Stand a Chance Against Your Competitors with Amazon Storefronts 
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4 min

Stand a Chance Against Your Competitors with Amazon Storefronts 

AMZ Advisers, May 11, 2022

It’s very hard for small businesses to stand out in Amazon at the very beginning of their selling journey.  Luckily, registered brands have one unique advantage: Amazon Storefronts. 

Amazon Storefronts allows brands to add their personal touch by creating a landing page to showcase their products on Amazon. 

The seller's storefront works as a gateway between brands and customers, designed to nurture unique buying experiences. Sellers can essentially migrate the look and feel of their regular website, and have it reach Amazon’s massive customer base.

Now, let’s dive into the benefits that this amazing tool can provide for your brand. 

What is an Amazon Storefront?

The Storefronts program, also known as Stores, is a free service for registered brands. It was launched in 2018 as a replacement to Amazon Pages, which was discontinued in late 2012. 

Amazon Pages allowed sellers to create custom landing pages on Amazon. The goal was to boost merchants' exposure in the marketplace. 

Storefronts work in a similar way to Amazon Pages. The difference is that Amazon Stores features more content options and design flexibility. 

For example, brand’s stores can have dedicated pages to feature different product collections. Sellers can use text, images, and videos to share their personal history. 

The goal of Storefronts is to close the gap between sellers and customers. By doing so, they can stand out from the competition to drive sales. 

Who are Amazon Stores For?

Storefronts is catered for small and medium businesses (SMBs). According to the 2020 Amazon Small Business Impact Report

  • As of May 2020, SMBs sold over 3.4 billion products on Amazon. 

  • SMBs sell around 6,500 products per minute, on average. 

  • Third Party (3P) sellers account for over 50% of all items sold in Amazon’s online stores.

Amazon clearly benefits from supporting SMBs. That’s why Storefronts is designed to help SMBs reach new customers. 

For example, Amazon Storefronts come with three key services to sellers: 

  1. Curated Collections. These are unique product offerings for customers. They are collected from 25 Amazon categories, such as “Back to School”. 

  2. Meet the Business Owner. A spotlight that highlights a unique storefront entrepreneur. Users get to know a bit more about selected brands on a more personal level. 

  3. Storefront of the Week. Showcases one storefront each week. This gives a chance for the best sellers to widen their reach on Amazon. 

Another great perk is that sellers can set up a custom Amazon URL (**amazon.com/BrandName). This allows them to promote their store off-Amazon!**

You can use this URL on your social media page, for example. It is an easy way to redirect off-Amazon customers to your store.

This is quite useful when you do not have a website up and running yet. A Storefront is a great way to get sales moving ahead of time.

How to Create an Amazon Storefront

The process to set up an Amazon store is quite simple. But take your time. This will be your new face on Amazon, after all. 

So, make sure every element of the storefront meets your approval before launch. 

Here’s how to create an Amazon Storefront:  

Step 1

First, log into Seller Central, hover over Stores, and click on Manage Stores.

Step 2

Then, hit the “Create Store” button.

Step 3

Welcome to the Store builder! This will be the main hub of your storefront, and what customers will see on their first visit.

In Store Settings, you will need to fill in the following information about your brand:

  • Display name (Up to 30 characters)

  • Logo (and the area where you want it to appear)

Note: Your brand’s name and logo will make up your shopper-facing title and URL.

  • Format in which your products will appear: Standard or Tall

Step 4

Once you get to the Home page section, select a template to share your brand’s story, and upload a meta description for the storefront; this text will appear on customer search results. 

The meta description will also help you rank in browser searches off Amazon. So, make sure it’s catchy and informative. 

Winning Tip! Display your best-selling products in a single grid with the Product Highlight template. You’ll thank us later.

Step 5

Review your data and click on the Create page.  

Now, you can start building subpages, adding images, content descriptions, and thumbnails for your listings. 

How you choose to organize the layout of your Storefront is up to you. Just make sure it facilitates your brand’s voice and accurately conveys how you want to present your products.

Here are a few small but crucial tips to help you do so: 

  • Create a Header. This is your hero banner, located at the top of the store. It is the first image visiting customers will see. Headers are great to establish your brand presence across every page of the storefront.

  • Share Your Branding Wealth. Your Amazon Storefront is just like your main website. It is another extension of your brand. So, treat it as such and make sure it looks the part. The goal is to present a consistent identity to customers, on and off Amazon. 

  • Deliver Quality Content. Take your best-selling assets and give them a special place in your store. Create tabs to highlight each product category, and invite customers to read on. As with your website, unique images and content will contribute to your value.  

  • Connect your products. You can link thumbnails to connect product images to their listings. That way, when a customer clicks on an image, they’ll navigate to the full listing. You can also add an “add to cart button” below each tile to speed up the buying journey. 

  • Invite Feedback. Share your storefront with your team, and encourage feedback. They know your brand better than anybody. So, they are in a perfect place to say if the storefront is a true reflection of your brand. 

  • Follow Amazon’s Store Creative Guidelines. This will help you to get the exact dimensions before creating the images required for the various areas of your Storefront. Amazon will also remind you of the size of image you need in the upload widget.

Last but not least, it’s always wise to share the load. Get a team of creatives — writers and designers, for example — to shape the way your storefront looks.

Successful brands invest in design. They tend to turn to agencies focused on Amazon to make sure their Storefront not only meets Amazon’s policies and guidelines , but also delivers the message they want to convey to their customer base.

Step 6

Finally, click on “Submit for publishing.” Amazon will take 24 hours to review and publish your storefront. This is to ensure that you comply with marketplace policies.

Once Amazon grants its approval, you can start driving customers to the storefront. Remember, you will have a custom Amazon Storefront URL generated as well. So spread the word!

The main advantage that Small and Medium Businesses have is that they are closer to their customers and community. Put this into good use and utilize your storefront to take your customer engagement to the next level. 

Get the Most out of Amazon Storefronts

Creating an Amazon Storefront is a great step to boost your revenue. But to do that, you must drive traffic into Amazon.

There are many tools to help you attract new customers into your Amazon stores. Here, we’ll review two of the most effective ones: Sponsored Campaigns and Amazon Stores Insights.

Amazon Stores Insights

The 2020 Amazon Internal Report also states that: 

  • Storefronts with over 3-page tabs have 83% more user retention, and 32% better attributed sales per shopper.

  • Recently updated stores (within 90 days) get 21% more repeat visitors. They also registered 35% higher credited sales per visitor. 

It’s not enough just to create an Amazon Store to reap such benefits. Luckily, sellers can keep track of performance using Amazon Stores Insights.

This unique dashboard shows the following metrics to brands with stores: 

  • Daily store visits

  • Sales generated

  • Units sold and orders placed

  • Units per order

  • Page views (per visit and per visitor)

  • Total sales (per order, per visitor, and per visit)

  • Store traffic (sponsored and organic)

You can use this data to review the reach of your Storefront and how customers respond to it. Take it as an opportunity to refine your Amazon strategy. It should be integrated into your marketing strategy as well.

You may also know them as Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads. These campaigns are among the most popular strategies for Amazon brands.

Sponsored keywords target specific items from a seller’s catalog. Each ad uses product-related keywords to draw customers in.  

In short, when a user searches a specific keyword, your sponsored ad will show up on Amazon search. From here on, customers can click on the image and go to your store.

Brands can set up three types of PPC ads, which are:

  • Sponsored Products. This highlights a single product from your catalog. They usually appear among Amazon search results, or alongside product listings.  

  • Sponsored Brands. This showcases 1 to 3 products in a single ad. They are also customizable, meaning you can include your brand’s logo, and custom headlines to drive visibility.  

  • Sponsored Display can promote complete product catalogs, on and off Amazon. You can set them to appear below product listings, or on your own website.

As with Amazon Stores, Sponsored ads are exclusive to registered brands. And don’t worry, they are quite easy to set up.

  1. First off, select the item (or items) you want to advertise. 

  2. Then, conduct a thorough search for the most relevant keywords to promote your products.

  3. When you have the keywords, embed them into each banner. 

  4. To complete the set-up, allocate a PPC bid per search term.

That’s it!

Once you get Amazon’s approval, you can publish your campaigns. Note that the marketplace charges a small fee for each click. But the results may be worth the investment. 

Final Thoughts

As of December 2021, Amazon hosts around 20,000 storefronts from small businesses. And according to SupplyKick, brands can see up to a 30% sales boost from storefront visitors alone.

The success of Amazon Stores lies in the ‘personal touch.’ First, because brands get a unique space to reflect their value. 

Plus, storefront customers can enjoy a similar experience of shopping online directly with the seller, or going into a brick-and-mortar store. 

A well-designed storefront can make a customer forget that there are other similar products available on the same platform! That is the power of Storefronts and how it works to retain customers' attention. 

So, it’s clear that Amazon Storefronts are a key strategy to make it big on Amazon. This is true for both big brands and small businesses alike. 

Don’t wait any longer. Setting up an Amazon Storefront may be what it takes to make you shine in the marketplace.

To get started or learn more about how Perpetua can help you scale your Amazon Advertising business