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A lot of people want to know, “How does Amazon work?”. Warm up the Wayback Machine, we are going back to the early days of Amazon to trace the lineage of what I call ‘The Amazon Game’. What you need to know about Amazon Search |
todd vanderstelt | founder | dash/APPLICATIONS
as a former Amazonian, todd is an amazon expert who works with brands, agencies, and investment firms to demystify the platform while leading the development of our amazon focused solutions. https://www.dashapplications.com/about-us.html |
It is easy to be distracted by the constant stream of policy changes, the launch of new ad units, or shiny ‘Beta’ launches, but it is the fundamentals of Amazon that determine whether or not your brand succeeds or fails… both on the platform and off. And as true as that statement was in the early days, it has only become more so as Amazon has grown in importance.
So, to get us back to the basics, let’s start with a simple question, “What exactly is Amazon?”
What you need to know about Amazon
- If you can not win the Buy Box, it all falls apart
- Optimize your detail pages so customers can find you in Amazon’s Search Results
- Use your detail page content to educate and motivate customers to convert
- Amazon affects sales in other channels, and other channels affect sales on Amazon
Amazon is a Marketplace
The primary determinations for the Buy Box winner are price and inventory availability. This is great for customers, who value selection, price, and convenience, and serves as the foundation of the famous Amazon Flywheel. For Brands however, it can mean price degradation, inconsistent signals for Forecasting and Inventory planning, and an inability to promote your products through advertising.
In short, if you cannot consistently win the Buy Box, you will not succeed on the platform.
Amazon is a Search Engine
You may have heard the term ‘Detail Page Optimization’, the purpose of which is to ‘optimize’ your pages for Amazon’s Search algorithms. The trick here is to balance content written for algorithms, with content written for customers… my next point.
Amazon is an Unassisted Sales Floor
There are plenty of best practices to find out there, but my best recommendation is to shop your pages like a customer. Do you give them all the information they need to make a purchase decision? And just as importantly, if they determine that this product is not for them, are you empowering them to shop across your line to keep them within your Brand?
Amazon is a Brand Builder and Breaker
But the inverse is also true. Gone are the days of dumping overstock in some far-away region, or leaving it to unchecked distributors to get your products out in the market. Any missteps your business makes has the potential to disrupt, if not destroy, your brand.
Amazon has a famous saying: “Start with the customer and work backward”, which is a great mental exercise regardless of your business. But for Brands today, I would also consider: “Start with Amazon and work backwards.” You will be happy you did. The health of your Brand depends on it.
Why Should You Care About the Amazon Fundamentals?
todd vanderstelt | founder | dash/APPLICATIONS
as a former Amazonian, todd is an amazon expert who works with brands, agencies, and investment firms to demystify the platform while leading the development of our amazon focused solutions. https://www.dashapplications.com/about-us.html |
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