Customizing Your Ecommerce Store to Compete With Amazon

Consumers can find it hard to resist the pull of Amazon. We’ve put together some ways your ecommerce store can still compete. Learn how to provide a better experience and give customers what they want in this video.

Transcript: Customizing Your Ecommerce Store to Compete With Amazon

Hi there. I’m Lauren. I’m a conversion specialist here at Command C, and today we’re looking at ways you can compete with Amazon.

In this video, you are going to learn how to keep customers coming back to your site and keeping them loyal, what customers expect from your site and what they expect from Amazon, and why there are still opportunities to sell off of Amazon, even though Amazon seems like it’s eating up the ecommerce world.

What Amazon Gets Right & What It Doesn’t

Customers mainly shop on Amazon. They are starting their product searches on Amazon as opposed to on search engines. 66% are starting a product search on Amazon.

They are also shopping with Amazon mainly because of the fast free shipping, which a lot of ecommerce stores are now able to get close to. Not often same day shipping, but maybe two or three day. Amazon also has a broad selection. A lot of customers are able to shop and get everything they need. Many people are also Prime members, so that’s a reason they shop with Amazon, and people feel that Amazon often has the best pricing.

Amazon doesn’t have a few things. There’s no direct customer relationship between the customer and the brand. People have a relationship just with Amazon.

The quality of many products has also gone down. There are likely a lot of prior Amazon customers who used to do all their shopping, but now they’ve been getting a few items that don’t meet their standards.

People are often now not trusting in the reviews. There are more and more articles coming out about how brands on Amazon are gaming the reviews, so the customers don’t trust them as much.

There’s also not a way to educate customers about certain products or certain solutions. There are no B2B opportunities. You can’t advertise outside of Amazon. If you’re listed on there you have to advertise within Amazon, and you also don’t have the opportunity to increase AOV.

Where’s the Opportunity for Ecommerce Stores?

40% of US shoppers don’t want to shop on Amazon. They want to try to reduce their reliance on Amazon. Less so with baby boomers. 86% of them feel guilt-free about shopping with Amazon, but we’re seeing more of the younger generation.

Gen Z, millennials, gen X, do feel guilty about purchasing on Amazon. There’s a growing opportunity of them starting to shop on with individual retailers or e-commerce stores. People leave Amazon because of low quality goods, choices from other retailers, and they just want to support other retailers, or other stores.

Quite a few different ways you can compete. Specialized tools like fit for fashion, finding the right size. Stories and branding, loyalty programs, so we’ll go into a few of these.

Give Customers Something Unique

One particular promotion you can run is free gift with purchase. That’s a great way to get customers shopping with you. They feel like they got something extra by purchasing with you.

The Purchase Experience

On your own store, you customize and control the purchase experience. For BarkBox, they make it very branded. They make it fun and easy to shop, and really customize your subscription box. But their listing on Amazon is just very basic. All you get to pick is the size of your dog, and that’s it.

Same for Warby Parker. You’re able to really customize and get a good idea of which frames are for you. They have this cool quiz here to narrow down the selection. Whereas on Amazon, you’re just scrolling through a collection page with hundreds and thousands of different products.

More Ways to Buy & Pay

Customers also get the ability to get cross sells more easily. This benefits you as a store owner, and the customers. Here on Allbirds, you’re adding sneakers to the cart and then you’re shown some socks, which is very relevant for the customer.

There are also payment plans. Some customers may have the money to purchase this sheet set, but they would rather just pay in monthly installments. You have the ability to offer customers that on your store, but not on Amazon.

You can also offer quantity discounts. A unique way Kettle and Fire is doing that is here with this bar. If you add five more cartons, you get free shipping. If you add some more cartons, you can get 3% off, 6% off. If you add 23, you get a mystery gift. This is something unique you can do for your customers that isn’t possible with Amazon.

Messaging & Branding

You can also better communicate your messaging and your value proposition. Twigs Paper showcases their value proposition here, eco-friendly way to give the best wishes to your loved ones. But on their Amazon listing, it’s a little harder to understand that, especially in the sea of so many other cards.

And then branding. On Amazon, you’re very limited as to how much branding you can put. It just looks very general here, just some images and some text, a little bit of the brand comes through, but on their website for Poppi, it’s very brand heavy, very bright, loud, lots of graphics. You really get a sense of the brand and who it’s for with the site. A

And then lastly, giving back. You can much more clearly communicate if your company is giving back to a certain charity, or is involved in a social movement, or an environmental movement. And that’s something that can really drive customers to want to support you, purchase from you. That’s much more easy to communicate here on your website than on Amazon.

Just a few ways you can get your store to communicate benefits of shopping with you rather than going to Amazon. Think of a few ways you could run some tests, or change your messaging to really get customers sticking with you, purchasing from you, and not wanting to consider purchasing on Amazon. I will see you in the next video. Thanks.