Why Your Product Needs a Presence on Amazon!
Do you sell on both your own website and Amazon? A major objection we hear from physical product sellers is that they don’t want to sell on Amazon because they don’t want to cannibalize their sales on their own site. While we totally understand this concern, we also wanted to provide you some rationale about why being on Amazon can only help your overall sales. So if you’re on the fence about selling both places, let’s dive into why we advise physical product sellers to have an Amazon presence.
The first thing people object to is simply the idea that if someone buys your product on Amazon versus on your website, you have a lesser margin on the sale after Amazon fees. This is completely valid, and there may be a percentage of buyers that hear about your brand from somewhere and then search to see if it’s on Amazon. When they find it there, they follow through because it’s just easier than going to a separate website. While those pesky Amazon fees do cut into your margins, what if someone hears about your brand and doesn’t go to the effort of tracking down your website? You lose the sale entirely. But if someone is able to type in keywords close enough to yield your product listing on Amazon, you’ve just made a sale that could have been lost.
Going along with this same idea, some people don’t feel comfortable shopping on websites they’ve never heard of. In an age where credit card fraud is a major issue, Amazon tends to be the most trusted shopping site. People already have their payment info logged in and they are literally one click away from an impulsive purchase. Sellers want to eliminate as many barriers as possible to get someone to purchase.
Making it easy for customers to to find your product, put it in their cart, check out with ease, and trust that they can get the product on their doorstep reliably and in a short timeframe, is what makes shopping on Amazon a customer’s #1 preference if given the option. To be honest, if I am shopping on a seller’s website and go to complete my purchase, but my purse is in the car and I don’t have access to my credit card right away, I will typically just abandon my cart. Sale lost. But there have been countless times when I remember while waiting in the carpool line that I need to order new supplements, and I pull out my phone, easily find the ones I want, and less than a minute later the purchase is done!
Here are some tips for sellers who are still concerned about if Amazon is the right fit:
- If you have a large catalogue of products, only list your top sellers. Don’t waste time on less profitable or less popular SKUs. Spend your time and money on listing the ones that will offer you the most return. That way, even without having all your products there, your brand has a presence on Amazon when someone searches for you.
- Check the potential in your niche. Not every product is a homerun on Amazon. Heavy, hard to ship items (unless you go the FBM route), products with tight expiration date, merchandise that is so unique no one would think to search for them, and SKUs that are doing less than $10k per month are typically not a good fit.
- If you’re worried about profit margins after the Amazon fees, you can always list the retail price slightly higher on Amazon than it is on your website. Many customers either won’t compare the prices at all or, if they do, they figure the speed and ease of Amazon make the price worth it.
While every case is different, and we’re super happy to give you our honest assessment as to your potential on Amazon, we believe that it is in the best interest of most sellers to have a presence on Amazon, even if they are already doing well on their own site or in retail. The exposure you get being featured on Amazon’s platform is unmatched by any other sales channel in the world! Don’t miss out on the opportunity to grow your audience beyond those who have already heard about you, and reach the millions that click “Add to Cart” on Amazon every single day.