Creating effective Amazon Storefronts with Noah Wickham

hi guys and welcome to another episode on Amazonia YouTube channel for today episode we have Noah from my Amazon guy very special guest Noah tell us tell us a little bit about yourself thank thanks sir yeah uh my name is Noah I work with my Amazon guy uh we are a full service Amazon agency dealing with everything AE uh that Amazon has to offer uh I myself am a bit of a jackf trade's been in the e-commerce space for a little over a decade at this point I've done pretty much anything and everything you can imagine on e-commerce platforms and so uh yeah very happy to be here with you today nice nice so uh I'll be free to ask you a bunch of questions then since your experience is is so wide uh but for today's episode we decided to go um we're going to talk about uh storefronts little bit about creating storefronts a little bit about best practices what to do what not to do and I think now I will be sharing a few examples but let's start with an AB a part for an absolute beginners like what a storefront is and why having a starfront is that important and then we'll go from there yeah absolutely so Amazon storefronts are interesting so on Shopify let's say if you have your own branded Shopify store everyone goes and they are going to be looking at only your products right and they are going to be searching through looking at everything you have to offer on Amazon on the other hand you're a lot of times going to be looking at essentially tons and tons of different brands is a marketplace right with a very very broad scope of view of what you can find on it stores in General on the platform are essentially the one place that you have as a brand to have all eyes that someone has on you right so if they uh are looking specifically at your store it's just you you don't have to worry about the competition or anything like that once they click on your product pages right back to the aspect of showing tons of other uh sellers so stores really are powerful in the sense of capturing the eye and keeping it only on you on Amazon like you have the stage and you control everything essentially you to yeah I was comparing the other day randomly chosen two two Brands uh I think it was yeah around the uh kn blocks yeah so there was one brand uh really a lot of sales a lot of good reviews good good rating and the other one was the same but the the main difference for me was that when I clicked on a on a brand name to access the storefront one had a really nice looking storefront really showcasing the brand name and the story and everything really uh immediately uh showing me that they're serious brand and serious about their products while on the other hand when I clicked the other one there was nothing it was like when you click on on that brand name you just it's like another search page with just product single single product just sitting there by its loansome nothing else around it and catastrophe and so immediately like okay I'm not going to buy that so it really really makes a difference uh so yeah I strongly suggest anyone who's just starting to just uh enroll uh start with the with a Starr storefronts so um that covered what would you say that are some of the key elements that every storefront needs to have like something is better than nothing but still I suppose that abely to I think uh let me do this let me let me share an example uh of what I would consider to be a really good uh storefront so uh this just one of the ones that I decided to pull up here uh this specifically is just Nature's spy huge huge brand on Amazon and in retail across the entire us a big thing when it comes to a storefront is you have a few different sections you specifically have your banner so this is typically going to be utilized just to expand on what your brand name is show your uh brand motto whatever that might be then you have your actual search bar so you have everything that you want to have people click on this is modular right so we can essentially choose and pick whatever it is we want want to show up here after that that's when we get into the actual store aspect of things right Nature's Bounty does a really good job of how they lay out their store they start off with a just easy ad commercial video for their product giving uh easy people are happy with their product love that straight into their actual value prop so what is the purpose behind their type of products right and then into the categories that they have and they instead of having you know a specific bestseller or hair and skin like they do up in here they say what each one is for so you know play heart health Thrive Digestive Health adapt and each one of these is a different little bubble that you can click on and it takes you to those areas the one aspect where I think they are messing up a little bit they have two of the same exact bubble difference is this one is not linked pass that instantly into all their products right so they sell supplements they sell pretty much anything you can imagine they're just showing their products in order based on their brand and type so you can see every single one this in my opinion is how a Brand store should be laid out they are essentially giving you options to click in the only thing in a brand store like this that you'd want to look at changing would be the idea of having a little bit faster appeal to products right yeah people have to get yeah people have to get through a lot of stuff to actually finally see a product obviously they have them all here they have their different ones up here in the bar you can go through all their different categories of depending on what you're needing but that's the only area where essentially you're going to run into some issues when it comes to uh actually having some engagement on the platform and on your store is they just don't have their products front and center but they do a very good job again with trying to guide the end consumer through the storefront as a whole so you know with that example that's how you lay out a store right that is the purpose of an Amazon storefront is to try and get people involved and clicking through the store rather than just using it as only another guide for hey here's my product purchase it again right I see and uh since you mentioned that okay this is just a slight issue with it's truly amazing storefront but since you mentioned that's a mistake that their uh the product is a little bit lower on the page uh then what are some of the common mistakes that you see that people make when creating storefronts if if you can name a few I think some of the common ones that I see are people uh who try and treat a storefront the same exact way that they would a Shopify store so uh Nature's B honestly is a little close to that if it wasn't for the fact of how they laid everything out uh they laid everything out really really well um but again I think the big part is not pushing their products in a way not doing correct linkage that's one I see a lot uh where people will not have the correct link so for instance one of those boxes if you click on it it would uh just take you right back to the store instead of to a product maybe yeah in just exactly just broken links uh out of stocks being like the first thing that someone sees that's horrible right if someone clicks onto your store uh imagine it's a Shopify store again and someone clicks into your website and they see the very first thing is a giant Banner that says hey sorry we're out of stock on this they're probably not going to click any further so Amazon store is the same way um I have another example of kind of that as well I'll share here which is uh it's a newer brand actually on Amazon uh ag1 this is a huge huge brand uh close to a billion dollar company I believe uh I use the product every single day actually um but the big thing here is that this has been a fully Shopify based e-commerce company up until recently right and like their Brand store shows that where they are very much just playing off the fact of hey we're AG you1 we know that you know your nutritional Foundation one scoop they don't have any extra details about the products here they don't have anything in between uh same thing with all their ingredients and you know the thing is you click on all these and it just takes you right to the same product every single time so every single one of these links that they have here is to the same product and it just links to the same so they're not really doing anything with their store here outside of just putting all of the same and if we just click you know back into the product again all of those different areas are there just images so they're not doing anything new for their store that isn't already on their uh product page so it's it's making the store essentially useless for any actual use case yeah I keep seeing such examples on on various other uh places like big Brands can very often neglect some of the things partly intentionally or partly because they're so big as you said you you that um having an out of stock item on a first page of storefront is are really um um what's the word what's the word that that's not um a bad word it's kind of like a it's kind of like a taboo I guess you know and but that's also the difference there they are a big brand where 99% of people if they make that same decision that ag1 does and honestly ag1 has done fantastic on Amazon so far but if they made the same decision that uh you know ag1 does on their storefront that's going to hurt them right that's going to cause uh some definite conversion and definitely some clickthrough rate issues yeah since it's um I think many people look at the storefront like it's a set foret set and forget part of the Amazon business but you said it well that um having not not not only having fully optimized but but M maintained storefront is crucial uh so it brings me to an idea that it it should actually be a part of um uh a te team or or a VA at least to occasionally check what's happening over there just not to miss those important sales uh over there uh and should be a routine check I would say um how I I love the topic of mobile so how how mobile uh optimization on storefront what's the how big of a role does that play I would say uh I would say it plays a much bigger role than people think um especially you know uh in this day and age majority of all work that happens on Amazon stores on Amazon General is being done from a computer right it's not really feasible to do all of the work on Amazon from mobile uh and it's something that I preach constantly that people need to understand 60 to 70% of all people who are shopping on Amazon are shopping from their mobile phone right if you have have a storefront product page anything with uh details and it is just you know tiny little text on pictures or anything like that people aren't reading that right so when it comes to developing you know an Amazon storefront that's always something I'm going to make sure as a check is that people before anything is uploaded hey did you check this on mobile is it readable is it legible you know can you still uh have a good format for your mobile device so that's that's a really big thing and uh with that I mean even the brand uh Brand store storefront analytics nowadays will let you check uh the traffic based on device type right so that's something that I would always uh encourage people to do and they will likely be uh you know see that oh I get a large percentage of my traffic from mobile or if you're like a B2B type product Oh it's coming entirely from desktops so always tailor your storefront based on where you're assuming your consumer traffic is coming from yeah and since you mentioned those analytics very often I get the feedback when I suggest uh an Amazon brand or a seller just to check their storefront insights they were like oh what like they they even they don't know that e that it exists but not to mention that actually using some of the insights over there okay they're not not super powerful I wish that that it's closer to what we can see in for example Google but still uh there are few good things that that that can be drawn from that yeah it's it's more of a it's more of a like guiding Factor right than it is anything else where it essentially uh the insights that we have there uh show us that storefronts you know we can see the engagement we can see their clickthrough it shows a lot in that sense of hey where are we going to actually be getting the most out of this guess what the majority of the time the place you are going to get the most out of your storefront is your homepage Because the actual click-through rate and dwell time on uh most uh and I say most not all but most storefronts is going to be sub 60 seconds right somebody's usually spending less than one minute in total on your uh overall storefront so if you need to get that attention from them and you need to get it really quickly yeah I remember one uh Amazon One supplement brand on Amazon we were helping with uh their process was like immediately when they have a product launch the the the pro the launch product needs to be on the homepage like first thing that somebody sees so that was like an sop that and it it did good to be honest no it does it's something I always tell people is if you are launching a new product uh I always always will encourage people to push that new product as the very first thing someone would see when they go to their home page or to their storefront because that is just a very very simple and easy way if you already have some storefront engagement from your brand to instantly get some Impressions and some clicks onto any new product right and how how do you think uh how seasonal uh changes for the holidays can impact sales i' I've heard that it helps but I I never did any actual use cases for that like special team for a storefront does does that does a thing or move a needle in the right direction what do you think I think it moves the needle just a little bit right so I'm I'm a big proponent of for instance that like store Banner at the top with the brand name I showed for like Nature's Bounty um that's type thing that I'll always be like hey around Christmas time seasonality throw a wreath up there throw a bow up there or something like that right it'll it'll help out not a ton but it definitely helps in some capacity where uh if someone's already shopping for that kind of stuff and they see that it's just kind of another uh little psychological indicator uh towards your brand do I think it really helps with overall conversion on a brand maybe but I doubt that there's you know that much data to really substantiate that yeah one thing I would love to have an opportunity to test would be to create a storefront that is completely created like a sales funnel towards a single product you know like just to see if as you mentioned the homepage it has the the the dwell time of no more than 60 seconds so I would emphasize that one page and just drive like a landing page towards the certain maybe newly launched product and just dedicate hom page to that and then maybe have somewhere like look at all other products or something like that so I wish to test something like that well I mean I think that's I think that's generally probably majority of sellers right majority of sellers are super small business they're maybe one two product shops and you know for their storefronts absolutely if that you only have one product I'd still encourage you to do a storefront and you know at the end of the day it's not that hard to put together and if you only have one product that makes it even easier right just drive it all to that product add some value prop uh stuff to the storefront to kind of give your brand a little bit of recognition give your product a little more information you know if someone's clicking on your uh Brand store from your single product you know it's likely that they already are kind of interested in it and all you have to do at that point is try and convert so I would look at the storefront for single product Sellers as nothing but like a conversion engine right right and what do you think about incorporating customer reviews and testimonials into storefront I think customer reviews um not really realistically speaking I'm not uh I don't think reviews are going to matter that much for majority of sellers uh when it comes to the storefront uh testimonials I think will matter more if it's you know some big name testimonials right so uh if you have like a really really big testimonial uh from I don't know like a Business Insider let's say or something like that you know some really big brand name um I think that would be nice to put on there but for the most part past that the only thing I can really think that would work is uh you know maybe adding a video testimonial if you have any of those onto the storefront but nothing that's really going to uh move the needle largely again you have to think you have to provide as much value and try and uh push as much conversion as possible in under 60 seconds so whatever is going to move that needle uh is going to be kind of the best for you one of the big things that I'm always going to uh push is again under that Insight section um Amazon has an engagement feature and that engagement feature lets you see essentially you know your views your click your clickthrough rate as well as like your top clicked product so uh always always I would say that people should be checking out the engagement and see where on their store people are actually engaging with nine times out of 10 they'll see that it's whatever the very first product that's shown to them on the homepage page is okay can you use that for I don't know maybe testing your St front pages yeah absolutely I mean that's exactly kind of how I would use it right is uh you know if you see that you have one product that uh is getting you know the most amount of clicks maybe it's your hero product maybe it's not on your storefront do nothing else to your storefront but just change which product is in that spot see if it changes and people still click on it that means means that essentially your storefront is built out in a way that everyone is guided towards that one product or that one spot and it also helps you down the line of seeing here's how I can kind of increase uh the amount of traffic that any one of my listings is getting anytime yeah I'm really not an expert on stor fronts so I love the the fact that you're here so so you can help somebody um I practically try to stay away from it for so many years and just stick to the PPC because I know I cannot learn all of that absolutely well and storefronts yeah storefronts realistically I have always looked at them as uh a secondary aspect right they're never going to have that many Impressions I mean I I have worked with you know brands that are doing 20 plus million dollars a year and their storefront on a 30 give 30-day given basis is is only getting 10 to 20,000 views right uh you know maybe a little bit more um so even from that aspect you're not necessarily getting the most amount of engagement on storefronts comparatively to your overall uh impression load but it's still one of those areas that it can help helps with conversion it helps also to have a uh you know One-Stop shop for everything and can kind of also help with that average order value uh when you add all of your uh products together there I see and how can sellers optimize their front storefronts for better searchability on Amazon are there any any tricks around that not really um the only one uh typically that I would kind of recommend to people um would be essentially if you're trying to push your storefront more obviously doing uh sponsor brand helps a lot just because that's you know pushing your storefront more but past that um you know it's not something that people typically are pushing all that much and you know for reason sponsor brand is expensive and it you know typically has a lower uh conversion overall comparatively to something like a sponsored product so uh is it something that people should do if you're you know already pretty high up there in your ranking and you're trying to take over some more market share within a very specific category yeah I think it would work and help out but uh from a overall kind of aspect where you're like hey should I push this sh not push it there's not huge ton of ways that people can really push their storefront other than that I see I see and um we started with uh advices for beginners so I would like to wrap up with the with the same uh for somebody who just started obviously there are so many Financial Obligations uh towards the inventory and ads and everything uh so for somebody just starting out what would you recommend like it can be a significant investment if you decide to go with a professional uh help towards that so if for those who decide to do that and can afford it I fully recommend to to contact you but what are some of the advices that you can share for people who want to do them themselves like in the terms of design or size of the of the front storefront or images or are they good to use AI or just pull some Roy royalty free images or anything that you can share I'm just guessing my recommendation will always be the same here more than likely and that is using canva uh to create your first storefront the very first video uh that my Amazon guy Steven Pope our founder posted on our YouTube channel was him uh creating a brand storefront for a brand as a a not technical designer type of person uh just making it himself using canva canva in my opinion is just uh a great software for especially people who aren't designers myself I am awful a design I am not a creative person in the slightest uh and even I could create a storefront that is at least halfway decent using canva so um look if you're just getting started that's always going to be my recommendation there is you know using a software like canva they have templates for things like this as well on their platform to make it super simple for anyone as long as you have like a logo uh you know that you can upload and so absolutely just use something like canva um you know look at some YouTube videos for resources on how to do the uploads how to make sure you know you have the right dimensions things like that so uh it's a lot simpler I think Than People initially uh imagine yeah and I would add to that I was uh we had a family trip we visit our friends they have three kids and one of their boys he's I think he's 10 and he's already proficient in canva so like he he's killing it so it's a canva is a great software it's cheap it's reliable and uh you know pretty much anyone can use it yeah so that that's also a big plus for for me um I haven't been able to dedicate time to it because I do that like on ad hoc like just quickly create a LinkedIn post or something like that but I know it's pretty powerful um so any last advice that you can give us before we wrap it up um storefronts data is King uh don't expect to get a million sales just because you open up a storefront uh again it still is a market place is not Shopify uh it's the closest thing you can get to uh having the customer attention entirely captured on you like your own you know website but at the end of the day it's still Amazon one click away and they're just bombarded with more Brands and products so uh it's good to have not uh you know HT the most necessary thing in the world but definitely is good practice to put it together and have a One-Stop shop for all your different items nice and what would be the best way for somebody to contact you yeah if anyone's wanting uh to have their Brand store storefront built out uh which you know we can do uh just head on over to my amu.com uh we have all of our services listed there uh you can also head over to my amazong guy.com brandstory uh or Brand store both of those would be uh place where you can read a little bit more about what we can do but we have full Design Services an entire in-house team of designers who it's all they do all day long is just make different storefronts brand stories brand stores so uh definitely check us out more than happy to uh talk to anyone who wants one nice I knew that you're going to throw us some link I got I got all the links we have a we have a back link for everything yeah I think that even if if somebody Tes like my Amazon guy.com something that they're going to see something really interesting we don't have it we also if you're ever just curious just try it and if we don't have a page for it we have uh a pretty funny uh 501 page that uh has a funny picture of Step our founder on it so you'll have to see that sometime okay no thank you for all the insights you shared it was it was really uh an interesting talk for me absolutely happy to be here thanks for having me yeah byebye