Should You Sell on Amazon Or Your Own Website?

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As an eCommerce seller, you don’t want to have all your eggs in one basket. Sure, selling on large marketplaces like Amazon is great, but you don’t have direct access to your customers. You can’t email them about new products or remarket to them. You’re also beholden to Amazon, and if you have any issues with your account your business could be in jeopardy.

This is why many sellers say you should sell on your own website.

You can collect email addresses, target customers with remarketing ads, and have complete control over your store. The only problem is you’ll never match the number of customers Amazon has.

So, which option is best? In my opinion, you should be selling on both Amazon and your own website. In this case study, I’ll talk about a strategy I used with two clients that generated excellent results.

Comparing Amazon to Individual eCommerce Stores

As we just discussed, there are pros and cons to both options. Let’s take a closer look at the differences:


How to Enjoy the Best of Both Worlds
We recently worked with two eCommerce clients who were faced with this same decision. Our advice was for them to sell on both their own site and Amazon. Here’s what we did:

1. • We created Facebook Ad campaigns that drove customers to the clients’ websites.
   • We added a “Buy Now on Amazon” button to the site, next to the “Add to Cart” button.
   • We added tracking pixels on the Amazon button so we could track people who bought the product there. (We used ‘Add Payment Info’ as our event)
   • When the budget allowed for it, we created separate campaigns that were optimized for Amazon button clicks and purchases.

The Results
What we found was that most customers clicked the “Buy Now on Amazon” button. This is likely because people know and trust Amazon. Here are the results:

1. • 72% people preferred to shop on the website for the product with 100+ reviews on the product page.
   • 78% of people preferred to shop on Amazon for the product with no reviews on the product page.

It’s very clear that for new stores, giving users an option to buy on Amazon is essential in giving the user what they want.
What About the Drawbacks of Selling on Amazon?
It’s true that there are some downsides to selling on Amazon. However, we’ve developed solutions that address these issues:

• • Retargeting Customers: With the strategy above, because customers come to your site first you’re able to track them and serve them remarketing ads if you wish.
  • Can’t Collect Customer Information: Using tools like Pixelme, we’re able to add pixels to the “Buy Now on Amazon” button. This allows us to collect information on anyone who leaves your site to shop on Amazon.
  • Have to Rely on Amazon’s Algorithm: By using Facebook Ads to drive traffic to your listings, and utilizing FB tracking pixels, you’re able to have more control over your sales. This means you don’t need to rely as much on the Amazon algorithm.

I'll always choose my own store. Yes, conversion will be lower, but products will be expensive and will have the buyer email, which is worth more than a conversion.

Great little tip about tracking the amazon button. Thanks for this case study, very simple improvement recommendation.

Same spam you sent to the support team.

BassTrackerBoats said:

Same spam you sent to the support team.

Click to expand...

Sorry about that. It must have been a mistake.

I'll have all Support emails removed from the list

Nice suggestion

Of course, sell on both. Why not? And your study strengthens my opinion. Very valuable nuggets of advice contained in this thread.

It's also valuable to mention that with the right product and SEO optimizations on Amazon, you can also rank your Amazon rankings as a side-effect which can be significant in attracting more customers to your product. Amazon mainly cares about how many weekly sales a product is doing, so you could rank yourself up higher by running FB to Amazon.

Also, I think it's good enough if you can place event on Amazon-button as a high % of that audience can be retargeted on Facebook - even though you won't be able to filter exactly between who bought and who didn't, the retargeting campaigns will still work like a charm. So, point is, you're not missing out on too much by not grabbing the customer's e-mail.

Clever set-up, thanks for sharing! Overall, I believe giving the visitors the option to purchase through Amazon is a CR booster.