For many Australians, Google and eBay are the go-to spots to find and purchase products. While these two platforms currently control the majority of search traffic in Australia, there is a sleeping giant in the Australian market that has been super under utilised and untapped to date by many businesses, this giant is called Amazon. Amazon has been quietly setting themselves up, from building out their fulfilment centers, to testing couriers and methods to provide the “next day” and “within 3 business day” delivery service they adhere to.
In the past year, during the COVID pandemic, they have now completely setup their new fulfilment centers and have successfully tested and rolled out the Amazon Flex courier solution, to achieve their promise of speedy delivery. A similar to model, which made The Iconic a nation-wide success.
Why should we join Amazon.com.au?
Based on recently stats provided by Retail Dive, around the world Amazon has seen a growth in search and purchase volume from 46% to 54% this year, taking over the Google market share in this space.
Based on the above table, you can see that in different categories and terms, Amazon has taken a huge share over Google, which eludes to consumer behavior changing and finding products on Amazon is now more critical than ever.
While these statistics are based on the rest of the world, Australia – while slow to join the party – is now starting to adopt all the digital practices that the rest of the world has already been using for many years now. A great example of this, would be Australia’s adoption of QR codes, this has been hugely successful in Asia and is a widely use technology for marketing, payments and delivery of information.
How does Amazon work?
Amazon is a marketplace, and like any market place it focuses on two key components:
- Keyword Search
- Reviews & Purchase Volume
Keyword Search: Amazon Search Engine Optimisation (Amazon SEO)
SEO is generally a term associated with Google, but it’s actually a term referring to how to write enriched-content targeting particular keywords or search phrases so that it allows search algorithms with the ability to understand and display the most relevant websites, products and services to a user.
In the case of Amazon, Amazon SEO is based on how to setup and improve your content to assist Amazon’s A9 Algorithm with understanding your store and products to serve the most relevant product results to your potential customers. For Amazon SEO, the key factors are:
- Organic sales, the larger volume of purchases the more the A9 Algorithm prefers displaying your products
- Setup products and product descriptions to include the relevant keywords and phrases you want to target and be associated with
- Customer Reviews, promote reviews and get a lot of them
- History & Age, the longer you’ve had a store and the more you sell – the more the algorithm knows your legitimate
- Impressions; views on a product based on particular search term (or just in general)
Reviews & Purchase Volume
Amazon wants sales, they want you to make a sale. The whole setup of Amazon is to help promote businesses and to help drive customers down a funnel to sell and purchase products. The more reviews and sales your business and products have, the more it will promote it across different channels including:
- Email Direct Marketing (EDM)
- mRec / Leaderboard remarketing
- Amazon dynamic pages (eg. Home Page)
Is it possible to connect my website to Amazon so I don’t have to manage two stores?
In a nutshell, yes it is possible to connect your store directly with Amazon, being Shopify, Magento and WooCommerce specialists we’ve connected many different eCommerce websites to Amazon which feeds through both sales orders and product with inventory stock levels.
If you are using a 3PL (third party logisitics) company and want to only utilise Amazon as a sales channel, this is possible and you can connect directly to send the order information and shipping information across into Amazon as well.
If you’re using Amazon as your fulfilment, sales from the website can also be directly sent across into Amazon as well.
Summary
Amazon is currently a growing platform in Australia, and getting onto the Amazon platform and utilise a good Search Engine marketing strategy will help improve your sales on the platform and may open up hundreds and potentially thousands of new customers.
Get in early and get in quick before everyone else catches on!
