Getting started with Stores
Stores allow you to create an immersive multi-page experience in a trusted shopping environment on Amazon. Customers come to Amazon to discover products and brands, and of customers who browse a brand’s Store once, 45% continue using Stores to shop on an ongoing basis.1 Follow this two-part guide to help you through the different steps of your Store creation and optimization.
If you have already created a Store, visit our guide on how to manage your Store for future updates and insights.
Sections: 1. Before creating your Store 2. Start creating your Store 3. Navigating Store ad moderation
Before creating your Store
In order to be eligible for Store creation, brands are required to enrol in Amazon Brand Registry.
To enrol in Amazon Brand Registry, you need:
- An active registered trademark for your brand that appears on your products or packaging
- The ability to verify yourself as the rights owner for the trademark
- An Amazon Brand Registry account, which you can create by simply signing in with your existing vendor or seller Amazon account credentials
Benefits of Amazon Brand Registry:
- Facilitates management of your brand’s product listings on Amazon
- Access powerful search tools to find content using images, keywords or a list of ASINs in bulk and report suspected violations
- Apply automated protections that use information about your brand to proactively remove suspected infringing or inaccurate content
– Josh Francis, Exectuive Vice President, HippeasOur Store is a pride factor for the brand. It’s probably the best opportunity for us to show what the brand is truly about. Customers can learn more about the product, and engage with the brand.
Start creating your Store
Stores ad policies: Access our list of Stores acceptance policies. If you’re unsure whether your ASINs are eligible or if your content is appropriate, review the policies in advance before starting creation.
Creative specifications guide: Access our resource that clearly defines all the creative specifications available to utilize in your Store. Use this guide to help plan in advance or build your Store in real time.
Before getting started
- Avoid dead-end experiences: In the tiles that you add, make sure that it is clear where the creative will take the customer. Clickable creatives should link to a page in the Store or to an ASIN detail page. A missing or broken customer experience can create pain points in the shopping journey.
- Create brand identity: Add pages that help build your brand identity. These pages create added brand value when customers consider purchasing your products over competitors. What unique information about your brand or products can you provide customers in your Store to help them make purchase decisions? Page examples include "About us", "How to" or "Learn more".
Structure your Store
Design your Store navigation with purpose. Help customers find the products they’re looking for and build a deeper connection with your brand. On average, Stores with 3+ pages have 83% higher shopper dwell time and 32% higher attributed sales per visitor.2
- Add category pages: Add different product category pages to help customers discover your entire ASIN catalogue. Also, consider adding pages that create recommendations for your visitors, such as “Shop by room” for furniture brands and “Shop by holiday” for party supply brands.
- Consider merchandising pages: Stores provide a great opportunity to merchandise your ASIN catalogue. Add pages with ASINs that are relevant to the page. Some merchandising opportunities would include “Deals”, “Seasonal”, “New arrivals” and “Best sellers” pages. These pages need to be created manually.
- Store tip: For “Deals” pages, add a “Featured deals” widget and manually add in the ASINs you have running or have planned in the future.
Home page
- Add branded content: Add lifestyle imagery, videos, short brand descriptions and/or brand slogans to differentiate your brand. Branded content helps customers know that they are in the right place, especially those browsing your Store for the first time.
- Consider adding tiles that link customers to your category pages: This is recommended if you sell several different categories of products. The home page is the landing page for Stores organic placements on Amazon. It’s fair to assume customers click on these organic placements to 1) learn more about your brand and/or 2) discover the different products your brand offers.
- Highlight featured ASINs: The home page is a great space to feature ASINs you’d like to drive additional discovery to. Featured ASINs can include (but are not limited to) your best sellers, new arrivals or seasonal offerings.
Add ASINs to your Store
- Group ASINs when you add them to the Store: Organize your ASINs to keep child variations of the same product close together, add products top to bottom based on ASP (average selling price), or list your ASINs top to bottom based on sales performance.
- Store tip: Remember customers are less and less likely to stay engaged as they scroll down the page. Focus on relevant content.
- Use the product grid: To upload ASINs in bulk, hide out-of-stock products automatically, adjust individual ASIN placements and provide balance between product and branded content.
- Use product tiles: To provide visibility to the detail page images, ASIN title, star rating, number of reviews, bullet points, price and “Add to cart” button. Recommended for pages that contain only a few ASINs.
- Store tip: To attain “Add to cart” in product grids and tiles, add your child ASINs. “See all buying options” will occur when you add parent ASINs, have active coupons, or when your ASIN goes out of stock and a third-party offer wins the buy box.
Create a dynamic shopping experience
- Provide unique header images for each category page: To help customers understand where they are shopping at all times in your Store. If you plan to drive additional traffic to your Store with advertising, having a unique header image provides a strong first impression when customers land on the page.
- Add interactive creatives: Stores supports a number of interactive tile types including video, background video and shoppable images. Customers can learn information about your brand and products faster and in a more enjoyable way with videos. Use shoppable images to drive discovery to one or multiple ASINs within a lifestyle image.
- Store tip:: A shoppable image can support up to six ASINs.
- Include lifestyle imagery: Add lifestyle imagery to showcase to customers how your products are meant to be used and enjoyed. Add these lifestyle creatives on home page, category pages, within header images and as shoppable images.
Navigating Store ad moderation
When you’re ready to go live on Amazon with your newly built Store, submit your Store for publishing or set it to go live at a future date. Ad moderation can take up to 24 hours, so be sure to allow yourself enough time.
When you go to submit your Store for publishing, you may face two types of rejections before going to ad moderation:
Soft rejections allow you to “Ignore warnings and submit for publishing”. One popular soft rejection is when you have an image that does not contain a link either to the product detail page or to a page in your Store. These rejections are provided to help you catch potential errors you might have missed while building your Store.
Hard rejections DO NOT allow you to move forward. Having blank pages without content will create hard rejections, for example.
Common ad moderation rejections
Unsubstantiated claims: If you make a claim about your brand in the Store (example: “best selling in the US”), the claim must be substantiated within the Store, with the date and evidence to support it.
- If you make a claim about your products, it must be clear which products this applies to and those products should be placed adjacent to the claim within the Store. Substantiation must be discoverable on the product detail page or the product packaging. Exemptions: If the claim is trademarked or the claim can be found on the packaging, additional substantiation is not required.
Dynamic Amazon content: Images you create should not include replicated Amazon elements like pricing references or pack size that are dynamically pulled from the ASIN detail page. Use product tiles and product grids instead.
- Store tip: If your Store was rejected because you improperly added a “Deals” page, ensure the page contains the “Featured deals” Store widget including the ASINs you are expecting to run deals for (Best deals, Deal of the day, Lightning deals).
Contact information: Your Store elements cannot include website URLs, physical addresses or contact information such as phone numbers.
- Store tip: Social media handles are acceptable as long as the messaging does not encourage customers to leave the Store. An example would include, “Buy from our social media”.
1Amazon internal, May 2020
2 Amazon internal, May 2020. Analysis compared stores with three or more pages against those with fewer than three pages.