How to Open an Amazon Storefront

In mid-2020, Amazon had more than 2.5 million sellers actively selling on its online marketplace. Acquiring a new seller roughly every 30 seconds, you can just imagine how large that number may be! With an increase in everyone’s desire to shop online these days, instead of walking into a store or mall, Amazon continues to hold the top spot for largest e-commerce companies in the world. 

Of course, to be that successful, Amazon relies on its sellers and storefront owners to be successful, too. To help with that, it has made the process of opening an Amazon storefront a simple one. In this article, you will learn what an Amazon storefront is, tips on how to open an Amazon storefront and how to start selling on the biggest marketplace known to e-commerce. 

What is an Amazon Storefront?

Simply put, an Amazon storefront is a store you can go into and browse, shop, and purchase products completely online. Sellers don’t need to rent a building or mall space and buyers don’t need to leave the comfort of their own home to shop. Amazon knows its storefronts are a great way to support small businesses and sellers know it can be a great tool to establish and build a brand, especially when first starting out. Most people are able to get their Amazon storefronts up and running for between $500 and $1000! 

Before you open an Amazon storefront, you need to know the difference between the Amazon Marketplace and Amazon Stores. Amazon Marketplace is the platform for third-party sellers, and Amazon Stores are how vendors like you can exclusively showcase your products and elevate your brand.

Sellers can open a storefront just to sell products to customers who have little time to spend searching the internet and want or need faster shipping. There are storefronts in a wide variety of departments such as home and kitchen, electronics, pet supplies, and many more. Amazon users can even browse storefronts based on region and ownership. However, there are some products that are prohibited from being sold on Amazon, like alcohol, animals, fine art, and more.

While the Amazon website has many ways to go about searching for products, sellers need to understand how to keep their business relevant.

Maximizing your Product’s Ranking

Starting your business with an Amazon storefront gives the potential to reach a wider audience, but this isn’t something that a seller should depend on. Because so many sellers sell similar products on Amazon, competition is a big factor to take into consideration. Keyword relevance and sales performance are two things that can help optimize your storefront on Amazon’s site. SEO is important to keep in mind for your Amazon storefront. These allow storefront owners to stay on top of the algorithm and maintain relevance. 

Featured Brands on Amazon

Opening a storefront allows the chance for products to be featured. When browsing Amazon’s website, featured brands will be shown for every department. There are several ways that sellers can work to get their products featured on this website:

1. Including keywords for search engine optimization
2. Paying Amazon to sponsor products 
3. Promote products through social media with promo codes, listing links, and giveaways
4. Be mindful of competition
5. Partner with influencers to market products
6. Use detailed descriptions and have great customer service to maintain high ratings
7. Provide a great shipping experience
8. Use lightning deals to motivate buyers to purchase products that are discounted for a limited amount of time 
9. Keep track of seller ratings and monitor feedback

One of the most influential ways sellers can see an increase in business is with Amazon’s Featured Merchant Status, or being eligible for Buy Box status. Being featured will allow buyers to see these products first, which is ideal when starting an e-commerce business. 

Working to feature products on Amazon is a way to keep your storefront relevant and run your business successfully! Although, none of this would be possible without creating the storefront to sell your products. 

Opening an Amazon Store

Before you can start selling on Amazon, you need to open your storefront. By opening a storefront, you are creating a place to post your products in the same location on Amazon’s website. Amazon storefronts make it easy for shoppers to view everything a seller has to offer in one place. Highlighted below are 5 simple steps to open an Amazon storefront in order to sell your products. 

Step 1: Sign up for Amazon Brand Registry

Enrolling in the Amazon Brand Registry program will help guarantee protection of the products you are selling from copycats and knockoffs. To apply you must give your brand name, a government-provided trademark number, the product category that your brand falls under, and the countries that manufacture and distribute the products you are selling. After Amazons reviews these requirements, you will receive a verification code to finalize enrollment for Amazon Brand Registry. 

Step 2: Create your Storefront

After approval for the Brand Registry Program, you will create your storefront directly on the website. This step is arguably one of the most important aspects to a successful online business because you are considerate of potential customers. Amazon sellers should also be knowledgeable about the importance of and the functions of marketing when opening their storefront. 

There are several subsets within creating your storefront: 

First, you will add your brand name and logo. You want a brand name and logo that is going to entice an audience to look further into your brand. 

Similarly, you want to choose one of three pre-created homepage designs that is simple but attractive. Marquee highlights products using enlarged images. Product highlight is exactly how it sounds- there’s focus on the best-selling product. Product grid shows the overview of all your products. 

After choosing one of these layouts, you can customize your storefront design using a drag-and-drop approach. This is the final step to ensure that your storefront is appealing and easy for buyers to navigate through. 

Step 3: Add your Products

Obviously, the most important aspect of your storefront is the products that are sold. On Amazon’s website, you can see the products are photographed in a way that the buyer is able to easily tell what they are going to purchase. The images should only be focused on the product you’re selling because this is the buyers first impression of the product. It’s critical for sellers to know how the products should be photographed to enhance online sales. 

Once you have the images of the products, they need to be uploaded to the Amazon Sellers account before they can go on your storefront. It’s recommended to upload the products in bulk for a faster transition, but they can also be uploaded one-by-one. Once this is done, you go to your in-progress Amazon store account and select one of the tiles that’s placed by the pre-created design. Select “add” and the product will enter that tile showing the image and its price. 

Step 4: Add Pages to your Storefront

Adding pages to your storefront allows buyers to easily navigate your storefront. Pages also keep buyers engaged because it appears more organized than just having a homepage. This can be done by clicking “add page” and giving the page a title. This is shown on the store’s navigation bar. Like you did for the homepage, you will then choose the page design from marquee, product highlight, or product grid. The process for customizing it is the same as it was for your homepage. 

Step 5: Preview and Launch your Amazon Storefront

This is the final step to creating your Amazon storefront! You can preview your storefront before launching it. It can also be beneficial to ask for feedback from others. This feature guarantees that you are satisfied with what buyers will see. Take into consideration how engaging your storefront is; will buyers want to come back and shop your products? While your Amazon storefront is not a website of its own, managing design and content, knowing your audience, and tracking analytics can help you work to keep visitors coming to your storefront. After previewing you can launch your storefront. Within 3 days, Amazon will review and approve the launch of your storefront and you can begin selling your products. 

How to Start Selling on Amazon

Just like starting your Amazon storefront, you can’t start selling products with just the snap of your fingers. It takes strategy and patience to get your business up and running. 

The backbone to successful selling on Amazon is your Seller Central account. This is the resource on Amazon that allows you to manage your selling account, track inventory, add product information, and list products. In general, it’s where you will find information to help you successfully run your business on Amazon. 

The next thing to focus on is the product listing itself. Make it easy for buyers- use specific descriptors, a clear image, and sub bullets of different features about the product. Avoid variation issues (can these products be sold separately if there is too much variation?), busy or unclear images, and not meeting requirements for product IDs. 

For buyers to feel ready to spend money on your product, provide detailed descriptions that are easy to understand. These aspects of the product listing include: 

• A title that is no more than 200 words
• Clear, high quality images to increase listing value
• Variations in the product, such as colors, sizes, scents, etc. 
• Short, detailed bullets that give descriptions and benefits of the product
• The featured offer or “Buy Box” gives the buyer the option to add to cart of “Buy Now” 
• A comparison of price or shipping options with other sellers who are selling the same product
• A description which will help your chances for buyers to find your product before those of other sellers

Once you have included these, your product is likely to be seen by more buyers. 

Post-Purchase Actions

After you make your first sale, you are able to track performance metrics and read customer reviews. You are able to monitor performance metrics on your Buyer Central account. Customer reviews are just as beneficial to you because they illustrate how your product is performing in the hands of the buyer. 

When you have a handle on selling, you can grow your brand. Advertise on Amazon with sponsorships and promote what your brand stands for on your storefront. Incentivize buyers and offer them discounts. Also consider global expansion. This opens the door to greater opportunity and more potential buyers. 

Keeping all of this in mind, you are ready to start selling on Amazon. Eventually, as an Amazon seller you can work on ways to maintain success and increase sales. 

Why Amazon?

Amazon is known for its outstanding variety of retail and opportunities for selling. As a result, opening a storefront on Amazon is a great way to build a brand and small community. You now know everything you need to in order to open a storefront and start selling. If you execute properly and put your heart into your business, there’s nothing else holding you back. In the event that you find yourself struggling, there are digital marketing agencies, such as SEO Design Chicago, that are ready to help you create accurate and informative product pages to increase interest and focus on building your brand!