Guide
Setting up and optimizing your Store above the fold
Your Store is the place for Amazon shoppers to explore, interact, and purchase from your brand, so the process for a customer to find and buy products on your Store should be as easy as possible. A conversion occurs when a visitor to your Store purchases something. This visitor can be someone who is already interested in your products and is intent on purchasing, or someone who isn’t aware of your brand and product offering and becomes an interested shopper while exploring your Store. According to research by Statistica, in March 2020 in the US, 88% of online shopping orders were abandoned1—in other words, not converted into a purchase. Guiding your shoppers from the awareness stage to the final purchase stage should be simple, straightforward, and user-friendly.
So what causes purchase friction?
Purchase friction occurs when shoppers get stuck between the awareness stage and the purchase stage. One of the ways this can happen in a Store is if they are slowed or obstructed from moving between your Store pages and purchasing your products. Obstacles include cluttered or crowded layouts, too much copy, poor Store structure and navigation, etc. Optimizing your Store to reduce purchase friction can help build trust with shoppers and, in turn, positively impact your Store-attributed sales.
Here are four ways to reduce friction to purchase on your Store:
Navigation is the method by which a shopper explores the Store and finds and purchases products. Simplified and organized navigation improves the overall experience for shoppers.
Let’s take a look at some of the best practices for simplified navigation on your Store:
The structure of the navigation menu is critical in helping the shopper explore the Store. Keeping it simple and consistent is the key. For example, short page names (labels) such as “Doughnuts” are more space-saving and customer-friendly than long descriptive names such as “Delicious glazed doughnuts.”
Example of a navigation menu in a Store.
The navigation menu on a Store looks different on desktop and mobile. On desktop, shoppers see multiple tabs along the navigation bar. On mobile, shoppers see a single drop-down menu. This is an important factor to consider when it comes to highlighting your top categories on a Store. Putting those top pages in the menu is one good strategy, but you can also use category tiles on the home page—image or text tiles leading to these top pages. Adding these tiles at the top of your home page, along with a strong call to action (CTA), ensures shoppers can find your most important content even if they don’t expand the drop-down menu on mobile.
Your Store is the home for your brand on Amazon, where you can showcase all of your products in one place. It's important to make your brand story and values stand out on the home page, as many shoppers who visit your Store may be interacting with your brand for the first time. An ideal home page has the following:
Example of a Store homepage
Examples of category titles
Example of sub-category tiles
Between July-December 2020, we found that Stores that featured their best-selling ASINs saw on average 10.2% higher shopper dwell time compared to Stores without best-selling products.4 Hence, once you have decided which pages you want to add, start adding products to your Store using the following product sections:
Example of product grids
Engaging and quality content on your Store can pique customer interest and help portray your unique brand identity. An interested customer may be motivated to purchase products from your Store. Quality content can also help in building customer trust and loyalty. Here are a few tips to achieve this:
You can enhance your Store design by using components like videos, background videos, and shoppable images. Using such dynamic components can increase customer interest in your brand and motivate them to purchase your products. Here are a few tips to remember:
Example of a background video
Ready to create or optimize your Store to reduce purchase friction? Manage your Store or register now to get started.
1 Statistica, March 2020, US
2 Amazon internal data, July – December 2020
3 Amazon internal, May 2020. Analysis compared Stores with 3+ pages against those with fewer than 3 pages.
4 Amazon internal data, July – December 2020
5 Amazon internal data, WW, 2021.