4 Tips for Expanding your Amazon Store to Shopify
Whether you are just starting out building an ecommerce business or have a well established ecommerce operation, it would be an oversight to overlook the power of having a presence on Amazon. With over 2.45 billion monthly visitors and over 564 million products sold in the U.S. marketplace alone, Amazon is the most robust online marketplaces in the world.
However, with Amazon’s eye-popping sales and traffic numbers, comes a growing number of sellers trying to capitalize on the popularity of the platform. With over 1.9 million selling partners worldwide, as a seller it can be time consuming and expensive to get eyeballs to your listings within the Amazon marketplace. And while Amazon is a great place to be discovered, it is beneficial to your overall ecommerce business to explore diversifying off of the Amazon platform and selling on a platform that you can better own and control. Shopify allows you to do just this.
If you are not familiar with Shopify, it is an ecommerce software platform that gives you the tools that you need to build, grow and scale your ecommerce business without being tied to a larger marketplace (like Amazon). When you are in a marketplace like Amazon, you have to abide by their rules and regulations which can stunt your growth. While the number of buyers make Amazon very attractive, so should having the ability to build your own brand, know more about your customers and market to them however and whenever you’d like – all of which can be achieved through building a Shopify store in addition to being listed on Amazon.
Read on to learn four tips for expanding your ecommerce business from Amazon to Shopify.
Offer different products on your Shopify store than you do on your Amazon store
No matter if you are just starting out building an ecommerce business, or are well established, it may be beneficial for you to only list a few of your products on Amazon. This will allow you to get exposure to the Amazon marketplace to generate sales and interest in your brand while keeping your listings and inventory to a minimum.
As you explore expanding off of Amazon, onto Shopify, by listing a few “core” products on your Amazon store, you can leverage your Amazon store as a way to drive traffic to your Shopify store (which could offer more than just your core products). In other words, Amazon acts as your discovery platform for customers to find out about your brand and your Shopify store is a way for you to build a longer term relationship with your customers if they want to try more than just your core products.
Additionally, with a Shopify store, you have more space on product pages (and the website as a whole) to educate customers on the value of your products. Amazon has strict guidelines that you must follow when you list a product which leads to a rather standard experience across sellers. When you expand off of Amazon, you have more creativity to educate customers and prospective customers on why they should buy your products. Perhaps you could build out infographics explaining your product or create a short video explaining your products. Having this flexibility makes it easier for you to build a lasting brand and test new types of products on your Shopify store.
Make it easy for your existing customers to reorder from you
Features on Amazon like single-click reordering make it frictionless for customers who have ordered from you in the past to purchase from you again. A reorder is an effortless way for you to grow your business and is a true sign that your products are valuable to the customer. But Amazon isn’t the only ecommerce marketplace or platform that allows single-click reordering.
Upscribe offers Shopify merchants the ability to enable single-click reordering through a Reorder feature. Customers who are logged into their Shopify account through your store can view their past orders and place a reorder from you in a single click.
Additionally, through this feature, Upscribe can send email and SMS messages to customers reminding them to place a reorder and the customer can make that purchase in a matter of two clicks. This feature makes it easier for Shopify stores to retain more customers and grow profitably.
Build an email and SMS list
When you sell on Amazon, you are essentially renting space on their platform. You need to adhere to their rules and as such you do not get as much information about your customers and are not able to properly remarket to them.
Knowing this, as you expand your business off of Amazon and onto Shopify, it is important that you build your email and SMS marketing lists because your Shopify store is a channel that you can own since it is yours. By building out your marketing lists, you will be able to market to your customers when you want to; and thus be in a better position to be able to drive sales when you want to. Doing this on Amazon is very difficult to do because Amazon does not allow you to easily remarket to your customers since you cannot easily remarket to your customer. Aside from taking out advertisements on Amazon (which are expensive) you really cannot drive demand when you want to on the Amazon platform.
As you build out your Shopify store, you can leverage Shopify’s native engagement marketing tools or download an email marketing app from the robust Shopify App Store ecosystem, like Klaviyo. By turning live a pop-up form that incentivizes visitors to sign up for your marketing list by giving them a discount off of their first order (for example), you will be building a foundational element of your business for years to come. Some of the benefits of building your own email and SMS marketing lists are as follows:
- You’ll be in a better position to build a long-term relationship with your customers which will help you build a lasting brand.
- It will be easier for you to get previous customers and prospects to return to either repeat purchase from you or make their first purchase from you.
- You can reach out to your customers to drive demand when you want to…for free! You don’t need to pay costly advertising fees on rented platforms like Amazon, Facebook or Google. Since you “own” your customers on your marketing lists you can more profitably grow your business, when you want to.
Additionally, Shopify’s checkout natively has a checkbox that customers can select if they’d like to opt-into receiving marketing communications from your brand. This feature helps you organically build your marketing lists, which in turn helps you build a lasting brand.
Invest in your SEO efforts so you can grow organically
Similar to how building your own marketing list is a foundational element of growing your business, investing the time and energy into building SEO focused content that drives traffic to your site is a smart and efficient way to build a lasting brand.
Amazon has strict regulations as to what you can and cannot put on your listings. And they have their own ways to optimize your product listings which can be confusing and sometimes change in a moment’s notice.
When you expand your business to Shopify, you have your own entire website to build, write and create any type of content that you’d like. This allows you to target keywords and topics that are relevant to your brand and drive traffic to your store. Since this traffic is “free” it will put less pressure on your paid acquisition engine to drive new visitors, which in turn could help you make your business more profitable. You can also be more creative with the types of content that you put out and really use it as an opportunity to educate visitors on your brand and products, which again is challenging to do on Amazon where it is mostly branded for Amazon, not your brand.
If you are looking to expand your ecommerce business off of Amazon, building a Shopify store will allow you to build your own brand and control your brands narrative; all while allowing you to capture and own valuable information on your customers. By expanding off of Amazon and onto Shopify, you’ll be in a better position to expand your overall business, while growing profitably and in a more sustained and lasting way.
Tools like Upscribe will provide you with features, like single click reordering, that you benefit from on Amazon, on Shopify. To learn more about how Upscribe can help grow your entire retention business (subscriptions and reordering) on Shopify, click here.
