With millions of small and mid-sized businesses on Amazon, your company needs to stand out from the completion and opening of an Amazon Storefront, also known as an Amazon Store, which sets your brand apart from your competitors and helps build trust with your shoppers.
Amazon continues to invest in new features, tools and programs to benefit the growth of small businesses on Amazon, especially the ones operated by brand-registered sellers. An Amazon Storefront will have the feel and look of a real e-commerce store with Amazon's large audience reach. If you are interested in learning how to create an amazon storefront, keep reading.
What Is Amazon Storefront?
Amazon Storefront is a multiple-page store within the Amazon platform to help customers shop for products from specific brands. The brand designed and operated these stores through Vendor Central, Seller Central account, or an Amazon agency partner.
Amazon Storefronts are a DIY (Do It Yourself) solution that allows vendors and sellers set up their own brand stores on Amazon. It is a free self-service product that allows brand owners to design and create multiple pages of stores to highlight their brands, products and value proposition on Amazon.
Who Can Create An Amazon Storefront?
To set up your Amazon Storefront, you need to have enrolled in the Amazon Brand Registry Program, which is available and free for sellers, vendors and agencies.
The main requirement for setting up an Amazon store is being enrolled in the Amazon Brand Registry program. It helps protect your products and brand from dirty sellers on Amazon, and it needs a registered and active text- or image-based trademark.
The brand registry also gives an Amazon seller access to plenty of Amazon features such as A+ content and a unique dashboard where you can search for and file copyright and trademark infringement claims. Apart from the Amazon Brand Registry requirement, there is no minimum number of products you need to create an Amazon Store.
Generally, once you enroll in the brand registry, Amazon Storefronts are available to all third-party sellers, 1st party sellers and Amazon agencies.
Why Create an Amazon Storefront?
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The main goal of an Amazon Storefront is to offer you a custom landing page where you can show off your brand and your unique value proposition. So, if you are not willing to invest in your own website yet, you should create an Amazon Storefront. Your business will need a home base, and your Amazon store can serve you as the destination for buyers to learn more about your brand and its specific value.
Other benefits of creating an Amazon Storefront include:
- It provides an excellent brand-centric shopping experience on both mobile and desktop platforms.
- Capitalizes on the internal and external traffic sources.
- Boosts organic rankings on the Amazon SERPs (Search Engine Page Results), increasing sales volume.
- Promotes your products to all the pre-existing customers.
- Provides the chance to popularize your brand to a new audience.
- Store insights dashboard allows you to find where your traffic is coming from and how well your store monitors page views and drives sales.
Amazon Storefronts are a great way of building customizable store pages by showcasing a small or single group of items. Since you can include a slideshow with texts, photos, videos, or other content making, it is perfect for new product launches.
How To Create An Amazon Store?
Creating an Amazon store is quite simple to do when following a few steps. This is a guide to help you to open an Amazon Storefront and configure it in a way that will last and will also be easy to manage in the future.
1. Set Up Your Seller Account
Amazon needs all Amazon sellers to provide proper documentation and identity verification before setting up an account. This will include the name, ID verification, contact information and bank information of the primary brand owner for the sales deposits every two weeks.
The sellers will also need to provide information about their business, such as the address, company structure, registration state and Federal Tax Identification Number. Amazon will also need credit card information to charge a $39.99 monthly fee for a professional seller account. All other costs associated with becoming an Amazon seller will depend on different factors, such as the fulfillment method.
2. Enroll in the Amazon Brand Registry Program
Every Amazon online store must be enrolled in the Amazon brand registry, which guarantees the integrity of the products sold on the platform. Before registering your brand, you should have a trademarked logo from the World Intellectual Property Organization to be eligible for the brand registry.
The Amazon brand registry (ABR) program offers different tools to improve and guard your brand on Amazon. This will include:
- Access to the restricted or gated selling product categories
- Professional presentations
- Enhanced marketing and advertising features
Once you register your brand, you can develop enhanced content for every product page, including brand messaging, lifestyle images, and many other assets. However, only registered brands can control product pages, and the Brand Services of Amazon will help eliminate any counterfeit sellers/vendors who disobey your brand's trademark.
To apply for the ABR Program, you will need to provide these details:
- Brand name as registered with United States Patent & Trademark Office. The brand name that owns an active registered trademark.
- Brand's serial number (USPTO registered)
- The list of countries where the products are manufactured and distributed
- Product label image
- Brand name's image on your product
- Product image
3. Create Your Amazon Storefront
Once you have enrolled in Brand Registry, it's time for the fun part, and that is designing your Amazon store. Amazon Storefronts are built with simple-to-use templates, and no coding is needed.
Go to "Manage Stores" within the Amazon Ad Console or the Seller Central, and you will see a list of the brands under your account that are eligible for creating an Amazon store. When you select your desired brand, you will be directed to Amazon's Store Builder console, where you will design your Amazon store. Next, click "Create Store" and choose your brand.
On the left side of your console is the Page Manager toolbar that allows you to add, edit, move and delete pages from your store. You will be prompted to design your store by selecting your homepage template.
4. Add Brand Name and Brand Logo
Now you will be in the Store Builder, but before moving to the next step, Amazon will need the following information:
a). Brand Display Name
Your brand display name will show on your storefront, so you should choose a name associated with your brand that your customers may recognize.
b). Brand Logo
Your brand logo will also display on your Amazon store, and you will need to upload an image or choose an existing uploaded image which should be at least 400 x 400 pixels. While you can change the settings to hide your brand logo, it can be useful, and it will be recognizable to your audience.
After you set your brand logo and brand name, click next.
5. Choose a Pre-Created Design for your Homepage
In this step, you will need to choose a layout for your homepage where Amazon makes it easy to open an Amazon Storefront since it uses pre-created designs. It is easy to customize your Amazon store by drag and dropping, and you won't need a developer background, although some design experience may help you create your own online store.
There are three-page template options you should choose depending on your business needs.
a). Marquee- Use big images to highlight the several products from your brand.
b). Product grid- Showcase all your products from your catalog. The product grid style is a perfect way to showcase your products in a grid format.
c). Product Highlight- Focus on the best-selling products with a bold video or image.
Amazon also offers a blank design to cater to businesses with a web design team.
Although these templates vary in style, all page templates have the same basic elements. However, no matter the homepage theme you use, don't be too caught up in this step as each one has its pros and cons and also you can change your homepage theme later.
Before choosing your homepage design, you will need to add a page meta description but ensure you keep your description short and simple. Use this as a tagline to summarize your business, products and how you will help shoppers on Amazon. When ready, choose the template you would like to work with and click "Save."
6. Customize your Amazon Store Design
Now that you have picked your design, you can customize your store's homepage. Designing a multi-page store using drag and drop tiles or pre-designed templates is easy. You can also customize your Amazon store by adding your videos, images and descriptions.
When in the builder, you will see different tiles, and their arrangement will depend on the design you choose, where you can customize them with text, images, products or videos. In addition to the tiles, you will also find a pre-set box at the page's top for a hero image, then upload an image of at least 3000 x 600 pixels. Ensure you choose an image that perfectly captures your brand, such as a lifestyle image or one that showcases your best-selling product.
7. Add Products To Your Amazon Store
Products are necessary for your Amazon store creation process, and they can be added via tiles. However, before you fill your Amazon stores with goods, you must upload products to your Amazon Seller Central account. Add the products one by one or in bulk, but upload your products in bulk for the smoothest and fastest experience.
Follow the steps below to add products to your Amazon Seller account. Once you are done creating your product listings, you can complete your Amazon store, then add the products you want to be listed, and they will appear in the tile slot. The tile displays your product's primary product images and price.
Add Store Pages if your store has many products where each age will list a specific category of products, making it easier for shoppers to navigate your store to find out what they are looking for. Customize each of the secondary pages the way you want to.
8. Preview your Storefront on Amazon
Before you launch your Amazon store, preview your storefront. From the navigation bar, located above the Store Builder, click "Preview" and see your store's appearance on Amazon. You can interact with your storefront to ensure all elements, such as links, work. Get other people to review and look at your store.
9. Launch Your Amazon Store
Once you finish creating your branded Amazon store, it's time to launch it. Select "Submit for publishing" from your navigation bar, and then Amazon will review and approve your Amazon Storefront within 72 hours. Look out for ant notifications or alerts from Amazon if you need to fix any issues.
What Metrics Can You See Through Amazon Store Insights?
Most business owners work to drive traffic to their online stores, but they don't check the Amazon Storefront analytics. Amazon Store Insights offer clear metrics that are related to your products, including:
- Daily visitors- A total number of unique users or devices viewed your store pages daily.
- Views- The total number of views a page received during a specific period also includes repeated views.
- Visitor or Views- Average number of unique pages viewed by visitors within 14 days of their last visit.
- Units Sold- Total estimated units store visitors bought within 14 days of their last visit.
Use the brand analytics tool from your store's main page. Apart from the metrics mentioned above, there are other traffic sources that Amazon measures, including:
- Amazon Organic Traffic- It refers to the traffic you get within Amazon, such as the brand's page links or search results.
- Tagged Sources- This is the traffic tracked through custom source tags, and you can create your source tags for multiple traffic channels. For example, creating source tags will help you track marketing promotions from your Amazon stores.
- Traffic from Headline Search Ads- This is the traffic the store page receives through headline ads.
- Others- Other traffic sources that are not categorized.
How To Get The Most Out Of An Amazon Store?
Once your Amazon Storefront is set up, you can use it to promote your products on and off Amazon. Here are some ways to drive traffic to your product listings and boost product sales. They include:
- Use a unique tagged source link to promote your Amazon Storefront across social media, including Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest.
- Run Amazon Headline ads to promote your online business to Amazon shoppers.
- Link your Amazon Store from your product listing detail pages and show your customers what else your brand is about and what's your brand's story.
- Use tagged source links for promoting your Amazon stores through Messenger, email marketing and SMS.
- Drive the retargeted traffic to your branded store using Amazon DSP ads.
- Use the Amazon Store reporting tools to measure the performance of your digital marketing efforts.
While owning an Amazon storefront is not as useful as owning your own online store, it can improve the conversion rate. In addition, if you don't have a base for your e-commerce business, the Amazon store is an easy and quick way to establish your presence online.
