How an Amazon Store Can Increase Shopper Engagement Why having an Amazon store is a no brainer for any brand

The following excerpt is from Timothy P. Seward's book Ultimate Guide to Amazon Advertising. Buy it now from Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound

Building an Amazon Store helps drive shopper engagement with a customized destination to help customers learn more about your brand. This is a free, self-service option that was introduced in 2017, and Amazon has been releasing new features and capabilities since its launch.

We often tell our clients that it's a no-brainer when it comes to having an Amazon Store for their brand. The main benefits of an Amazon Store include:

• Ease of creation and use
• A multipage experience for shoppers to learn more about your brand and products
• Integrated promotional features

Let's now take a deeper look at each of these benefits.

Ease of creation

Amazon has made it fairly simple for companies to create an Amazon Store for their brands with pre-designed templates and an easy-to-navigate interface. Although it may sound daunting, no coding or site-design skills are needed to launch an Amazon Store. To create your store, use the store builder in the Amazon interface. You can get to the store builder within Vendor Central by clicking on the "Stores" link at the top of the Amazon Advertising interface.

The store builder allows you to choose from pre-designed templates and then customize your design using tiles. Start by creating your main page and then create additional pages to expand on your different product categories.

Almost all of this can be done through the self-service portal. One thing that can't, however, is the ability to shorten your store's URL. A shortened URL makes it easier for customers to find your store, especially for shoppers who are familiar with your brand and want to go to your store directly without having to click through Amazon to get there. It can also be useful for marketing materials, since it is short, simple, and easy to remember. Once you have your Amazon Store up and running, ask your Amazon representative to help you with this.

A multipage, brand-centered shopping experience

Shoppers can navigate to your Amazon Store from your brand name, which appears as a link on product detail pages. You can also send traffic to your store from Sponsored Brands campaigns or ads from other sources (e.g., Facebook ads).

Once a shopper lands on your Amazon Store, they can use the store's navigation tools such as the navigation bar to explore your content and learn more about your brand message, products, categories, promotions, etc. Use your main page to showcase top products and introduce your brand, and then use sub-pages to dig deeper into your products and categories. Since you get to design the store, you control what shoppers see, where they see it, and how it's positioned. This level of control and creativity allows you to create a brand-centered shopping experience.

If you already have marketing materials (images, videos, descriptive images, etc.) that you have used on other platforms, you can save yourself some time and energy by using these same assets on your Amazon Store.

Integrated promotional feature

One major benefit of Amazon Stores is that you can send traffic from Sponsored Brands and other channels (such as Facebook) to your store. This is a great opportunity if you're using Sponsored Brands to generate awareness for your products because when a shopper clicks on those ads, they'll be directed to a store that's custom-built around your brand's story. Additionally, you can drive traffic to your Amazon Store from other channels through your store's URL (e.g., by including it in a blog or social media post).

Amazon Stores also include links that allow shoppers to organically share your Amazon Store on their social media accounts. This feature includes the ability to share on social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. These social sharing buttons allow shoppers to tell their friends or followers about a brand they have found on Amazon that they really love.

Another key benefit is the ability to feature active promotions on your store. If your brand has any active promotions, you can add a widget to your store that will automatically showcase those products on your store. This is a great opportunity to increase the visibility of these deals, especially if you place the deals widget on the main page of your Amazon Store. This feature is especially useful during periods of high seasonality, as this is a great time to feature any active deals on Amazon.

For example, if your brand has promotions or deals running for Cyber Monday and another round of deals running for the first week of December, this widget will automatically populate with the available deals for each round of promotions. You can easily add or remove this widget on your Amazon Store and then resubmit to see the change.