Internet and mobile marketing for fashion and apparel
Selling Apparel on Amazon’s New Webstore
Amazon’s online success is well known – 105 million customers last year and revenue approaching $20 billion.
Amazon has long provided a web store feature where third parties can sell merchandise. They have now begun rolling out a new version of the Amazon webstore with features that should be particularly valuable to online apparel marketers.
For larger sellers one notable feature of Amazon is their massive scalability. You will not outgrow their system. Amazon is making their technological prowess widely available and easily accessible and affordable as a means to develop other aspects of their business.
Virtually every significant aspect of current practices in online marketing seems to have been taken into consideration.
The site is optimized for SEO to give you optimal ranking in search results on Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. XML sitemaps are automatically provided. Product url’s are automatically formatted for optimum SEO.
As might be expected from the world’s leading online retailer, websites are optimized for conversion of visitors into customers. Product ratings, reviews and shipping information are all easily included. The obviously well-proven Amazon checkout process is included and automatically incorporates existing Amazon customer accounts. (nice feature!)
Features that increase average order value through promotions and automated up-sell, cross-sell and recommendations are also easily included. Inclusion of category-related products from Amazon can blend in seamlessly with your merchandising mix. Availability of other features such as recently viewed items also helps drive up average order value.
A nice combo of features for up-selling are the contextual up-selling and best-selling recommendations.
Important to apparel sellers are visual features for handling multiple views, zooming, multiple colors, sizing and video. Amazon provides a full and clear UI for these features.
Along with the automatic inclusion of existing Amazon customers, another feature is the lack of a requirement of having your own merchant account. Amazon includes this with the package deal.
Other features worth mentioning are integration with call-center operations, CRM, personalization and the fact that Amazon hosting can be totally behind the scenes and invisible to visitors.
Along with front end features, Amazon provides a full featured backend for administration of inventory, orders, store design and other settings.
In terms of pricing, base costs are minimal at $10-25 per month. The main costs involved are the percentage of sales paid to Amazon, which is in the range of 3-4.5%, depending on volume.
Amazon has developed and is making available a truly world class web store. Developing such a site would surely cost in excess of a million dollars and require years of development and debugging.
Release of the web store is currently in a phase where it is being rolled out to larger customers. Over time the site will become available to smaller customers.
Early users of Amazon’s new webstore include Martha Stewart, Timex and Samsonite. An example of a current apparel merchant on Amazon is Bebe.
Contact Holijoli if you would like to explore how to deploy your online sales with Amazon.
Holijoli helps apparel companies create online marketing success - increased profit, improved visibility, expanded market reach, better customer relationships. Our talents lie in the area of technology, communication and strategy.
Holijoli was founded in 2009 by Steve Kilner who brings an unusual combination of career experience as a longtime Silicon Valley software entrepreneur, a one-time owner of a women's apparel business, and a marketing consultant specializing in copywriting, messaging and branding.
Steve Kilner
