Shopify For Amazon Sellers

So you are looking for a scalable e-commerce business and have discovered the possibility of selling on Amazon.com or its other global marketplaces.

Being a 3^rd party vendor on Amazon is quite appealing to you and it just might be the road to enable you to quit your 9-5 job.

Product research has been done on Jungle Scout or ASIN Inspector. Product sourcing have been done on Alibaba or 1688. Heck you may have even requested a freight quotation from us or any other leading freight forwarder. You are ready to pull the trigger and embark on an Amazon 3^rd party seller’s entrepreneurial journey.

But once that carefully selected product launches and sales are coming in (thanks to auto pilot with FBA). The next step is very important and can distinguish you as a real business or just a wannabe entrepreneur. As you continue to launch new products , you will also need to focus on branding and have your own online real estate. Your Amazon customers may want to see you have an online presence before they trust in your products, having your own presence online can actually help increase Amazon conversion rates and ranking. Bottom-line – Your Amazon products need and deserves a better place to call home.

That’s where Shopify comes in to solve the problem. It is your very own web storefront to showcase your product in any way you want and your own piece of internet property that can easily be sold for a nice multiple in the upcoming future. It is a nice complement to your Amazon private label business and just as profitable when scaled right.

Here are 10 top reasons why you NEED to start investing your time and resources with Shopify Now !

1. Own the customer

Amazon is very serious regarding customer privacy (they even added an opt. out of promotional email policy recently). They are now disclosing the bare minimum of just the shipping address and telephone number to third-party sellers. There is limited use with just these two pieces of information. You can probably send a snail mail postcard to the address with a killer offer or coupon and request their email opt. in, but the conversion rate for that would be very low and cost of customer acquisition would be high.

The gold of e-commerce stores is their customer base and the best connection is still email. Yes, after all the years old the social media channels, emails are still the best way to connect with your customers on a personal level. Email addresses also allow store owners to re target ads or create look-alike audiences on Facebook among other marketing options. Getting hold of the email mean you can build a gold mine of engaged subscribers and fans, this goldmine email list is already connected with your shop and trust your brand. Trusted vendors get the highest order repeat rate.

Having your own Shopify store would allow you to own the customer and build the gold mine that we just spoke of. You will be provided all the information that a customer provides to you during opt in or check out, You would not be violating any TOS and your efforts will be rewarded when you have built a strong, reliable and engaged email list.

2. Amazon brand registry

The Amazon brand registry program requires the third-party vendor to have an e-commerce website in order to be approved. The quickest and most simple way to go about it would be to invest in a basic Shopify store, Shopify stores have 100% approval rate by Amazon Brand Registry. There are big changes coming up in the Brand Registry Program, changes that will benefit and protect private label brands to a further degree.

3. Funding with Shopify capital

Amazon rolled out its Merchant loan program called Amazon lending a few years back. Shopify  has recently followed suit and are offering US based stores working capital at a manageable interest rate. (Notice I said manageable, not affordable) – but if your profit margins are good, Amazon lending and Shopify are definitely two things that should not be overlooked. Increase your working budget without taking on additional debt that may affect your credit. Both Amazon lending and Shopify capital are loans given to you strictly based on your sales history. It truly is the “BAD CREDIT ? NO PROBLEM!”

4. Wholesale orders

This one is self-explanatory. Do you really want Amazon to take 15% of your $15K wholesale order? Your customers can place the wholesale order directly on Shopify with your provided discount code. Once order is confirmed, we can help you fulfill it directly from your factory in China to your customer and you can avoid paying Amazon FBA fees.

For large wholesale orders this can result in huge savings, which adds to your bottom line and increases profit margin for all your wholesale orders. The scalability of this is also tremendous because it requires minimal effort from your end. The factory and our company will handle everything for you, all you need to do is get the wholesale order.

5. Lower commission / Better pricing

For US-based Shopify stores, if you decide to use Shopify payments (powered by Stripe). The current deal is Shopify payments waives the per transaction fee and you only pay for the Shopify payment processing. Which means you only pay about 3% for the transaction fee plus payment processing TOTAL!

Which is a great deal considering that Amazon fees are 15% alone.

The lowered price of the transaction fee will enable you to offer a better pricing on your own Shopify store. If a savvy customer decides to Google the product and find a better price on your website, your Shopify store would get this order. Although this would only apply to vendors that also have a Merchant Fulfilled ability.

6, Blog about your product

The Amazon product sales page only allows so much information and input. Characters are limited, HTML is against TOS and not really allowed. Some winning products require a bit more explaining, but convert higher after a better tutorial.

This is where your Shopify store would come in handy as a customer resource. Well written content that explain or introduce your product will help increase customer experience substantially. Not to mention all the SEO and social media benefits that it provides. If you have a higher budget, videos are even better to increase conversion. All this can be easily done on any Shopify store, even for store owners that are non-technical. Blogs and pages can be turned into easily shareable content that can go viral on social media. Amazon product pages never go viral and basically just boring.

7. Source site for listing on other sales channels such as eBay / Newegg / Sears / Rakuten / Jet / Walmart

To really scale up your product and brand, you would need a multi-channel strategy, most of our high-volume clients use their Shopify store has the source of content for their multi-channel listing. This enables the store owner to only create one page for each product. After the product pages completed with all the relevant details and photos – a well-trained VA will use the Shopify store’s product page and create the relevant listings to each marketplace. All the store owner needs to provide to the VA are pricing rules, shipping rules and whether or not they will change up the title and description to avoid duplicate content.

8. Mitigate the risk of un-reasonable suspension and annoying Hi-jackers

if you have been in the Amazon ecosystem for long, you well know that no one is safe. Seller performance can drop the hammer for the most obvious or the most illogical reasons at anytime. It really sucks to get suspended when you have $100k worth of merchandise in multiple Amazon FBA warehouses. Once the hammer is dropped and your account is suspended,  your funds from previous Amazon sales are held for a minimum of 90 days. You lose control of your private label listing. If you want your inventory back from FBA – be prepared to pay $1.00 per unit for our removal order back to your own warehouse. If you have a outstanding balance with Amazon lending, Amazon will try to draw directly via ACH from your disbursement bank account.

You are left with very minimal or no seller support, you will either be ignored or a canned response from seller performance will appease you from time to time. Each day you are suspended , a competitor creeps up and gains ranking, ranking that you worked very hard for. But that is the risk with Amazon, they can provide sales, but they cannot provide security. With a Shopify Store, as long as you are selling something illegal – you will not have to answer to anyone except the IRS. You are free to go about your business and do not have to worry about the overnight disappearance of your trusted partner.

Product hijackers on Amazon are also rampant. Amazon third-party sellers that are not trademark registered find it very difficult to get hijackers off their private label listing. Sometimes a test order is required and overseas sellers can take up to four weeks for delivery. Which means four weeks of lost revenue for the third-party seller. Even after a test order is placed, without the proper trademark documentation, it is very difficult and time-consuming to get hijackers off.

A Shopify store is fully under control by you, and no one else.

9. A strong eco-system with large talent pool and apps

How many teach you to get rich Amazon gurus are out there ? And how many are forced to eat their words when Amazon decides to tweak its TOS?

The way that Amazon is so non-transparent with its TOS makes it hard for anyone to really become a true expert in the Amazon ecosystem. Amazon also has a tough line against its third-party sellers. The paying customer are truly Amazon’s customer, third-party sellers are only a product in the eyes of Amazon. If a product is nonperforming – Amazon will get rid of it. No matter how much seller fees this product was generating.

Shopify is completely different – they encourage app developers and partners to help their customers succeed. They really put customers first and store owners will find no shortage of talent to work on their project. Shopify app developers also apply creative ways to solve time-consuming or bottleneck issues, which is very important when planning to scale to high-volume. With developers ready to work and easy to use apps – non-technical Shopify store owners can create beautiful and functional e-commerce storefronts with ease.

10. Easy to manage and user friendly

The last and most important thing about your own e-commerce storefront is the ability for the owner to work on it. Even without a  technical background – WordPress, Magento or Volusion may be a bit too difficult for most people and Shopify is only one of many simple shopping carts CMS available out there. But in terms of scalability – Shopify is the industry leader. It is easy to use with a good hosting that offers payment gateway. This takes the headache out of most traditional e-commerce providers.

Blog entries and product creation are easy and can be managed by anyone, themes can be edited with ease and pricing updates are a breeze using a spreadsheet. If there is further customization required, simple CSS edits may be needed, but It is not very difficult.

Many marketing promotional Shopify apps and can also help you grow your store with ease. Shopify fully integrates with a very wide range of software such as Mail chimp, Zapier, Facebook, Google Shopping and much more. These integrations make it very easy for store owners to manage their data and saves us the most important asset of all – TIME.

Never put all your eggs in one basket – build your brand now and start a Shopify store. Two years later you will look back and give yourself a pat on the back for doing this. Because it will be a sell-able asset which adds tremendous value to your brand.

Disclaimer – We test each product and research with other users of the product thoroughly and only give our honest opinion, Shopify is no doubt a premium product that delivers value, therefore we have no problem placing an affiliate link in our product review.