Amazon Best practices for your Store User Manual

Amazon Best practices for your Store

Why should I build a Store?

Customers are here to discover. Help them find what they’re looking for. According to Tinuiti, formerly CPC Strategy, 52% of shoppers are willing to shop a brand they’re not familiar with on Amazon. Imagine someone you’ve just met is curious about your brand. How do you describe it? You probably don’t say I have these products X and Y and end it there. It’s not because those products aren’t important. They obviously are. But they’re one facet of your brand, not the entire conversation. You can apply this idea to your brand on Amazon. Customers want to discover brands. They’re curious to see who they are. Stores give customers another way to browse, engage, and shop, and brands another way to connect with them in the process.

6 things to know about Stores

Stores are free alwayson destinations for your brand on Amazon, and they’re available to vendors and sellers enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry.

DIY solution

You don’t have to be a designer or know how to code

Build brand value

Convey your brand’s look, feel, and message to engage shoppers.

Promote your selection

Show your full catalogue in one shoppable setting.

Curate as you like

Add videos, lifestyle images, and stories about your brand

Integrate with Sponsored Brands

Combine with your advertising efforts to help drive discovery.

Stay informed

Your Stores insights dashboard provides details on engagement, sales, and more. Stores work for your brand covers how to build and publish your Store, focuses on how to help maximize traffic, and looks at how to measure your Store’s performance and optimise to your goals.

Getting started with Stores

According to Tinuiti, 75% of shoppers use Amazon to discover new products and brands. When shoppers are browsing, they’re receptive to inspiration. Stores can help you create an experience that introduces shoppers to your brand and inspires them to come back. Here, we look at how to create that experience, starting with the basics.

Create your homepage in the Store builder

Start by logging in to Seller Central or the advertising console, then go to Stores > Manage Stores to start creating your Store. The first step is to fill in your brand name and include a high-quality brand logo, at least 400×400 pixels. After this step, you’ll be asked to add the page meta description for your first page your homepage. This description is often used in search engines to provide additional details about a page, so describing the main purpose of your Store, or including the main call-to-action from your page, may help you perform better in SEO. Our Store gives our brand a permanent place on Amazon.

Pick your preferred template

Next, you’ll choose a template based on how you plan to curate your Store

Educate shoppers about your full selection
Use the marquee template, which lets you capture multiple subcategories in an organized, easy to navigate way Create awareness about a product or range: The product highlight template lets you promote specific products in your catalogue like bestsellers or new launches, making them more visible to shoppers. Boost discovery and sales of individual products Opt for the product grid template if you have a large number of items to display, or want to give shoppers a total view of your portfolio If you’re so inclined, you can also use a blank template to build your Store from scratch.

Build your Store subpages

Your homepage is just the start. You can add up to three levels of subpages to your Store to better tell your brand story and show your offering.
To create a page, click Add page  in the Store builder and choose from the template options. We recommend using the product grid template to create additional pages based on your top-selling products, catalogue categories, deals and discounts, and seasonal products. Some other tips

• Not sure how to group your products? When in doubt, choose the simplest, most customer minded way. That might be organizing them by category or product type, or by use, need, or theme. For example, if you sell party supplies, grouping your items by theme birthday, anniversary, hen do  might create the best experience for shoppers.
• Take the opportunity to go beyond the product and share more about your brand. You can use text tiles to build pages about your history, mission, and whatever else you’d like shoppers to know.
• If your brand has a flagship or hero product, it can be helpful to create a subpage that describes its benefits and shows customers how to use it.
• Build a page for seasonal or festive centred items, so you can have a dedicated place to present to shoppers during specific times and events.

Choose your content tiles and widgets

Once you’ve chosen your template and added your subpages, you’re ready to add the content that helps bring your Store to life. Using the tile manager, you can populate your Store with videos, images, text, and other products. Add, delete, and organise these drag and drop tiles and widgets to fit your goals and engage Amazon shoppers.

Available content tiles and widgets

Product tile

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Once you add the product, your product tile will auto-populate the price, primary image, and Prime status of the product. Full-width product tiles also allow you to source more information from the product detail page, or otherwise add your own title and description.

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Image tile and image with text tile| Images can help create a unique look and feel, demonstrate how products work, and provide inspiration. Image with text tile allows you to add free-form text over or beside the image. You can also link your image to a page in your Store or to a product detail page.
Shoppable collection images tile| ****

With this tile, you can use lifestyle images that feature your products in different settings or in collections with complementary products. When shoppers click on the featured products, they see basic information like name, price, customer ratings, and Prime availability. They can also add the product to their cart or navigate to the product detail page.

Text tile| ****

Text tiles allow you to provide more information about your brand or products using free-form text. You can link to a page within your Store or to a product detail page by adding a Shop now or Learn more button below the text.

Video

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Videos can be added to split-section tiles and full width tiles to further tell your story. Be sure to remove any links or references to external websites from your video before uploading it.

Product grid tile

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This tile displays your products in a grid format, and includes the product name, image, price, star rating, and shopping actions like Add to cart. To find your products, you can select them manually or discover by keyword. Note that a minimum of four products is required for this tile.

Gallery widget| ****

The gallery widget supports between three to eight images that are at least 1500×750 pixels. Use this to capture multiple shots from your brand.

Bestselling products widget| ****

An easy, automatic way to highlight your bestsellers. When selected, this widget auto-populates to reflect your top products and will update as new ones reach that status.

Recommended products widget| ****

This tile automatically generates products for each visitor to your Store based on their purchases and preferences.

Featured deals widget| ****

If you have active promotions for any of your products, use the featured deals widget to display those promotions automatically.

Background video

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Background videos let you make a bold visual statement with your Store. Your video will auto-play and loop silently for visitors, as well as create a background for your page.

Review and publish

After you’ve built your Store, take a close look and ask yourself Are there any typos, grammatical errors, or inaccuracies? Correct them first to help make sure your Store offers a great customer experience. Does it render well on all devices? Use the preview option to see how your Store will look on mobile and desktop. Do the images look good? Choose ones that are high-res, well-lit, and well cropped. Does the content comply with Store policies? To help with the moderation review, the content acceptance policy ahead of submitting and make sure your Store reflects this guidance. Next, submit your Store for publishing or set it for a future date and time. Moderation review can take up to 24 hours, and you can check on status through the status bar in your Store builder. This will also display any error messages. If approved, your Store will be published automatically.

Store inspiration Hippeas

Hippeas, an organic chickpea puff brand, started selling on Amazon in 2017. They built a Store that communicates their value proposition, introduces new shoppers to their brand, and engages customers who have shopped their products before. They also use Sponsored Brands, cost-per-click ads on Amazon, to promote their selection in Amazon shopping results and drive to their Store. Our Store is a pride factor for the brand. It’s probably the best opportunity for us to show what the brand is truly about. Customers can learn more about the product, and engage with the brand.

Drive discovery

You built a Store, and now it’s time to help more shoppers find it. We’ll look at four ways to help generate traffic and engagement.

Sponsored Brands

Sponsored Brands is one of Amazon’s self-service advertising solutions. This particular ad type lets you show a selection of your products in shopping results, along with your brand logo and a custom headline. When building your Sponsored Brands campaign, you can choose where to drive customers either to a new landing page featuring a collection of your items or to your Store. We recommend linking to a Store with at least three subpages, so shoppers can explore your entire selection and engage more deeply with your brand. On average, we’ve seen that linking your Sponsored Brands campaign to your Store page has 28% better return on your ad spend, compared to linking to a product list page. You can also choose between linking to the homepage of your Store or to a subpage. If you want to give customers a holistic overview of your brand, try linking to your homepage. If your campaign relates to products found in a specific subpage of your Store, you should link directly to it and make sure that your Sponsored Brands keywords complement the products.

When we’re building out a Store page, we want to have clear, concise headings. We want bright, amazing images, and video if we’ve got it. And then, how we’re getting traffic there definitely through Sponsored Brands.

Byline

On product detail pages, your byline appears near the product title in blue text and can help provide organic traffic to your Store. Shoppers who are interested in seeing more from your brand can click your byline and be directed to your Store. If you discover the byline on your product detail pages doesn’t lead to your Store, contact Seller Central or Vendor Central support. Provide the names of the products as well as the URL of your Store.

Off Amazon channels

To help shoppers discover the range of their selection on Amazon, brands often link to their Stores from their social accounts and other paid and earned media channels. You can make this easier by claiming a short URL for your Store amazon.co.uk/BRANDNAME. How do you get your short URL? Contact Seller Central or Vendor Central support to have one assigned to you. I actually link off Instagram to our Store]. When [followers] click the link in our profile, they’ll land on our Store, which has all of our products on it. It’s a nice way to direct people to a Forever Green Indoors experience.

Leverage SEO for off-Amazon search results

There are a few ways for you to leverage SEO to drive traffic to your Store. Stores pages URLs are included in Google’s Sitemap, a listing of URLs provided to a search engine, advising which URLs and pages to crawl and index.
• Stores associated with the byline carrying the same brand name have a canonical URL that contains the Store and page name, which provides search bots with a clear relationship and hierarchy between same-Store pages and relevant keywords.
• Store pages deep-link shoppers to the Amazon Shopping App on iOS devices. This means that shoppers will go directly to a Store page on their Amazon Shopping App, if installed, when they click a Store link posted on a third party page.

Store inspiration Salvatore Ferragamo Timepieces

Using bold lifestyle photography, product shots, and video, the iconic Italian luxury brand has created a fitting destination on Amazon.

How can I help build customer loyalty through my Store?

The key to building loyalty is creating an experience that speaks to your customers needs. One way to do that is to make your Store unique, immersive, and customized. Use a variety of content tiles, from background video to image with text, to show the depth of your brand and selection and when it comes to the products featured in your Store, pay attention to the quality of their detail pages. Make sure they include accurate info, at least four highres images, three or more bullets, and video if you have it. Helpful, engaging product detail pages can help you build customer trust and drive conversions.
In the next section, you’ll learn how to interpret metrics about your Store’s performance to make informed, customer centric decisions.

Measure your performance to optimise your Store

You want to know that your efforts are resonating with shoppers and supporting your goals. Which pages have the most visits? How many sales do you see in a given period? In your Stores insights dashboard, you can access a range of metrics that help you understand how your Store is performing.

Stores insights dashboard metrics

Visitors

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Total number of visitors to your Store within a selected range. A unique visitor can visit more than one page and from more than one traffic source. Because of this, the total visitors by page or source might sum up to a value larger than the total number of visitors by day.

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Visits

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Total number of visitors who arrived from a traffic source or visited a page within a single day. A visitor can visit from more than one traffic source and visit more than one page.

Views| ****

Number of page views.

Views/visitor

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Average number of page views per visitor.

Views/visit

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Average number of page views per visit.

Sales

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Estimated total sales generated by Store visitors within 14 days of their last visit.

Units sold

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Estimated units purchased by Store visitors within 14 days of their last visit.

Orders

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Estimated total orders placed by Store visitors within 14 days of their last visit. Orders contain one or more units sold.

Units/order

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Average units per order.

Sales/order

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Average sales per order.

Sales/visitor

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Average sales per visitor.

Your insights dashboard also provides a breakdown of metrics by traffic source. You can view traffic generated from your Sponsored Brands ads, traffic originating from your byline on product detail pages, traffic coming from your Store’s source tags, and traffic from other sources not categorized.

What are Store source tags?

A source tag is a URL parameter, ?channel=tag-name, that you can add to any Store page URL when using it as the landing page for your advertising or marketing activities. When customers visit your Store using a URL that contains the tag, we automatically attribute the visit and any resulting metrics orders, sales, et to that tag. We then categorize this information for you in the insights dashboard, giving you a more detailed view of your metrics by source. You can access your top 100 tags at any point. Putting this into context, imagine you want to drive traffic to your Store from a certain social post. You can add a tag to the Store page URL you placed within that post, then see all the metrics driven by it in your dashboard.

Use your metrics to make enhancements

The data in your dashboard gives you actionable insight into how shoppers interact with your Store. Here are some ways to apply that data

Visits

As we mentioned, a visitor can visit from more than one traffic source and visit more than one page. You can use this insight to understand which traffic sources visitors use to arrive at your Store, and which pages they visit. That can help you determine if for example, traffic increase from a paid source correlates with a traffic increase from Amazon organic sources, so you note if there’s a halo effect.

Page view/visitors

This insight can help you identify, on average, how many pages visitors view per day. A high number of visits to a single page in one day, followed by low page views per visit, could indicate that a lot of the traffic arriving to the first page doesn’t continue to explore your Store. You might want to consider refining your traffic sources for example, linking a Sponsored Brands ad to your Store to drive more relevant traffic, or optimizing the landing page you’re driving traffic to.

Sales, units, and orders

With these, you can calculate sales per visitor, sales per order, or units per order. Use the insights to measure pages and traffic sources that yield both
the best and worst sales performance. If the sources or pages are performing well for you, consider comping these strategies with your low-performing sources and pages or removing them if they’re not producing results in line with your goals.

Store inspiration Chefman

Chefman creates kitchen appliances that make cooking more efficient, not to mention fun. In keeping with this concept, their Store features helpful how-to videos and product photography that makes you want to reach out and turn a dial, press a button, or grab a delicious looking panini.

How often should I update my Store?

While that depends on a few things (such as your sales cycle, overall goals for your Store, etc.), it’s a good idea to let the metrics define your cadence. For example, if you see in your insights dashboard that a product centred page is getting a lot of views but few conversions, you might try featuring new products, using a different tile to display them, or adding dynamic content like video. Beyond that, you should refresh your Store any time your brand launches new products or runs a campaign or promotion that you want to reflect there as well. Use the same creative and branding from your other assets (your brand website, social accounts to create a unified experience across all of your channels. You should also plan to update your Store for major festivities and shopping events, putting your most relevant, giftable products front and centre.

Create. Connect. Continue.

• How to create your own Store on Amazon.
• How to help customers discover your Store through paid sources like Sponsored Brands and organic sources like your brand’s byline and off Amazon channels.
• How to gain insights about your Store so you can optimise it more easily, building a unique, engaging destination for customers.
• How other brands have designed their Stores to reflect their vision, story, and catalogue.

To learn more about these topics, check out some of our favorite resources

• Stores overview.
• Leverage Stores for brand awareness interactive course Stores frequently asked questions.
• Sponsored Brands best practices guide.

References

• Low Prices in Electronics, Books, Sports Equipment & more
• . Spend less. Smile more.

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