Mike Cockfield, CEO at Khaos Control Solutions, highlights six reasons why you need to start selling your products on Amazon.

Amazon, it’s a company we’re all very familiar with and one many of us have grown up with. The eCommerce giant has dominated the world of online selling to become one of the top eCommerce businesses out there. Currently, thousands of businesses rely on Amazon to sell their goods and help their businesses grow. Over 20,000 business are making more than $1 million a year selling on Amazon, and some companies have built their entire business around selling exclusively on Amazon, not even relying on their own eCommerce website.

Despite their impressive size and global reach, some companies are still against selling their products through Amazon. As an online retailer, this is a channel you cannot afford to be missing out on. From its enormous customer base to its comprehensive shipping policies, Amazon is a channel that can have a huge impact on a business’s sales and revenue.

1. Marketing Tools - Amazon has a lot of useful data tracking and analytics tools that can really help eCommerce businesses to understand their customers and tailor marketing efforts to better appeal to their audience. The tools at your disposal as an Amazon seller, allow you to see where your customers are located, what kind of keywords they are searching, and track fluctuations in buyer behaviours to allow you to accurately maintain stock levels and plan stock accordingly.

2. Product visibility - Amazon has 310 million active users. Let that sink in for a moment, 310 million people that are browsing products online on a website that people generally only look on if they are looking to buy. Effectively, what you have there is 310 million warm leads that are browsing products at any time of the day. If you’re selling in a brick and mortar store you are confined to usual working hours, unless you run some obscure 24-hour retail service, this has the obvious impact of limiting the chances of customers coming across your products and buying them. With Amazon Prime and Amazon Top Seller your products appear at the top of searches, meaning even more people see your products.

3. Scalability - If you run a traditional brick and mortar store and are looking to grow, you would likely have to move to a bigger premise, which will probably mean a hefty injection of capital. You might need to increase your storage space and secure a larger warehouse, again costing you a lot of money. Even if you sell on your own eCommerce website you may have to move to a more powerful hosting provider. When you want to grow on Amazon the infrastructure is already there for you to sell as much as you want. You do not need to invest in additional space or new machinery to keep up with the growth; Amazon has all this covered for you.

4. Product reviews - Product reviews are rapidly becoming an important factor in a customer’s buying decision. A recent study found that customers wouldn’t buy a product with 3 stars or less. More and more people are using Amazon as a search engine for products as it allows them to see real reviews from customers who have purchased the product. This form of social proof is extremely valuable for merchants who have many high-ranking reviews on products as it has proven to increase sales.

5. Shipping - Amazon’s shipping speed and efficiency is a powerful tool to have in your arsenal as an eCommerce business. A recent report found that Amazon spent around $20 billion on shipping costs last year and that the company actually makes a loss on this. It is worth it, however, in order to provide customers with their goods in such a timely and convenient fashion. Delivery is becoming ever more competitive for eCommerce businesses and trying to keep up can be costly, as is evident with Amazon’s costs themselves. It is useful then, to have Amazon cover this shipping cost for you.

6. Amazon FBA - With Fulfilled by Amazon you don’t have to store your own inventory, or even see it. Amazon FBA means all you have to worry about is selling the product. Amazon will handle the warehousing, picking and shipping of the product. As an FBA seller, you can also gain the coveted Prime badge and Top seller badge meaning your products appear higher in searches giving the best possible chance to boost sales.

Are you convinced?

From these reasons, it’s clear that selling on Amazon is a huge opportunity for retailers and one that they cannot afford to miss. Even if you want to develop your own brand and draw traffic to your website, Amazon can be a valuable tool in gaining brand awareness and building a solid customer base, particularly for new businesses whose website might not be ranking as well as they would like in Google.

Selling across multiple channels will increase the number of potential customers that can view your products and therefore give you the best possible chance of selling your products and building your company reputation.

When selling across multiple channels it is imperative that you have a system in place that can manage your stock effectively to prevent you from overselling goods. Once this is ready, you are good to go.