So you’ve been selling successfully on Amazon for quite some time now. You use a top amazon seller tools , understand the keys to success to selling on this particular platform, and you’ve built up a nicely established online selling business. Good work.
The next step for you as an Amazon seller is to set up your own Amazon store. A place where your own branded products can do their thing, and you can make even more money than you did before. Who wouldn’t want that?
This guide will talk you through everything you need to know about setting up your own Amazon store, the best way to go about it, and things you should watch out for. Let’s get going.
Amazon Stores
First of all, let’s explain what an Amazon store actually is.
Amazon allows you to create your own brand by way of an Amazon store. By doing this, you can increase your sales because your brand is getting much more traction and visibility on the platform.
An Amazon store is a visually rich platform where you can showcase your products, and create a lovely shopping experience for your customers. Due to the nature of Amazon stores, by having one you automatically enhance your consumers’ shopping pleasure, and drive more sales, as it makes it even easier to buy from you, and therefore, your brand.
Amazon Stores were launched back in 2017.
This is done in a few ways:
- Gives you a chance to get your brand out there to customers you haven’t reached before.
- Gives your existing customers a new look at your brand, and to tempt them into buying from you again.
- You can create slideshows of your products with images, text, and videos, and is wonderful for launching new products, and making a huge fuss about it!
- Heightens your SERPs within Amazon in an organic manner.
Why you should create an Amazon Store
The primary factor that drives Amazon entrepreneurs to set up their own Amazon Store is to encourage more sales – sales with their existing customers, and sales with their brand new customers. If you make your Amazon Store a really appealing place to be, and a pleasant shopping experience, more sales will come. It’s a very accessible method to shop, and one which shoppers enjoy – so why not go ahead and create that very platform for them to enjoy – and buy from you?
Your Amazon Store is not restricted to desktops, either. The mobile shopping experience is second to none, so you can capture your prospective shoppers’ interest whether they are browsing your Amazon Store on their own computer, or mobile, or out and about.
Benefits of an Amazon Store
- Easy to set up, with customizable templates for you to simply follow, and populate with your products.
- You don’t need to be a web developer! Setting up an Amazon Store does not require any coding knowledge or skill whatsoever. Bonus.
- Visually rich, Amazon Stores are a pleasant place for your customers to be – as they immerse themselves in your product images and videos.
- You can create more than one page of products, depending on your own unique business requirements.
- Your Amazon Store can be tailored exactly to your own specifications, making it unique to your business brand, and to stand out from the rest of the competition.
- You have the option of social sharing integration with your Amazon Store, to drive more engagement, traffic, traction to your products, and, of course, sales.
I’m sure now you are completely sold on the idea of creating your own Amazon Store. Let’s go ahead and look at the next steps which are involved in this process.
How to set up your own Amazon Store
It’s fairly straightforward to get going and to set up your own Amazon store, and you can do it all yourself. In order to do so, you’ll need to register with Amazon Brand Registry Program. This Brand Registry ensures your business has a professional platform, and offers you many perks, such as advertising tools and marketing features.
When you submit an application for the Brand Registry, you’ll need to go ahead and give these details:
- The name of your business brand
- The serial number of your business brand with the USPTO
- The names of the countries in which your items are produced and delivered.
- The picture of your brand name on an item
- The picture of your items’ label
- The picture of your item
Bear in mind that Amazon only register those businesses which have a registered trademark. These trademarks must be issued by the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) in these areas:
- USA
- Brazil
- India
- Japan
- France
- Germany
- Spain
- UK
- European Union
- United Arab Emirates
- Canada
- Mexico
- Australia
- Italy
Usually, the Brand Registry procedure takes from 24 hours to a month. Which is quite a wide timeframe, but being on the Amazon Brand Registry is a necessity, so this step cannot be skipped if you want to become an Amazon Store Seller. You’ll receive a code which you can use for verification purposes.
What are benefits of the Amazon Brand Registry Scheme?
- Enables accurate product listings
- Enables various product listings
- Enables product variants
- Enables protection of your brand
- Ensures more product sales
- Removes bad product listings
- Ensures authenticity of products
- Delivers enhanced image searches
- Delivers shoppers accurate information about a product
- Enables complete management of your own brand at all times over your item listings
- Enables ASIN bulk search features to save time
Once you have gone through these steps, creating your own brand Amazon Store is FREE!
To create your own Amazon Store, there is a requirement for you to already be in possession of an Amazon professional seller’s account. This is a given, really, as no newbies would attempt to set up an Amazon store without selling professionally on Amazon’s Marketplace first!
Professional Amazon Selling Plan Characteristics:
- The professional plan is for entrepreneurs who sell over and above 40 products in a month
- The professional plan is subject to a subscription fee (at this time $39.99/month), combined with referral & variable fees
- The professional plan allows sellers to conduct business on different Amazon Marketplaces, not just their generic Marketplace.
- The professional plan has no limit whatsoever to the categories that you can sell your products within, unlike the individual plan with Amazon.
Amazon FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon)
Most online Amazon entrepreneurs navigate their way down the FBA route when it comes to selling their products on Amazon.
When you go down this route, a lot of the hassle of selling via Amazon is taken care for you, at a price, of course! FBA looks after the ordering receiving, the order processing, the despatching of the orders, the delivery of the orders, and also the customer complaints and returns. Leaving you with plenty of time to grow your business, rather than focusing on the logistics of day-to-day selling on Amazon’s Marketplace.
Every Amazon Seller wants pleased, reassured shoppers, and the peace of mind that your buyers’ orders are being completed, and on time.
A little note about how the FBA service works:
- Organize with Amazon how many units you’d like to store in Amazon Fulfillment Centres for long term or short-term storage.
- The goods are then included in Amazon’s inventory.
- People buy your goods after seeing your listings on Amazon’s Marketplace.
- The sold goods are then packed, and shipped to your clients
- All customer returns are dealt with through FBA, and also any complaints or customer queries that happen along the way.
What are the Benefits of FBA?
- Zero issues for you to deal with of customer service queries or grievances
- Zero shipping and distribution issues for you to deal with
- Zero ordering and delivery errors
- Your clients obtain their orders faster via Amazon Prime
- Your customers enjoy peace of mind with the Amazon Prime logo against your product
- Increased presence on Amazon, as FBA sellers are ranked higher, so your products are promised to reach a wider audience
So what’s next? Next we need to look at setting up and managing your Amazon Store. Head to Stores>Manage Stores.
During this step you’ll be required to provide your brand’s name that you want to display, and also your brand’s logo. The logo will need to be minimum 400x400 pixels in size in order to be uploaded.
A bit about Amazon Store layouts
Within this Manager section of your Amazon Store includes the following manager tools:
- Page Manager
- Tile Manager
- Status Bar
- Preview Window
The page manager tool enables you to move around your pages to your satisfaction, as well as deleting pages that are not required.
The tile manager tool facilitates interaction of all your tiles, similar to the page manager. The content tiles are simply content elements – and incorporate: product pictures, galleries, videos, titles of products, and best-selling product grids that you are interested in highlighting to your shoppers.
The status bar in your Amazon Store alerts you to any errors on your pages.
The preview window does what it sounds like: displays a preview of your page that you are currently working on.
You can have as many as three stages with different product pages at each stage. You can choose from three templates which vary in layout:
- Product Grid
- Marquee
- Highlight
The template you choose will vary, and will be dependent on:
- Your type of business
- The niche your products are categorized in
- If you demonstrate a large amount of highlighted products within your business
- The template you think is the most visually appealing to your customers
Product Grid Template
If you’d like your products to be arranged neatly in a grid format, the product grid template is probably the way to go.
This product grid template enables you to showcase a big amount of products, all at once.
Marquee Template
The marquee template in your Amazon Store acts almost as a gateway page to your other pages, offering a selection of your products as an overview for your customers.
Highlight Template
The highlight template offers you the opportunity to showcase special products, and is ideal if you offer discounts or product promotions regularly for your shoppers to browse through.
Tell your own brand story
Now is the time to get creative with your Amazon Store. You really can customize the templates provided by Amazon to your heart’s desire. Showcasing your special products whenever the need arises, and create special promotions by enhancing your product listings.
It’s simply a case of dragging and dropping the elements to create your pages. And did we mention – no need for coding?
If you already have an ecommerce website, this bit shouldn’t be too troublesome. Follow the basic principles that you have already used for your ecommerce website, as it’s pretty much the same. Keep in mind your customers, and prospective customers. At all times ensure the navigation of your product pages is super simple, and easy for shoppers to go back and forth, and find the items that they want. A seamless experience like this can truly elevate your Amazon sales.
A bit about Pages
You can of course keep your Amazon Store to one single page, showcasing your entire inventory or products. But why stop there?
As you have the facility to add more, you may as well do so.
Do this:
- Navigate to Add Page in the Store Builder menu
- Go ahead and add a title
- Add a meta description so your buyers understand the purpose of this particular page
- Choose which template you want to use for this particular page
Item Upload Time
Go ahead now and do some item uploads – the exciting bit.
Add your items to the layout you have already chosen for your own Amazon Store. It’s very easy to upload ALL of your items at once, using the ASIN uploader.
When you upload your products to the platform, you have the facility to not show products automatically that are not in stock currently in your inventory. This enhances the experience for your shoppers, and negates any confusion over products that may or may not be in stock.
Create your website address
Create a simple but bespoke Amazon URL to encourage your customers to peruse your new Amazon Store by doing this. This would look like: amazon.com/yourownbrandname .
Having a unique Amazon URL gives your buyers reassurance that you are a credible and viable business, and it’s probably the case that your URL will be remembered by buyers instead of a competitor. Having power over your own eCommerce site, even if you are mega-successful with your Amazon listings, means that you can have an individual business away from Amazon, too. This is especially important when you want to start marketing your products to a new audience.
Ad Campaigns
Amazon gives you some nice handy insights within the Amazon Store interface. From here you can view meaningful insights into how shoppers are interacting with your brand in your Amazon Store, and drive ad campaigns accordingly, based on your own findings.
Show me an Amazon Store
Surely you are desperate by now to see exactly what an Amazon Store looks like, so you can get some inspiration for your own Amazon Store?
You got it.
Credit: Amazon
An Amazon Store looks very much like a mini website, but store on Amazon’s own platform. So you’ve really got the best of both worlds, as your branded products are being pushed out to all of Amazon’s shoppers – and we all know what a huge market that is, right?
Optimise, optimise, optimise
It’s all very well setting up your own Amazon Store, but to really stay ahead of the competition (and there’s an awful lot of it out there!), you need to enhance your product listings to stay in front of the pack. There are lots of ways in which you can do this.
Primarily, sort out your keywords. Do your research, then do it again. You’ll need to be 100% aware of the keywords you want in your listings for your products to drive the most amount of traffic to your Amazon Store. You’ll want to include these researched keywords not only to your product descriptions, but also to your titles and features of the item, too. Cover all the bases!
You really don’t want your prospective customers to all flock to your new product pages in your Amazon Store, to have them let down as they didn’t find what they expected to find. Ensure your product titles, descriptions and features have those important keywords, and then make sure that you satisfy that description, so you are giving your customers what they want.
Amazon’s focus is to match prospective buyers with the items that they are interested in purchasing, so make it super simple for Amazon to do this by matching up what you are selling with the product descriptions.
For sponsored goods on Amazon’s Marketplace, ensure that your detailed product listings include:
- Related words to their keyword search
- Valuable features for your potential buyer
- Text and content which encourages and tempts your buyer into, ahem, buying!
An item page on an Amazon Store which converts, and converts astoundingly well, looks like this:
- A thorough explanation of the item
- Item pictures which are high-quality and professional (this includes videos, too)
- Qualified for Amazon Prime and all its elements
- An appealing title, which is also accurate and relevant to the item in the listing
By incorporating this invaluable content on your item pages on your Amazon Store, you will be compensated by Amazon, as the result of this will be buyers who are networking with your page, and experiencing lower bounce rates.
You can also integrate Shoppable Images. These images can be shown with lifestyle pictures, shown in locations that enable your shoppers to imagine how their chosen products will look, and spark their imagination. Your shoppers can click on these Shoppable Images , and they will be shown the basic product features and information, with the facility to then go onto the more detailed product page if they need further reassurance to go ahead and purchase said product.
Another feature you can add to your pages are descriptive text with your product images. This allows you to give detailed, visual captions to your product images, highlighting benefits and uses of the product. This text also gives you a further chance to enhance your SEO from third-party search engines.
Following these steps ensure that the chances of your shoppers staying on your Amazon Store longer is much, much higher. They will want to know more about your brand, and potentially other products you may be selling that they will want to buy while they are there.
Once Amazon appreciates that your merchandise page description is correct, and reflective of the product, and the price is appropriate, conversions will happen. Happy days.
Before publishing your Amazon Store product pages, just do a triple check on the grammar and spelling to make sure your pages look as professional as possible. You can use Store Preview to check exactly how your desired pages are going to look to your buyers.
Which products sell the best on Amazon?
On a side note here, it’s worth mentioning about Amazon best selling products. Because, after all, if you are going to go ahead and set up your own Amazon Store, you want to ensure you are including the very best-selling products, don’t you?
Amazon Best Sellers List
This list contains the categories on Amazon that sell the best at that present moment in time.
And this list is the best place to start when doing product research on best-selling products at any given moment in time.
Best Amazon Selling Categories in 2020
- Toys and Games
- Cameras
- Electronics
- Video Games
- Cosmetics
- Books
Handy Tips to Sell on Amazon
As a great starting point, take note of these below tips for sourcing your next best seller, as, chances are – if your intended product fits all (or some) of these criteria, you may well have a star buy on your hands!
- The product has upwards of ten transactions in a day
- The product is eligible for Prime Shipping
- The product is small
- The product is light
- The product has an approximate selling price of $21-$200
- The product is simple to ship
- The product has fewer than 100 reviews already listed
Items you probably shouldn’t source to sell on Amazon
- The product is sold in great volumes every day
- The product is already sold in successful, branded stores
- The product is extremely heavy or bulky
- The product is complicated or costly (or both!) to distribute
- The product is already trademarked
How to Source the Greatest Items To Sell On Amazon
Choose products which are searched by regular and accurate keywords. This comes down to extensive product research. Which we can’t say enough!
Check out the Customers Also Bought portion of Amazon. From here you’ll gain valuable insights into which items your prospective shoppers also went ahead and purchased, so you’ll get some great suggestions from here, suggestions that may not even have entered your head!
When choosing the best- selling products to boost your ROI, it doesn’t come down to one separate piece. It’s made up of several elements:
- Categories
- Weight and Size for Shipping
- Breakability of the item
- Whether that product is currently sold in droves, so there’s too much competition
There are a multiplicity of useful tools to be found on product research, product finders, and indeed, product price trackers online. Use these tools wisely to figure out your own best-selling products for your new Amazon Store.
Amazon Sellers who Succeed on Amazon
It’s worth mentioning some products that sell particularly well on Amazon’s Marketplace.
- Unique/Bespoke Items
Amazon Sellers who craft their own jewellery, for example. These unique and bespoke items sell well as they are generally one-off items, which aren’t easy to replicate, and also have low competition from other sellers. Often you’ll find that these items can demand higher prices as there’s not often something similar on the market already = more profit!
- Niche Items
Items which fall into a niche category are often successful, as it’s extremely unlikely that Amazon itself would start investing in these categories. Therefore, you probably wouldn’t have competition from Amazon with these niche items.
- Used Items
Refurbished or used goods have a lot of interaction on Amazon by shoppers. Shoppers who are driven by price, and not so much on delivery times.
Amazon Store Insights
Next you will be keen to learn about the interactions and engagements with your product pages on your new Amazon Store.
Your Amazon insights include:
- Sales
We all want to know how many sales we are making, right? Navigate to the Sales toggle, and you’ll be presented with the predicted sales on your products in the last two weeks. Amazon produces sales data insights not on the day of sale, but the day of the buyers’ visit.
- Units Sold
The Units Sold tab displays the predicted units that your buyers purchased in the last two weeks.
- Views
The overall amount of views that a single product page obtained. You can filter this to display different periods of time, if you so wish, and this data does include views on a repeat basis.
- Views or Visitor
Views or Visitor displays the amount of average unique pages that have been seen by a shopper daily.
- Daily Visitors
The overall amount of unique devices or people who saw the pages of your Amazon Store in a single day.
As of last year (2019), you can now view insights data in 6 new ways from the Amazon Insights platform – these include Sales/Visit, Sales/Visitor, Orders, Orders/Visit, Units/Order, and Sales/Order .
Businesses are allowed to see and export the top 100 source tags (previously this was limited to 30 source tags).
You can use these insights to make informed business choices, based on the aims of the business.
FAQ
How much does it cost to create an Amazon Store?
As long as you have an Amazon Professional Seller account already set up, and registered with Amazon Brand Registry, you are good to get started with your new Amazon Store completely free.
Are Amazon Stores just for desktops?
No. Amazon Stores can be viewed on desktops, Amazon mobile app, and also Amazon website. Amazon Store templates are built with a responsive model.
Does it take a long time to build an Amazon Store?
This is very much a loaded question, as it very much depends on how many products or items you have in your inventory currently, and the type of template you want to create. Bear in mind that once you have drafted your Amazon Store product pages, you will need to submit it to Amazon for absolute approval before it can go live. This process usually takes around 72 hours to be examined and accepted, so you can’t get going immediately with your Amazon Store.
Final Thoughts
Amazon Stores provide a whole new opportunity of a way to sell on Amazon. And for most, this opportunity can be very successful and lucrative.
It’s definitely the next step for the Amazon entrepreneurs who are ready to explore the potential Amazon has to offer its sellers.
