Setting Up and Optimizing Your Amazon Brand Storefront: The Fundamentals

As an online seller, you know your inventory and product descriptions better than anyone. Unfortunately, building and optimizing an Amazon Brand Storefront takes more than familiarity with its products. Product organization, creativity and ongoing refinement are also essential. 

In addition, an Amazon Storefront also unlocks access to new customer data that can increase conversions and ROI if used effectively. So, rather than an isolated tactic, Storefronts should be implemented as part of a broader campaign to develop followers and strengthen your Amazon business. If this combination of creative design, data analysis and campaign synergy seems overwhelming, you’re not alone. However, we’ve put together this guide to help you get started. 

Storefronts sell more on Amazon

Harnessing the power of Amazon’s customer loyalty can provide an incredible opportunity for growth among e-commerce businesses. Listing products on the world’s most popular online marketplace comes with the advantage of reach and convenience. However, companies can be understandably wary of losing their brand identity by competing on a site with tens of millions of other products and sellers from around the globe.

Fortunately, joining the online giant as a seller doesn’t have to mean abandoning your brand identity. Since 2018, Amazon Storefronts have offered a way for brands to showcase all their Amazon products to online shoppers within a custom-designed and branded store interface. Rather than sacrificing such a significant advantage when selling on Amazon, businesses can create a Storefront. This tool allows the seller to organize and feature its listings in a way that reinforces its unique brand, introduces new products and enhances the customer experience. 

Brand Registry is the key

To join the 30,000-plus businesses selling more than 2.5 million products in an Amazon Storefront, you must complete Amazon’s Brand Registry. The program is a step beyond opening the required seller account and is available to companies with an active trademark from the United States or one of 18 other countries, the United Kingdom, the European Union, or the United Arab Emirates. In some cases, a pending trademark may also be accepted for registration. In addition to meeting the necessary trademark requirements, businesses must also provide any product category they intend to compete in and a list of where their products are manufactured and distributed. 

Unlike creating a seller account, the good news is that there is no fee associated with the Amazon Brand Registry program. Any company that meets the eligibility criteria can join at no cost. In addition, access to the Amazon Storefront feature is not the only benefit of registering a brand with the site. 

The primary purpose of the Amazon Brand Registry is to keep brands secure and create a more attractive platform for legitimate sellers. Participating brands have access to powerful tools that detect and report suspected intellectual property infringement. Amazon also utilizes the information provided by sellers through the program to improve their ability to block violations before they have an impact. Enhanced marketing and advertising options, as well as expanded monitoring capabilities, also add to the value. 

Design for your customers

When setting up an Amazon Storefront, keep in mind that design and branding are skills you shouldn’t take lightly. While Amazon has gone to great lengths to make Storefront creation simple and accessible to any seller via templates and drag-and-drop tools, the task can undoubtedly benefit from a well-devised strategy and an experienced designer. 

Amazon Storefronts are created via the self-service Store Builder, available through the advertising console. They consist of various pages that feature a brand’s products and organize them in a customer-friendly way. Often, the best Stores will have an engaging homepage highlighting the most popular products, while an intuitive set of sub-pages makes it easy for shoppers to navigate the shop and find exactly what they are looking for. 

The pages that make up an Amazon Storefront are composed of content tiles. Tiles can contain text, video, images or product listings. Each page has a header section that features a hero image that remains consistent throughout your Store’s pages, a brand logo and a navigation bar. Every page requires at least one additional tile beside the header section and can only be divided into 20 total sections. In addition, there are further limitations on certain types of tiles used in each section. These per-section restrictions include:

• Four background video tiles
• One product grid tile
• One gallery tile
• One featured deals tile
• One recommended products tile

Pre-designed templates help sellers balance the tiles used on a page and maintain acceptable design standards, but pages can be built from scratch or the templates adjusted to meet a seller’s preferences. Currently, 12 different types of content tiles are available when constructing a Storefront. In addition, many are available in multiple sizes or adjust automatically based on the content to accommodate a vast array of design possibilities.

Of course, one of the most critical aspects of an effective Amazon Store is its organization. In addition to telling the story behind your products, a brand store should improve a customer’s shopping experience on the Amazon platform, not make it more complicated. You also want to create a structure that will introduce shoppers to new products that complement the ones they are already familiar with. 

In many cases, the navigation within your Amazon Storefront should be set up similarly to your direct-to-consumer site, assuming it is already rooted in how consumers shop your products. We recommend setting up the navigation by need or “job to be done.” This approach prioritizes the perspective of customers who typically shop based on a problem they are trying to solve. 

Opt for simple naming conventions for your Store’s pages rather than trying to cram descriptive details into each one. Save those long-tail keyword efforts for your product listings. It’s also best to create a minimum of three pages for your Amazon Store. More expansive stores make organizing products in appropriate categories easier and keep shoppers in your brand store longer, often increasing sales per visitor. 

Of course, there’s no shortage of examples to look to when designing an Amazon Store. Most explorations reveal that captivating images and high-quality photography are consistently found in successful Storefronts. Video is also an underused feature that shoppers rate among the most helpful factors when making a purchase decision. At Amify, we’ve helped many of our clients refine the Amazon shopping experience for their customers. Moby, Stella & Chewy’s and Because are examples of our proven approach to designing an Amazon Storefront that strengthens a brand and moves products. 

Have a plan for hurdles

Much like your other e-commerce tactics, brand stores demand continuous refinement. According to Amazon, Storefronts that were updated within the past 90 days see 21 percent more repeat visitors and a 35 percent increase in sales per visitor. Those statistics mean you can’t afford to neglect your Amazon Store. So, in addition to making sure your latest products are featured appropriately in the structure, you should also plan to monitor your Store Insights to spot problems early. 

Low daily traffic to a Store can mean visibility is lacking. Tweaking the comprehensive campaign discussed above can be one way to address this issue. Social media, off-site digital advertising and Sponsored Brands ads can all increase traffic to your Storefront. It may also be wise to confirm that the brand byline for your ASINs is correctly linked to your brand store. 

A solid flow of visitors but less-than-expected sales point to an issue with your products. Pricing could prevent conversion, or the path from the product to the cart may be too complicated. Consider revamping your product listings to include video or other assets that better communicate value or changing the tile types within the Amazon Store to those with an instant “Add to cart” button. 

Another way to ramp up sales is to identify pages that are performing well regarding conversion but may be lacking in traffic. These are ideal opportunities to promote via Sponsored Brand campaigns that drive shoppers directly to the pages proven to move your products. Conversely, high-traffic pages with poor conversion can be adjusted to better feature the products customers are most likely to buy from the Store. 

Of course, a complete lack of traffic or sales for a specific page in your Storefront means a significant problem with your content or navigation. You may need to reconsider the strategy for that page or troubleshoot your Store from a shopper’s perspective to identify the root of the problem. 

Don’t overlook the data

One of the greatest benefits of opening an Amazon Storefront is the amount of data that becomes available to an Amazon seller. Access to Store Insights about the shop’s performance and the Brand Analytics Dashboard is an incredible opportunity to increase conversions both in and out of your Store.

Once your online Store is active on Amazon, you’ll be able to see the platform’s Store Insights and have a glimpse into the habits and sales conversions originating from visitors to your stores. Amazon Store insights also track how visitors find the online Store. In some cases, the accuracy of this data will depend on your ability to utilize source tags within your digital marketing plan, including in Amazon Sponsored Ads. Data on the sources of your Store’s visitors can help a company evaluate current marketing efforts and provide direction for new initiatives. 

While Store Insights are specific to the performance of your Storefront, it’s not the only data accessible to Amazon brand owners. Participation in the Amazon Brand Registry program opens the door to Amazon’s Brand Analytics, making even more relevant information available to guide your decision-making. The data provided to a brand owner via the Brand Analytics dashboard comes via four types of reports. These include Amazon Search Terms, Market Basket Analysis, Item Comparison and Alternate Purchase Behavior, and Demographics. Each provides actionable data that can help widen your funnel of shoppers and minimize the number of customers who opt to purchase a competing product. 

Success requires a strategy

E-commerce success won’t materialize simply by organizing your products in an attractive way. Instead, an Amazon Storefront should be part of a cohesive digital market strategy that requires selling your brand to customers in a way that strengthens satisfaction and encourages loyalty. This effort must be reflected in your copywriting, media, listing optimization keywords and PPC advertising.  

Customers who connect emotionally with a brand name typically have a higher lifetime value. And according to Deloitte research, 80 percent of consumers would pay more for products if the company committed itself to being socially responsible, environmentally responsible, and/or paying higher wages.

From the copy on the landing page to the bullet points on each product page, the style and tone should enhance your brand, not compete with it. Professionally shot and art-directed images – by people fully briefed on your brand narrative–will help ensure your pictures do more than just look good but say something too. Also, as you plan out your Amazon Storefront, lean on video’s power to engage people emotionally to showcase your brand story and stand out. 

Amazon product listings are also fundamental to your Amazon Storefront’s effectiveness.‍

You should describe your products with clarity and precision. And a well-executed strategy calls for integrating keywords into your Amazon product listings and avoiding the wrong search terms that could land your product in the results of an irrelevant search and tank your conversions. 

Finally, creating an Amazon Storefront should not be an isolated tactic. Instead, it needs to be part of a broader campaign to develop followers and strengthen your brand. Consider ways to drive traffic to your Amazon shop using your other brand assets, such as social media followers, digital advertising or a Sponsored Brands campaign. Just because Amazon is where most of your sales occur, it’s not the only place to engage customers. All aspects of your branding and advertising should support your Amazon Store, and your presence on Amazon must contribute to your overall brand. 

Sell more with Amify

Meeting the diverse challenges of building and managing an Amazon storefront is hard, especially when juggling it with all of the other demands of your business. Fortunately, you can boost your company’s growth by capitalizing on Amify’s full-service Amazon expertise and trusting a partner with proven results. 

From optimizing your brand’s presence on Amazon to managing FBA inventory, we have the knowledge and tools to help your company reach its goals faster and more efficiently. Contact us today to see the difference Amify can make.