With huge net sales of over $107 billion in 2015, and more than 304 million active users, Amazon is truly one of the most exciting, thriving online marketplaces around. eCommerce is quickly overtaking face to face sales in brick and mortar stores, with a big number of online businesses moving towards a clicks and bricks model, a move that very often sees a great increase in sales and profit for the brand, and improved convenience for the customer.
Amazon and eBay are two of the biggest eCommerce platforms, creating billions of pounds in revenue every year, and constantly adding more and more users to their already thriving base of millions. For many businesses, rather than selling independently through just their own websites, listing products on Amazon Marketplace and eBay is seen as a viable option.
Why should I sell my products on Amazon?
Amazon Marketplace enables vendors to sell their products through one of the world’s biggest shopping websites, allowing their third party stock to appear alongside Amazon’s own products in search results. It’s a very successful method of sales for both third party businesses and Amazon themselves, with a huge 40% of Amazon’s sales coming from the marketplace.
2016 was a record-breaking year in sales worldwide for sellers on Amazon. The Amazon Marketplace empowers brand owners and retailers of all sizes, many of them small businesses, to reach customers around the world.
said Peter Faricy, Vice President of Amazon Marketplace.
In fact, according to our economic studies, sellers have created over 600,000 new jobs outside of Amazon. Sellers are choosing Amazon because we help them build and grow their businesses with impactful programs like Seller Fulfilled Prime, and we’re proud of the fact that sellers are reinvesting their success into their local communities by creating jobs.
Let’s take a look at the some of the key figures for Amazon in 2016:
- Amazon’s new “Fulfilled by Amazon” program saw more than 2 billion items delivered worldwide
- Sellers across the world received more than 28 million orders on Cyber Monday alone
- There were 184 million unique monthly visitors to Amazon websites
- A 20% year-over-year revenue growth
- 304 million active customer accounts across the globe
It goes without saying, a sales platform as successful as this means there’s going to be some tough competition. You can’t just add your products, sit back, and wait for the sales and money to come flooding in. A proactive approach is needed, and this is where we come in.
Last year, we started to pilot a service with the aim of increasing marketplaces sales, to help sellers get a better return from their trading on eBay and Amazon. We ran this service with some pilot clients to get an idea of how effective it could be before we started to offer it out to a wider customer base. The results came back at a strong level, and we’re now ready to offer this out to more customers.
What justifies Courageous charging to increase sales on Amazon?
We’re a marketplaces agency – which means we specialise in developing eCommerce websites; marketplace integration and growing sales through better trading and export. For the past two years we’ve worked closely with organisations such as Online Seller and the Department of International Trade to offer advice, and a range of events including training and workshops on this matter.
The team were sat looking at our skills as well as our real hands-on experience and it made us realise – if we can’t increase sales on Amazon for a client, then it’s probable nobody can!
What makes Courageous different to other agencies?
We’re the UK’s only dedicated marketplace agency, that’s what. We’re experts in designing eCommerce stores and integrating with marketplaces such as eBay and Amazon. In fact, we’re so good at it (our clients will back us up on this!) that we offer a range of training courses and meetings throughout the UK, to share our knowledge and love of eCommerce with others.
We truly have a passion for helping businesses grow, increase their sales and reach their goals. We’re confident that we can take on any project and make it a big success. If you’re not quite convinced, let us show you what we’ve already done…
Let’s look at some real results!
As we said earlier, we started piloting a new service last year, with the intention of increasing sales on Amazon. For us to claim it’s been successful, we’ve obviously got to give you some evidence! Let’s take a look at one of the clients we worked with…
We’re going to practice some confidentiality here, so for the sake of this, let’s call the company ‘Acme Trader’. Acme Trader have an eCommerce website, and as part of the work we did, we integrated them with Marketplaces, as well as designing them a bespoke eBay store. Acme Trader is a lifestyle business, rather than a full-time company, and they outsource their warehousing and customer service to another business. They sell branded stock on their stores, in a market that is quite competitive.
So, how did our process work out for them? Take a look at this graph, which shows the way their sales have grown from a standing start between Month 1 and Month 8:
Yes, that’s correct, the business has quickly grown to turnover almost £9,000 a month by investing in our optimisation service. It’s a hands down success!
That’s to the penny too – there’s no rounding up or massaging the figures – that growth is phenomenal and you can see as we start to work with them on export, the potential continues to grow. Acme Trader have a very exciting future ahead!
How do we increase sales on Amazon?
There’s no tricks, secrets or underhand tactics here – all we do is employ what we share at our meet ups, educate in our training and explore in our workshops and master classes.
We’ll be honest – you could probably do this yourself. There, we said it.
You could trawl Google for days, even weeks on end looking at the best top tips for increasing your sales on Amazon, and eventually, you might just get there in the end. But how would you know if you’ve really covered all bases? What if there’s something more you could be doing that you’re missing out on? With over 8 years of experience behind us in managing and growing Amazon sales, that’s the type of valuable knowledge that you get with us.
To increase your Amazon sales, we work to a clever 10 point plan that we’ve put together. Obviously, every client is different, so we’ve ensured the plan can adapt to any business, with their own unique targets and ambitions.Download our 10 Point Amazon Plan for FREE
What can we do for you?
Our expert knowledge can be applied to just about any online selling business, and we always focus on the needs of each individual client in order to achieve the best possible outcome suited to them – after all, every business is unique.
We know that trying to master running a successful online marketplace isn’t easy, which is why we want to share our wealth of knowledge which we’ve acquired over years of hard work, and help businesses like yours increase sales on Amazon, with the following procedures…
Identifying the right eCommerce platform for your marketplace is a must, and the most important thing to start off with. With a whole host of different eCommerce platforms to look at, there’s no “one-size-fits-all”, and some of the top-rated providers such as Shopify, WooCommerce and Magento, all carry their own benefits.
The simplicity of Shopify and WooCommerce make them a great choice for setting up an easy-to-launch business, while the advanced functionalities of Magento allow full customization and control over every aspect of the website.
Optimisation
Once we’ve got the right platform integration for you, we’ll be sure to fully optimise your listings to drive more sales. This is basically a bunch of things we’ll do to make your product listings the best they can be – and better than your competitors. We know the standards that Amazon wants, and what it takes to get your listings ranking highly and more visible to customers.
Analysis
Putting you ahead of the competition is important, and price and competitor analysis is another key service in our package. In every individual niche and product field, there are going to be different businesses doing things in completely different ways. Observing and analysing what the competitors in your field, both successful and unsuccessful, are doing can be a very valuable activity. Rather than learning from your own mistakes, you can learn from someone else’s, ensuring you stay on track and firmly ahead of the competitor.
This sounds like an April Fool but isn’t! Warehouses with wings to get Amazon patent https://t.co/uUD3b8fhop
— Digitl. (@wearedigitl) December 29, 2016
Keeping a close eye on how your campaign is progressing is key, which is why we see great importance in growth reporting and forecasting. We take pride in keeping track of your sales data in a clear, organised manner, making sure you have all the resources you need to analyse the data you want, in your own time. Once we’ve started the process, we’ll have some useful data at hand, that allows us to forecast how things may go in future. We ensure these predictions are as accurate as possible, giving you a clear idea of how things are going, and will continue to do so.
Now you know how your track record with selling on Amazon looks, it might be time to start thinking about taking your business global. We’re on hand to help with the ins and outs of international growth planning when it comes to a point of taking things that bit further. It’s easy to think that international sales might be out of your reach, but with a carefully planned strategy, tailored business plan and a bit of well-needed patience, international expansion won’t seem so difficult after all.
We can help if you like!
As mentioned earlier, we’ve piloted our ten point plan (available to download above!), and we’re delighted with the results. It’s proved successful, which means we’re now happy to be able to offer it out to other businesses, such as yours. Even better news is – it doesn’t cost an exorbitant amount either! We’ve been dealing with businesses both big and small since 2008, and have had many successful marketplace integration stories over the years – in particularly, with Amazon.
Amazon is already one of the world’s biggest online sales platforms, and it’s not treading water. Things are getting much bigger, as they invest in new technologies such as delivery drones – it’s definitely the place to be for sellers!
If we’ve not yet managed to convince you that Amazon selling is the way forward, check out our portfolio to view some of our previous (pretty impressive) work with marketplaces.
If you would like to have a chat about how we can help you increase your sales on Amazon, then click here to book in a call to learn more from Darren (the person writing this). I don’t bite, and I’m also not a salesman so I won’t twist your arm or pester you into paying us for the service.
