As the face of your products on Amazon, any brand owner can appreciate the opportunity that an Amazon Storefront provides. However, it’s essential to keep in mind that design and branding are skills and not something to take lightly. While the platform has gone to great lengths to make Store creation simple and accessible to any Amazon business, the task will benefit from a well-devised strategy and an experienced designer. 

For companies that opt to use the drag-and-drop tools or pre-designed templates to undertake the creative process themselves, it’s important to understand some of the fundamental aspects of the process. Beyond familiarity with Amazon Seller Central and the Amazon Brand Registry process, Sellers should know how the most effective techniques and best practices can influence the design. But first, the foundation of every Amazon Store starts with the self-service Store Builder, available through the advertising console. 

Amazon Storefront Building Blocks

An ‍Amazon Storefront consists of various pages that feature a brand’s products and organize them in a customer-friendly way. The best Amazon Stores will often have an engaging homepage highlighting the most popular products. At the same time, an intuitive set of sub-pages makes it easy for shoppers to navigate the shop and find exactly what they are looking for. 

The pages that make up an Amazon Storefront are composed of content tiles and widgets. These can contain text, video, images or product listings. Each page has a header section that features a hero image that remains consistent throughout your Store’s pages, as well as a brand logo and a navigation bar. Every page requires at least one additional tile beside the header section and can only be divided into 20 total sections. In addition, there are further limitations on certain types of tiles used in each area. These per-section restrictions limit the sections to:

• Four background video tiles
• One product grid tile
• One gallery tile
• One featured deals tile
• One recommended products tile

More on Tiles and Widgets

As more and more brands have added a Store to increase brand awareness on the Amazon marketplace, the flexibility and options available have grown. Currently, there are nearly a dozen different types of tiles and widgets to choose from when designing a Storefront. Some of them automatically populate based on sales data or user preferences, and most can be combined in countless ways to customize the user experience to align with a brand’s goals. The current options when designing an Amazon Store include the following:

Product tile – Once you add the product, a product tile auto-populates with the product’s price, primary image, and Prime status. A full-width product tile will also allow you to add more information from the product detail page or input your own title and description.

Image tile and image with text tile – Images are added via an image tile, while an image with text tile allows you to enhance an image with overlaid or adjacent text. These tiles can also link to a page in your Store or any product detail page.

Shoppable collection images tile – This tile is intended to feature your products in use or to group your complementary products easily. Most brands will use lifestyle images within this option to engage customers and strengthen their branding. 

Text tile – Text tiles allow you to add copy within your Amazon Store and highlight product details or your brand story outside of an item listing. Text tiles can link to a page within your Store or to a product detail page by adding a “Shop now” or “Learn more” button below the text.

Video – Videos are a valuable part of any Amazon Storefront and can be added to split-section tiles and full-width tiles. Just remember, Amazon does not allow links or references to external websites, so existing videos that promote your direct-to-consumer site may need to be adjusted for compliance before uploading. 

Product grid tile – Companies that want to display a group of four or more products can use this tile to showcase the product name, image, price, star rating, and shopping actions like “Add to cart” for multiple items simultaneously. 

Gallery widget – The gallery widget adds visual interest to an Amazon Storefront by integrating between three to eight images that are at least 1500×750 pixels. Use this to capture multiple shots from your brand.

Best-selling products widget – This is a simple, automatic way to highlight a brand’s bestsellers. When selected, this widget auto-populates to reflect your top products and will update as new ones reach that status.

Recommended products widget – This tile automatically generates products for the Amazon shoppers who visit your Store based on their purchases and preferences.

Featured deals widget – If you have active promotions for any of your products, the featured deals widget will display those promotions automatically in your Amazon Store. 

Background video – Background videos can make a bold visual statement by adding dramatic motion to your Store. A background video will auto-play and loop silently for visitors while serving as a background for your page.

Amazon Storefront templates

While Stores can be completely customized and built from scratch, one of the most popular methods of building an Amazon Storefront is to rely on the available pre-designed templates. These can help sellers create Stores and pages that meet acceptable design standards and support a quick launch even by novice sellers. Amazon offers three template themes and suggests determining the best one based on your brand’s goals. 

The marquee template is intended for companies that want to educate shoppers about their entire selection of products. It focuses on presenting multiple subcategories in an organized, easy-to-navigate way.

Brands looking to build awareness about a product or range of products are encouraged to use the product highlight template. Its design attempts to promote specific products in a catalog (like bestsellers or new launches) and make them more visible to shoppers.

Finally, a product grid template aims to boost discovery and sales of individual products and is well suited for companies with many items to display or that want to give shoppers a total view of your portfolio.

Strategies for Success

Maintaining an Amazon Store requires continuous focus and an understanding of various tools available to improve the customer experience. As you’re building an Amazon Storefront, don’t overlook these essential strategies to ensure a stronger brand and encourage long-term growth. 

Be creative

One overlooked advantage of an Amazon Storefront is its flexibility to supplement your brand’s seasonal swings or Amazon advertising. Tiles, featured products and categories can be easily adjusted to reflect the changing interests of consumers during holiday periods or when certain products are in higher demand. 

Amazon brand stores even offer a “Versioning & Scheduling” option to support temporary sales. This can be used to capitalize on events such as Amazon Prime Day, Black Friday, or Cyber Monday while minimizing the disruption to your usual Storefront design and the amount of work required to adjust between versions. 

You should also consider that your Amazon product presentation within a Storefront doesn’t have to be limited to an Amazon listing. It’s important to also clearly communicate the benefits that the items you sell can provide to a purchaser. You can make these benefits a key piece of your enhanced brand content through endorsements from credible reviewers or informative videos. 

Similarly, Amazon Stores can be an opportunity to educate customers more broadly about your brand and introduce them to other products they may be interested in. Rather than focusing entirely on promoting each product description individually, consider how the items in your inventory can complement each other and which tools within the Storefront can be used to showcase those relationships. 

Keep it organized

One of the most critical aspects of an effective Amazon Store is organization. In addition to telling the story behind your products, a brand store should improve a customer’s shopping experience on the Amazon platform, not make it more complicated. You also want to create a structure that will introduce shoppers to new products that complement the ones they are already familiar with. 

In many cases, the navigation within your Amazon Storefront should be set up similarly to your direct-to-consumer site, assuming it is already rooted in how consumers shop your products. We recommend setting up the navigation by need or “job to be done.” This approach prioritizes the perspective of customers who typically shop based on a problem they are trying to solve. 

The design must be simple and organized regardless of the product category. One of the quickest ways to lose potential customers is by presenting them with a confusing layout that frustrates them and makes finding products difficult. Opt for simple naming conventions for your Store’s pages rather than trying to cram descriptive details into each one. Save those long-tail keyword efforts for your product listings. It’s also best to create a minimum of three pages for your Amazon Store. Finally, don’t forget to evaluate the brand analytics data that an Amazon store unlocks to look for empirical evidence that your navigation plan is working as expected. 

Make it mobile-friendly

Any Amazon store that plans to meet customer expectations needs to perform well on a mobile device. Fortunately, the folks at Amazon realize this and have given Store Builder users the ability to switch between mobile and desktop views as they design a storefront. But don’t rely on Amazon’s tools. Instead, once a Store launches, check the live version on various devices continually, as screen proportions and response can change as mobile options evolve. 

Brands that want to optimize their Store experience for mobile shoppers should plan to keep text to a minimum and avoid split sections that will result in a discouraging amount of scrolling on smaller screens. Large featured images and videos can be among the most effective tools for Amazon Stores on a mobile device and are among the tiles that display most consistently across a range of screens. Be sure to keep your navigation and product organization simple enough to avoid frustrating customers who will be shopping from a mobile device. 

Embrace Inspiration

Of course, there’s no shortage of examples to look to when designing an Amazon Store. A little time researching successful Storefronts will reveal that captivating images and high-quality photography are integral to the best Amazon Storefront design. Video is also an underused feature that shoppers rate among the most helpful factors when making a purchase decision. 

Don’t hesitate to spend some time shopping in existing Stores before you begin building your own. It can help you identify problems that disrupt a customer’s search flow and find strategies that will work well to lead shoppers to complementary products seamlessly. And don’t focus only on the product categories you’ll be competing in. Look for brands with a similar number of products or that target the same types of customers to find fresh ideas that will stand out. 

Amify Can Help

At Amify, we’ve helped many of our clients refine the Amazon shopping experience for their customers. Moby, Stella & Chewy’s and Because are just a few examples of our proven approach to designing an Amazon Storefront that strengthens a brand and moves products. 

Contact us today to learn how our experts can lead an Amazon Store design process that brings your brand’s growth and conversion goals closer to reality.