Sticking to the basic principles of Amazon listing optimisation will help you emphasise what sets your brand apart, and make it easier to achieve a healthy conversion rate. However, there’s still a lot more you can do to emphasise your value proposition and showcase your brand identity.
The Amazon storefront builder is a powerful tool for giving your customers a more cohesive experience with your brand, helping you stand out from the basic PDP experience and introduce your audience to your wider catalogue.
In this guide, we’ll explore how the Amazon storefront feature works, how to create an Amazon storefront, and the steps you can take to ensure your storefront is as effective as possible.
“Amazon storefronts are your shop in a shop, the chance to group your key products in one place and to cross sell and upsell your catalogue. On average we see about 10% of a brand's revenue go through their storefronts. It's a key part of a brand's existence in the Amazon ecosystem.”
- Danielle Thompson, Head of Content
What is an Amazon Storefront?
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An Amazon Storefront is essentially a store within a store, giving you a dedicated space on Amazon where you can design your customers’ browsing experience through a customised navigation layout, similar to how you’d build your own DTC ecommerce store.
The tool is free to use, and accessible to any Seller or Vendor who’s enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry. The interface is similar to many popular site builder CMSs, with a simple drag-and-drop interface where you can combine several preset “tiles” to create your own store experience, or choose from a pre-set structure then add your own visual and text elements.
Aside from being linked to from your product listing pages, Amazon storefronts can also be used as landing pages for Amazon advertising campaigns. This makes them a great tool for grabbing the attention of your audience while they’re idly browsing and making sure they see your products before your competitors’.
The Benefits of Having an Amazon Storefront
Many Vendors are familiar with the concept of Amazon brand stores. However, the time and resources required for creating Amazon storefronts can make it tempting to put off the project in favour of more urgent business needs.
While figuring out how to create an Amazon storefront that effectively represents your brand can take up a lot of bandwidth, there are several important benefits to doing this that will make the project well worth it.
Here are some of the key reasons why you should plan to set up an Amazon storefront.
Curated Brand Space
When you create an Amazon storefront, you’ll have an area of the Amazon website totally under your control and solely dedicated to showcasing your brand. This not only allows your audience to browse through your entire range in a browse tree that you set and control, but also gives you a great opportunity to share your brand’s story and identity through a medium you can control.
Rather than exploring each of your listings through Amazon’s standard layout, brand stores give customers a more immersive, curated touchpoint with your brand, which you can use to direct the shopper journey with greater control.
“We want customers to feel like they're on a brand's website when visiting their Storefront. We like to mirror a lot of elements used on a client's site, to ensure the customer has a consistent brand experience.”
- Saffron Wainman, Marketing Manager
Showcase Your Visual Branding
Listing images and A+ content give you some control over how your audience will come into contact with your brand. However, optimising these elements as much as possible will still mean you’re working within the confines of the basic Amazon shopping experience.
After setting up an Amazon storefront, you’ll gain instant access to much more creative freedom when it comes to visual branding. The tiles available in the Amazon sitebuilder provide a wide variety of media formats, allowing you to display assets of all sizes, put compelling infographics front-and-centre, and even upload video content to help keep shoppers engaged and increase dwell time.
Like the structural control you’ll have over the store, the creativity that comes with Amazon storefronts helps you form a branded experience that stands apart from the usual shopper journey, and lets you form a more direct connection with your audience.
Competitor-Free Space
Unlike your product listings and the search results pages where Amazon users search for your specific products, your Amazon storefront isn’t available for purchasing ad space. This means you can leverage some selling architecture that’s 100% controlled by your brand, without the risk of banner ads distracting your audience and tempting them onto a competitor’s listing.
Better Control of Pagination
If you’ve got a particularly large catalogue, creating an Amazon storefront will also give you an effective way to organise it into distinct categories and subcategories. This makes for an easier browsing experience for your customers compared to relying on the standard Amazon navigation, and can also present some great opportunities for cross-selling complementary products.
A New Angle for Analytics
The Store Insights Dashboard, an analytics tool that comes with your Amazon storefront, will show you where your store traffic is coming from, the individual pages that are driving sales, and other metrics. These KPIs will give you a clearer picture of how well your Amazon brand store is supporting your growth, and help you make data-backed decisions on how to develop and optimise your store in the future. If you’re looking to drive traffic from your own website, you can also create tags to track links from and see how much revenue this drives.
Want to maximise the value of your Amazon storefront? Our Vendor+ full channel management service gives you the support you need to optimise every facet of your brand’s Amazon presence and unlock the potential of the world's biggest ecommerce market. Find out more
How to Create an Amazon Storefront
While setting up a storefront will give your brand a major boost on the platform, the sheer amount of competition among brand stores on Amazon means you’ll need to approach this project the right way.
Here’s how to set up an Amazon storefront on Vendor Central and ensure that you get great results.
Setting Up An Amazon Storefront
Your first step towards creating an Amazon storefront is to access the store builder tool. To do this, navigate to the Advertising Console in Vendor Central, then select “Stores” within the burger menu in the top-left corner.
This will take you to a list of all the brands enrolled in Brand Registry on your Vendor account. Find the one you want to build a store for, and click the yellow “Create Store” button next to it.
Following this, you’ll be taken to the Amazon store builder. Before you can access the main UI, you’ll be prompted to enter your brand display name and upload a logo image.
Designing Your Homepage
Your Amazon storefront’s homepage is the first thing shoppers will see when they navigate to it through the “Visit [your brand name] Store” link on your product listings. Serving as the first impression of your entire range, it’s crucial to get this part of your store right.
When you start building your store, Amazon will give you several templates to choose from, geared towards different actions like highlighting a flagship product, telling your brand’s story, or displaying several ASINs in a grid layout. Remember these templates can be edited as much as you like, and you can even start with a blank page and add tiles in any way you see fit.
However you approach designing your homepage, we recommend paying close attention to all the elements that appear above-the-fold, and include a branded banner and hero image that will immediately capture the user’s attention and give them a sense of your identity.
Showcasing any ongoing product promotions, bookending your store with a footer, and prioritising the page hierarchy by best-selling products, can also help you maximise the effectiveness of the store homepage.
Develop Your Store
With your homepage in place, you can start building your store in a way that helps your customers’ navigational experience and facilitates a smooth buyer journey.
Generally, your store pages and subcategories should organise products by clear categories and themes, alongside categories like best sellers, items on promotion, or new arrivals.
Without making your store navigation too cluttered, you may also want to create some special categories tailored to the audience segment that tends to buy your products from Amazon. For example, if you sell fitness equipment, you may want to create a “starter kit” category that brings together several pieces of complementary entry-level equipment.
Finding your way around the store builder for the first time can be a little challenging, so here’s a quick list of common actions involved in setting up an Amazon storefront and how to perform them:
Add a New Page in the Main Navigation
Click on “add page” in the left-hand banner, enter the title and subcategory, and choose a template.
Add Subcategories Under Main Navigation Pages
Click on the page you want to nest the new subcategory under, then click “add page”, and fill in the details required in the same way you would for a main navigation page.
Adding a Header
Click the header section of your store and upload an image in the pop-up. Make sure to use an asset that matches the recommended dimensions exactly to avoid image stretching or distortion.
Add a New Section to a Page
Go to the page where you want to add a new section, and click the “Add new section” button. This will open a menu of different sections made up of tiles that you can choose from.
Review Your Store
Once you’re happy with the way your store is looking, click the “Preview” option at the top of the page, and use the toggle to switch between desktop and mobile previews. Go through every page methodically (in both desktop and mobile) while keeping an eye out for typos, image distortion, or other things that may have a negative impact on the customer experience.
Publish Your Store
Once you’ve completed your review, the final step is to push your Amazon storefront live. Click the “Submit for publishing” button in the top-right of the store builder, and this will send the current draft of the store to Amazon’s team. Amazon will then review the store within 24 hours, and publish it provided that there’s nothing in your store that goes against their policies.
Having trouble designing a store that will work for your brand? Our Content Studio service helps optimise every brand touchpoint on Amazon and create stronger connections with your audience. Find out more
3 Great Amazon Brand Store Examples (UK)
One of the best things you can do to inform your Amazon storefront creation is study the stores already being used by successful brands on Amazon.
Here’s a round-up of some of our favourite storefronts from across Amazon UK to help inspire your approach to design and build a store that gets results.
ACR
Safety electronics brand ACR open their homepage with a graphic highlighting the storefront “Follow” button, immediately inviting users to stay tuned-in for the company’s Amazon updates. Following up with links to “shop by activity”, a detailed infographic of their flagship product, and eye-catching animated product images, this store excels in capturing the brand’s modernity and love for the great outdoors.
Munchy Seeds
Snack brand Munchy Seeds makes inventive use of the store builder’s tiles by creating purpose-built visual assets that match the platform’s requirements exactly, but fit together when arranged next to each other to form a larger, more striking asset. This, combined with individual assets linking the user to different sub-pages, allows the brand to direct the customer journey without sacrificing aesthetics.
Candy Kittens
Candy Kittens, a gourmet vegan sweet brand, has arranged a diverse catalogue in a way that’s tailored to introducing new customers to their range. Its navigation invites shoppers to shop by flavour, range, or pack size, while multiple tiles on the homepage are dedicated to the brand’s best-selling flavours, each one with its own distinct colour scheme and font. These design elements make great use of the short time you have when a customer lands on your store and explores your brand for the first time.
Amazon Storefront FAQs
By creating an Amazon storefront, you’ll unlock greater control over the shopper journey and distinguish your brand from the standard Amazon experience with an area that’s totally free for you to customise. We hope this guide has helped you gain a better understanding of the role Amazon storefronts can play in your growth, and map out the next steps for developing a store of your own.
For more support on your Amazon journey, be sure to check out our other blog posts, or read about how our Content Studio service can help you build your perfect store.
What is an Amazon Storefront?
An Amazon Storefront is a branded mini-store within Amazon that allows sellers and vendors to showcase their products in a customised layout. It offers more creative control over branding and navigation compared to Amazon listings, similar to an independent eCommerce website.
Who can create an Amazon Storefront?
Only businesses enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry can create a Storefront. This includes both Amazon Sellers and Vendors who have successfully registered their brand with Amazon.
How much does it cost to create an Amazon Storefront?
Amazon Storefronts are free to create and use for all Sellers and Vendors with Brand Registry. However, you may incur costs if you choose to invest in professional design, content creation, or advertising to drive traffic to your storefront. Making sure your visual assets are tailored to Amazon’s stated image requirements is essential for a swift store approval and a positive customer experience.
How do I set up an Amazon Storefront on Vendor Central?
To set up an Amazon Storefront, log in to Vendor Central and access the "Stores" section in the Advertising Console. From there, you can select your brand, create a store, and start designing using Amazon's drag-and-drop store builder.
How can an Amazon Storefront help my business?
Creating an Amazon Storefront helps businesses by providing a curated brand space, increasing visibility for their product range, reducing exposure to competitor ads, improving customer experience, and providing extra insights via the Store Insights dashboard.
How do I drive traffic to my Amazon Storefront?
Traffic can be driven to your Storefront through Amazon Advertising campaigns, social media promotions, and external marketing efforts. Once your store is approved and live, there’ll also be links to your store automatically added to your product listings.
Can I track the performance of my Storefront?
Yes, Amazon provides a Store Insights Dashboard that allows you to track key performance metrics exclusive to your store, such as visitor numbers, traffic sources, and conversion rates. These KPIs can be very useful for understanding how Amazon shoppers are interacting with your store, and the kinds of optimisations you should be making.
