Strong Interest in Amazon Sales Channel Ahead of Prime Day

The consistent feedback from merchants as well as technology and solution partners continue to be that customer expectations are at an all-time high and the onus falls on the merchants to deliver an exceptional shopping experience. Today more than ever, customers expect their purchasing journey to be intuitive, convenient, authentic, and available anytime AND anywhere.

At Imagine, we announced the general availability of the Amazon Sales Channel extension for Magento Commerce and Magento Open Source in the US, Canada and Mexico. Magento merchants based outside of North America can still utilize the extension if they are listing their products (or are interested in listing) in the US, Canadian and Mexican Amazon marketplaces; the extension will also be available for European Amazon marketplaces later this year.

Amazon Sales Channel effectively removes the barriers to entry for Magento merchants trying to get a foothold on Amazon by allowing them to quickly integrate their catalog, establish a bi-directional data flow and start managing listings from their Magento admin (learn more here). When you consider the fact that Amazon accounts for 44 percent of US online retail sales, it makes sense that merchants of all sizes would look to list products on one of the world’s largest online retail marketplaces.

While it’s only been a few weeks since Amazon Sales Channel became available, we’re seeing strong adoption and excitement from our community. Hundreds of merchants have already downloaded the extension and are managing over 35K product listings on Amazon. These numbers will continue to grow as more merchants and brands learn about the solution and the problems it solves for them like automatic repricing, catalog and inventory synchronization.

How Magento brands and merchants can optimize their Amazon Prime Day strategy

Considering that many Magento customers already have a presence on Amazon or are starting to dip their toes into listing products on the marketplace, I also wanted to discuss the next big shopping moment for this year: Amazon Prime Day. Amazon’s annual promotion for its Prime members has been an insider treat that the company keeps under wraps to prevent other retailers from participating, but in recent years, it has blossomed into an industry wide shopping holiday. Last year, Adobe found that Prime Day saw a substantial increase in online spending year-over-year, expanding well beyond the e-retailer to include large retailers ($1 billion-plus in annual revenue), which saw a 54% increase in sales versus an average Tuesday.

While Amazon hasn’t officially unveiled the date for this year’s Prime Day, I wanted to highlight several helpful tips from our partner, Fancy Awesome, about how Magento merchants can maximize their presence on Amazon in the lead up to the next major shopping holiday. As background, all sellers need to be invited to Prime Day to participate and it’s important to note that even after you’ve been invited to participate, there’s no guarantee that your listing will be promoted. In addition, the goal of Prime Day shouldn’t just be about profitability; it’s also about gaining tremendous amount of exposure for your brand and products during the biggest selling day on Amazon.

• Ensure that your product page is dynamite: It’s important that you leverage all of Amazon’s best practices around product images, header, product descriptions, videos and more.
• Raise your Prime Day ads budget: Most sellers on Amazon will raise their ads budget on Prime Day, but we’ve seen sellers have more success when they raise bids even a few weeks prior to the event.
• Sponsored Brands campaign: Driving traffic to your brand page is critical as it’ll help drive sales, guard against competitors and introduce buyers to other products in your line. To increase traffic to your brand page, we recommend that you increase the budget for Sponsored Brands campaigns, so your brand traffic is not lost to competitors that bid aggressively. Once customers are on your page, they’ll also be able to check out your other discounted items.
• Stock up on inventory: Heavily promoted products can easily wipe out your inventory, as well as other products in your brand page. Make sure you have plenty of inventory to take you through Prime Day and beyond.
• Lastly, make sure to promote your Prime Day deals through social media.

Fancy Awesome is an ecommerce growth company that specializes in Amazon Managed Services and Data-Driven PPC Marketing. With both automation and a staff of Amazon experts, the company creates amazing software and services for Amazon to help brands and sellers operate more efficiently and maximize profit.

To learn more about Adobe’s industry leading cloud commerce platform, visit here.