mitigated with Amazon’s extensive array of tools. One such tool is the Amazon Store. So, in this article, we’ll explore how starting your Amazon Store can help brands stand out. Let’s dive in.
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What Is an Amazon Store?
An Amazon Store, often referred to as an Amazon Storefront, is a customizable space on the Amazon platform where brand owners can showcase their products and tell their brand story. It’s akin to a typical e-commerce website, with a customized homepage and a navigation bar that links to the various categories and subcategories of your product lineup.
Unlike individual product listings, even those enhanced with A+ Content, starting an Amazon Storefront allows brands to create a cohesive, branded experience that reflects their identity and makes it easier for customers to browse a curated selection of products.
The primary goal of starting your Amazon Store is to give brands more control over how they are represented on the platform. So, why not just develop a standalone e-commerce website that would give brands full control over the user experience? The answer is straightforward—web development can be costly.
Amazon Store vs. Custom E-Commerce Website
So, creating an Amazon Store is a cost-effective alternative to building a custom e-commerce website from scratch, particularly for smaller businesses that need to manage costs efficiently.
To create Amazon Store, brands only need to sign up for a Professional Seller account, which costs $39.99 per month. The subscription provides access to the Amazon Storefront feature and other valuable tools at no additional cost.
In contrast, if you look into web development market prices, you’ll find that this Amazon fee is a mere fraction of the average web development cost, which can exceed $10,000. Beyond building the website, you must also pay for reliable hosting, invest in SEO and advertising, and more—all significant upfront investments.
With an Amazon Store, brands gain access to a ready-to-use platform featuring built-in infrastructure, a seamless customer interface, and robust security measures. Using this feature saves businesses considerable time and resources, often outweighing the trade-off of less control over the customer experience.
Tip: If you’re uncertain about whether selling on Amazon is the right choice for your business, consider testing the waters with the Individual seller plan. This plan charges a $0.99 fee per transaction instead of the monthly subscription fee that comes with the Professional seller account. The Individual seller plan is ideal for small businesses expecting to sell less than 40 sales per month (40 x $0.99 = $39.60). If you expect more transactions and need access to advanced features like data analytics, promotions, and bulk inventory management, having a Professional account is better. To calculate approximate sales figures, you can use Amazon sales estimator tools.
However, it’s not just about the costs. Selling on Amazon with your own Amazon Store offers several more advantages. Let’s discuss them.
The Benefits of Selling on Amazon
Easy Access to a Huge Customer Base
This one is kind of obvious but still worth mentioning. As the world’s leading marketplace, Amazon accounts for 37.6% of all e-commerce sales. It has a total of 310 million active users worldwide, with 230 million holding Amazon Prime subscriptions. Over 195 million users visit Amazon.com every month. 230 million customers worldwide have Amazon Prime subscriptions. This is a colossal customer base, which you can quickly access with minimal investments.
Enhanced Brand Visibility by Starting Your Amazon Store
One more perfect illustration of the power of Amazon is the amount of searches—66% of product searches originate on this platform. This means that even if you have a great website, most of your potential customers will never discover you. Add to this the immense trust in Amazon reflected in the fact that 87% of U.S. shoppers are more likely to buy from Amazon than other e-commerce websites.
Streamlined Operation
With the Amazon FBA program, brands can delegate the complexities of logistics—everything from storage and packaging to shipping and returns—directly to Amazon. Instead of investing in building and managing their own warehouses or refining delivery workflows, brands can tap into Amazon’s established infrastructure. This not only reduces the upfront costs of running an e-commerce operation but also allows brands to benefit from Amazon’s fast and reliable delivery promise.
Advanced Analytics
We’ve noted that subscribing to a Professional Seller plan comes with numerous advantages, such as access to Amazon Analytics, which provides valuable insights for data-driven market strategies. By examining customer behavior—like browsing patterns, purchasing habits, and demographic information—brands can better comprehend what influences consumer decisions. This understanding helps in optimizing product offerings and ensuring a well-stocked inventory that meets consumer demand.
A Host of Marketing Tools
Amazon provides a comprehensive suite of marketing tools designed to enhance brand visibility, engage customers, and drive sales. First of all, it’s a well-developed advertising platform. Amazon Advertising offers brands multiple options to create tailored advertising campaigns that reach a broad audience. With Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display ads, businesses can strategically position their offerings at high-visibility locations on Amazon.com and even on third-party destinations.
Other tools include:
- A+ Content: allows brands to enrich their product listings with detailed descriptions, images, and videos, thereby improving customer engagement and conversion rates.
- Amazon Live: enables real-time customer interaction through live streaming, where brands can demonstrate products and address customer inquiries.
- Amazon Vine: invites select reviewers to provide feedback.
- Amazon Posts: functions like a social media platform, allowing brands to share lifestyle images and content to further engage with customers.
- Amazon Store: enables brands to create a personalized storefront to showcase their products and provide a unique shopping experience.
Amazon Store Feature: Enhancing Your Amazon Presence
So far, we’ve discussed the benefits of selling your products by starting your Amazon store, such as accessing various Amazon marketing tools. Among these tools is Amazon Store, which is a customizable multipage webstore on Amazon.com that brands use to create a brand-centric shopping experience and maintain brand identity to ultimately stand out among numerous competitors.
The Amazon Storefront allows brands to have a competitor-free space that connects customers with the entire product line, enhancing product discovery. With high-quality photography and a well-thought-out design approach, brands can create an aesthetic product portfolio that is easy to browse through using the navigation bar and homepage sections.
What’s also great about the Amazon Store functionality is that it’s hard to make a bad UX design with it. All you have to do is to choose the template and add content sections to designated areas.
How to Set Up Your Amazon Store
To get the Amazon storefront feature, you’ll first need to meet two key requirements. First, you must have a professional selling plan, which comes with a monthly fee of $39.99. Second, you’ll need to enroll with the Amazon Brand Registry—it protects your brand and gives you access to enhanced marketing features. Once these are in place, you’ll have access to the Amazon Store Builder.
Here’s a short guide on how to create an Amazon storefront:
1. Start with a Draft
Log into your Seller Central or Vendor Central account. In the main menu, click on ‘Storefront’ and then select ‘Manage stores’ to start drafting your storefront.
2. Choose Your Homepage Layout
Next, decide on the layout for your homepage. Amazon provides several templates to suit different styles and purposes. You can choose from options like Marquee, which is used to highlight a single product or make a bold statement; Product Highlight for showcasing best-sellers; Product Grid for a more comprehensive display; or begin with a Blank to fully customize your page.
Tip: Don’t forget to add an SEO-optimized meta description for better visibility in search engines.
3. Design Your Storefront Header
To give your storefront a cohesive look, upload a banner that reflects your brand’s aesthetic at the top of your homepage. The ideal size for this image is 3,000 x 600 pixels.
Tip: Your above-the-fold section is the first thing visitors see—make it unforgettable! Use an eye-catching hero image. Below the navigation bar, feature shoppable images to highlight best-sellers or categories.
4. Build and Customize Your Homepage
You can easily design your homepage using the Store Builder’s intuitive drag-and-drop interface. Add and arrange content tiles to effectively showcase your products and promotions. Don’t forget to share your brand’s values and story through engaging visuals and narratives to connect emotionally with customers.
Tip: Keep content clear and easily understandable. This applies to both imagery and written content. Also, avoid clutter. Remember, design is just a tool, so keep it simple and clean to keep customers focused on your products.
5. Organize with Additional Pages
Create additional pages for product categories and subcategories. These pages will appear in a drop-down menu.
Tip: Organize your products into clear categories and subcategories. Use concise titles to avoid overwhelming customers and prevent layout shifts on mobile.
6. Preview Before Publishing
Before making your storefront live, always review it carefully. Check for spelling mistakes, alignment issues, and overall design flaws. Also, it’s crucial to ensure your Amazon Storefront is mobile-responsive. Check whether your store’s layout and navigation are usable across all devices.
Bonus: Best practices in Starting Your Amazon Store
- Use compelling call to action (CTA) to encourage further exploration.
- Keep the content of the above-the-fold section fresh with seasonal updates.
- Don’t overlook the Q&A section—it’s a powerful conversion tool. Provide honest, comprehensive answers to common customer inquiries.
- Address your customers’ pain points.
- Optimize product listings with A+ content for a cohesive shopping experience from a storefront to product pages.
- Use Amazon’s brand analytics to track performance while starting your Amazon Store. Regularly evaluate results and make adjustments as necessary to keep your store at peak performance.
