11 Must-Have Elements for a killer Amazon Brand store

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📆 Monday, 19^th February 2024 

Hi, and welcome back to Growth Espresso - your one-stop destination for everything e-com.

In today’s Espresso ☕️, we’re talking about 11 must-have elements for a better Amazon brand store.

It’s no secret that Amazon is the most influential and disruptive retailer in the US, radically redefining eCommerce. And since Amazon.com has leapfrogged Google as the #1 place we go to search for products, Amazon Stores may be a brand’s most valuable piece of digital real estate – bar none.

Sure, we all know that your direct-to-consumer (DTC) website gives you the greatest control over brand storytelling, merchandising, and the customer journey. Not to mention your margins are going to be way better on your own channels. But as Amazon continues its stratospheric rise, it provides trust, convenience, and access to a vast new customer base that you can activate through a variety of sophisticated marketing tools.

Let’s get right into it 👇️ 

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1. Create a Deals page

Since your storefront will witness increased traffic during key shopping events like Prime Day and Turkey 5, you’ll want to make it easy for shoppers to browse for deals. You can create a dedicated deals page that lists out all the promotions and discount offers on your products.

Depending on the size of your catalog, you can choose to have a single deals page or a main deals page with subpages that feature similar products.

Be sure to add a banner on the home page that links to the deals page for increased visibility. We recommend positioning your deals page right next to the home page in your navigation bar.

2. Highlight your bestsellers

Creating a bestsellers page on your storefront lets you conveniently add all of your key revenue-generating products in one place. The bestsellers page can also highlight features and USPs of your best selling products to help customers better engage with your products.

3. Focus on creating an excellent above-the-fold experience

The first viewable section of your storefront should be structured, aligned and able to make a memorable first impression. It’s the first thing your shoppers will see and can determine whether to browse further or not.

The above-the-fold content and the rest of the home page should include:

• A header image that captures the shopper’s attention

• A video explaining the brand mission, values, etc. (optional but desirable)

• Lifestyle imagery

• Short brand description

• Tiles that link to your category pages

• Featured ASINs

4. Tell your story

Make sure your Store articulates your brand’s value proposition and tells your story in a way that’s appropriate for the Amazon audience.

Including unique information about your brand, brand story, mission, vision, values and ethics help build your brand identity and keep your brand on top of customers’ minds when shopping.

5. Create continuity

Align your messaging with your DTC brand, and other media channels, to foster confidence and trust with shoppers as they comparison-shop across several domains.

6. Navigation is crucial

It’ll be easier for your customers to discover the products they want if you understand their decision-making process, their needs, and their typical shopping journey. Map their goals to your navigation structure – and refine using Store Insights – to get them to their destination as seamlessly as possible.

According to Amazon, on average, storefronts with 3+ pages have 83% higher shopper dwell time and 32% higher attributed sales per visitor.

Your store should be easy to navigate and include multiple pages with products neatly categorized on each page. Along with creating merchandising pages like “Deals,” “Seasonal,” “New arrivals,” and “Bestsellers,” create category pages such as “Shop by Color,” “Shop by occasion,” etc.

7. Create shoppable images

According to Amazon, brands who add a shoppable image to their storefront for the first time see an average 53% increase in shopper dwell time in the next two months compared to those who don’t.

With shoppable images, you can choose to make any of the products featured in the image shoppable, enabling customers to click on the product and view basic information such as name, price, customer ratings, Prime availability, etc.

Customers also have the option to add the product to their cart or navigate to the product detail page.

Shoppable images should include a lifestyle that displays your product in various settings or in a collection with complementary products.

8. Keep it fresh

Set aside time every month to align the Store with new product launches, seasonal events, and promotional calendars.

Amazon Live is an interactive streaming platform where brands can conduct live streams to engage with their customers in real-time. When brands live stream using Amazon Live, their stream will appear on their US store’s home page and will be visible to all shoppers who visit the store for 24 hours after the stream has ended. The prominent placement of livestream on your storefront makes it a great place to announce special deals and new products.

9. Optimize for mobile and desktop

Make sure your Store looks and performs just as well for mobile users as it does for those on desktop. Pay specific attention to the way image and product tiles reflow and make sure any image-based type is legible at small sizes.

Tips to optimize your store for mobile

• Ensure all text is legible on mobile without needing to pinch and zoom

• Create a layout that makes sense on smaller screens

• Use full-width tiles that, unlike smaller split section tiles, don’t breakdown on mobile screens

• Your store should be easy to navigate on mobile as it does on desktop

10. Promote your Store on and off Amazon 

Create a marketing strategy for your Store to drive brand awareness and engagement:
• Use Headline Search Ads (prominent ad placement above relevant search results) to market your Store to a qualified audience
• Link your Store in the brand byline on your product detail pages
Include your unique store URL on marketing activities off Amazon.com
• Share your Store with your social media networks (built-in social features make it easy for shoppers to share with their social networks as well)

11. Use source tags effectively

Source tags allow you to track the performance and behavior of a specific set of users you have driven to your Store: from ads, social media, blogs, etc. Effectively deploying source tags will allow you to add a layer of sophistication to your analytics strategy and help you to refine your traffic-driving methodology over time.

Editor’s corner ✒️ 

Amazon Stores are now an essential part of most brands’ marketing mix – with many companies building out dedicated teams of marketers to capitalize on the opportunity. And while they are free to set up, they need to be actively managed and maintained, ideally by a specialist agency or team, to add real value.

Companies succeed when they continually test brand and custom marketing content to determine the best drivers of sales and awareness with what is likely to be a new audience. And given the ongoing rise of Amazon and its dominance in product search, Stores may represent the most effective vehicle for getting your brand in front of your target audience in a way you control.

Reading recommendations

Today, I am recommending some of my favourite newsletters in the space which have personally helped me grow as a professional. Subscribe to them below 👉️ 

1/ Stacked Marketer

Delivered fresh every weekday, carefully curated digital marketing news, tech, and actionable advice can be consumed in 7 minutes or less.

Subscribe to them!

2/ DTC Daily

Join 18,000 CEOs, founders, and marketers to stay up to date on the latest news, tips, and tools impacting their DTC business.

Subscribe now