Month: September 2022

The Trust Challenge

Small businesses that sell their products online and who create websites via “SaaS” (software as a service) solutions such as Shopify, BigCommerce, and others often find themselves in a struggle to communicate trust to their customers.  

While the audience of this article is most likely in the ecommerce-friendly camp, the simple fact is that ecommerce is still not considered universal or even “usual” by the majority of consumers.  In fact, at present, ecommerce represents just over 14% of overall retail sales in the US.  And of that 14%, many if not most shoppers still gravitate towards the more familiar brands and their websites. 

And what brands are behind those familiar websites you ask? Don’t be surprised. It’s the usual suspects of Amazon, Walmart, Apple, Target, and Home Depot currently topping the list. However, as more customers are using mobile phones and devices to shop, it’s clear that consumers are more ready and more willing to buy items via new or unfamiliar direct-to-consumer (DTC) sites.  And as a result, virtually all e-commerce platforms are scrambling to retain and grow market share. From sporting goods to pet food, sneakers to linen sheets, the expectation of free returns and fast two-day shipping has become standard ecommerce table stakes for businesses of all shapes and sizes.

Hello Buy with Prime

An emerging and compelling opportunity is now available to those upstart ecommerce businesses and DTC brands.  This option combines the best benefits of Amazon, but without the leap of faith to go “all in” with Amazon. Of course, we’re talking about the Buy with Program which enables small and medium-sized businesses to offer those familiar and comforting Amazon Prime badges on their very own DTC website.  

As noted earlier, communicating payment safety and product trust to consumers is a key challenge.  Buy with Prime eliminates the barriers for those who might not otherwise shop with a new or unknown online business.

Buy with Prime levels the playing field and provides small businesses with an opportunity to tap into the scale and reach of Amazon Pay – Amazon’s online payments processing service that empowers customers – on external websites – to pay for their items at checkout using their own Amazon account (and without the hassle of creating a new account and registering via the “new” website).  

Small business owners are also able to create and maintain long-term relationships with Amazon Prime customers (more than 200 million worldwide!) thanks to the data generated during Buy with Prime transactions. This is huge! Merchants can leverage this data via personalized email marketing tactics that effectively enable Direct to Consumer (DTC) brands to decrease budgets and dependence on less efficient digital marketing solutions such as Google and Facebook. 

What are you waiting for…?

The logic is basic, Buy with Prime allows merchants a straightforward tactic to reach engaged Prime customers along with providing the tools to convert those same customers accustomed to Amazon Prime’s promise of two-day delivery and easy returns. With the additional and obvious benefits of Amazon’s logistics prowess, participants are able to take full advantage of speedy two-day (or less in some markets) delivery time. 

If you’re ready to get your product offers on your own website in front of some of the planet’s most valuable customers, we encourage you to get in touch with us today!  It’s literally Primetime.  

In this article we’ll talk about the pros and cons of the “Amazon thing” and as a forum for transparently addressing why some sellers are hesitant to ever sell on Amazon.  And then we’ll cover why Amazon’s Buy with Prime (BwP) could be an ideal solution for those same sellers. 

First of all, let’s consider the key differences between classic all-in selling on Amazon versus strategically leveraging Buy with Prime as an enhancement of a Direct to Consumer (DTC) website. The answer to this central question could begin to alleviate concerns that business owners may have before enrolling for Buy with Prime.

The marketplace dilemma

Let’s face this head-on, for brands to truly be successful on Amazon’s marketplace (at least historically – and before Buy with Prime) they had to understand and be fluent in a wide variety of Amazon tools and interfaces within Vendor and/or Seller Central. Anyone who’s worked in either “central” knows that it’s a dynamic and ever-changing world, not one for the faint of heart.

Besides challenges related to understanding or translating “Amazonian” jargon and acronyms via these interfaces, product inventory had to be inside an Amazon fulfillment center to ensure that the offers were Prime-eligible (which of course includes many benefits related to shipping, shopping, streaming, reading, and more). And jumping forward, brands needed to also be prepared to invest in Amazon pay-per-click (PPC) advertising to ensure that their products could be found and discovered in Amazon search results. Besides those costs and barriers to entry, successful Amazon sellers need to make additional investments into internal staffing resources, and/or Amazon-centric agencies, and software and technology designed to keep track of Amazon-related product data, inventory availability, and managing reviews.

Perhaps even more important, if not insidious, sellers also face concerns about Amazon using the data it collects to create Amazon-bred private-label products that compete against their own products. There are also numerous examples of brands having to manage an onslaught of counterfeit products on Amazon and/or a seller’s own products being sold by unauthorized sellers. To be clear, the sheer amount of time and effort required by sellers to effectively sell on Amazon, in many cases, simply does not make sense.  And this is why many brands have resisted Amazon – either by not selling on the platform at all – or by accepting a lack of control and instead using little-to-no internal resources to “keep an eye” on Amazon.

Welcome to the upside of Buy with Prime

Now that we’ve listed the headaches associated with Amazon, let’s discuss Buy with Prime.  Buy with Prime seamlessly leverages Amazon’s various best-in-class platforms (payments, logistics, and marketing) to help brand owners and sellers to grow sales via their own DTC websites.  DTC websites built on Shopify, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce can now quickly be updated to include product offers that leverage Buy with Prime and include the best parts of Amazon – easy payment, checkout, and returns, and speedy free delivery by utilizing Amazon’s Multi-Channel Fulfillment (MCF) but without the headaches and significant investment into logistics and support. 

Buy with Prime also offers sellers the opportunity to leverage Amazon’s advertising solutions, enabling brands and sellers to easily target Prime members (now more than 157 million customers in the US alone). It’s also worth noting that Amazon Prime customers are extremely valuable, according to a 2021 survey, 31% of Prime members spent between $50 and $100 a month on Amazon.  And unlike audiences reached via advertising alternatives from Google and Facebook, Amazon Prime customers are, you guessed it, primed to discover and purchase products.  We won’t even go into the decreasing values and diminishing returns on advertising spend (ROAS) from Google and Facebook advertising.  That’s another article for another day. 

And for experienced and savvy Amazon sellers, here’s the cherry on top. When using Buy with Prime on your own DTC website, there is none of that “buy box competition” where you’re battling it out in a downward price spiral on an Amazon product detail page (PDP) with other merchants (aka 3P or third-party sellers) and/or Amazon retail (aka 1P or first-party sales). The beauty of Buy with Prime is that Prime customers know they can trust the Prime promise and smoothly purchase products directly from the DTC website they are visiting. This also means there is no “suppression” of an offer due to price. Thanks to Buy with Prime, brands/sellers are free to decide the price – putting sellers in control of everything – since again, it’s on their own websites. 

In summary, Amazon’s Buy with Prime program provides brands/sellers with the flexibility and control to offer Prime shipping benefits on their own DTC website – with the very best elements of Amazon – fast free delivery, a seamless checkout experience (no more abandoned shopping carts at registration) and free returns on all eligible orders. 

If you’re ready to replicate the best elements of the Amazon ecosystem without all of the Amazon-created headaches and marketplace constraints – please contact Equity Commerce today.  We’d welcome the opportunity to be a resource.