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 indus­try­wide 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 make most prof­it pos­si­ble.

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