Amazon wants to sprinkle “Buy with Prime” buttons across its websites nationwide, but it’s unclear how many merchants are willing to adopt the e-commerce giant’s latest shopping widget.
This week, Amazon announced that Buy With Prime — a tool that allows brands to qualify products for Prime shipping on their websites — will be available to all US sellers starting January 31st. bottom. Prime, Amazon said the tool has increased shopper conversions by an average of 25% since its invite-only launch in April 2022. It also pitches new features for With Prime merchants. It’s a feature that allows you to display reviews from Amazon on your company’s website.
Buy With Prime has the potential to boost sales for brands, but it doesn’t appear to be a top priority for many brands, two agencies working with Amazon sellers told Modern Retail. am. One brand pilot said the head of the agency he helped test said smaller brands wanted to jump on the Buy With Prime test bandwagon. Bigger brands are a little more cautious. In short, Amazon is exploring more ways to monetize its surplus fulfillment capacity, but it may take time for Prime purchases to become more widely adopted.
Chris Palmer, CEO of SupplyKick, a company that optimizes seller sales on Amazon, told Modern Retail that the expansion of Buy With Prime is Amazon’s response to changing seller attitudes. rice field. In other words, more Amazon vendors want to diversify their sales platforms.
“they [sellers] You want to sell from Amazon through other marketplaces, your own DTC, or retail channels. In light of that change, Amazon is adapting to changing times and coming up with tools that allow them to monetize and keep their business in-house,” he said.
A December study by Capterra, a division of Gartner, found that 99% of small and medium-sized retailers selling on Amazon today will sell on other e-commerce marketplaces, including Walmart, by 2023. reportedly scheduled.
Susie Tew, Ecommerce Director at Pattern, who helped skincare brand Trophy Skin pilot this feature, said that in the five months between July and November, conversions on her Shopify store increased by an average of 30%. says.
Other companies that have started featuring Buy With Prime on their checkout pages include beauty brands like bossy cosmetics and live by existence.
According to Tew, the overall reaction to Trophy Skin and several other sellers who have recently started testing Buy With Prime has been generally positive. “There is an inherent trust in the Amazon brand, the Prime brand that most of us are familiar with. Prime shipping is very attractive to people. Confidence in is attractive to people,” she said.
But SupplyKick said the response from the brands they work with has been more measured. “At least the portfolio brands we work with should actually drive them to adopt Buy With Prime. It’s slipping and not very successful.,said Palmer. In particular, Palmer said some of the portfolio brands SupplyKick has worked with are worried that Buy With Prime will “not move the needle” for them.
For one publicly traded e-commerce site, Palmer believes the company has already invested heavily in its own fulfillment capabilities and doesn’t need to give up control to Amazon to take advantage of Prime’s brand. .
Palmer said this scenario would apply to most Fortune 500 companies and publicly traded brands. “But there are small and medium sizes that I think make a lot of sense,” he added.
Additionally, Palmer and Tew said the purchase service was full of twists in Prime in April 2022, when the feature was in beta. For example, shoppers couldn’t apply promo codes or coupons. Shoppers also couldn’t use Buy With Prime to create a cart on the brand’s website. You had to click through to add each individual product to your Amazon account.
“We couldn’t change the ability to change the design of the button much, so it was strange to include this separate button when the look and feel of the merchant’s DTC site wasn’t Amazon Prime at all,” he said. rice field. But all of these issues have been addressed in meaningful ways over the past eight months, Palmer said.
Palmer said the main reason behind the wider rollout has to do with the extra warehouse and fulfillment space Amazon has built up during the pandemic. Amazon is currently looking for ways to monetize this excess demand.
Tew agreed with Palmer. “I see it as a strategic play. [Buy With Prime] It just gives them a sense of fulfillment and another way to tap into it,” she said.
Palmer said he expects more companies to adopt the feature, albeit at a slow and steady pace, as time goes on.
Tew warned that Amazon must remain competitive in terms of pricing against other fulfillment options. “But at scale, I think this could be very attractive for brands,” he said.
She also said the feature could see more adoption from early-stage startup brands. “We haven’t spoken to many, but it’s small to medium-sized businesses that want to jump on the test bandwagon to buy on Prime. We’re a little more cautious about it just because it’s a lot of bureaucracy, but smaller brands tend to be more agile,” she explained.
Ultimately, this is a service that experts believe is a multi-year investment that will stick.
“I don’t think Buy With Prime is a one-time experiment. I think it’s a structural enhancement to what Amazon brings to the industry,” he said.
