Top 5 Highlights from Amazon Accelerate 2023

Article by: Lauren Stair

September 22, 2023

• News and Updates,
• Strategy and Thought Leadership

Welcome to our annual recap of the highly anticipated Amazon Accelerate event! Our team attended this year’s conference to immerse ourselves in the latest industry developments, connect with Sellers and partners, and bring you the key takeaways that will shape your success on the Amazon Seller Platform.

Amazon Accelerate 2023 emphasized the importance of proactive adaptation to the evolving ecommerce landscape. While the announcements were anticipated by our team, they underscore Amazon’s commitment to refining the Seller experience and catalyzing growth for Sellers like yourself. As an agency dedicated to keeping our finger on the pulse of Amazon, we are excited to share our cherry-picked event highlights.

This year’s event spotlighted several announcements, reaffirming Amazon’s dedication to bolstering Sellers and accelerating growth (no pun intended). These pivotal developments include:

Stay tuned for our upcoming blog posts, where we will delve into the top highlights, sharing expert insights and tactics to position your brand at the forefront of the ever-evolving ecommerce landscape.

Let’s get started 👇

1. Supply Chain by Amazon

One of the standout highlights from Amazon Accelerate 2023 was the introduction of Supply Chain by Amazon, a supply chain capability aimed at streamlining shipping and bringing unparalleled benefits to Sellers. As the eighth largest logistics provider from China to the US, Supply Chain by Amazon eliminates the intermediaries commonly associated with importing and shipping, allowing Amazon to take complete control of the supply chain process and deliver products directly to customers.

By eliminating intermediaries, Supply Chain by Amazon reduces the complexities and costs associated with international shipping and provides Sellers with various value-added advantages. Lower holding and labor fees benefit Sellers, ensuring a more competitive and cost-effective solution for expanding their global reach.

Moreover, Supply Chain by Amazon has proven its commitment to superior performance, with an impressive 84% of year-to-date shipments arriving at or before the promised time. This reliability and all-inclusive pricing sets Supply Chain by Amazon apart from traditional logistics services. The pricing structure includes freight, fuel surcharge, drayage, customs processing fees, demurrage, delays, and accessorial charges, giving Sellers a comprehensive and transparent understanding of costs. Once the price has been agreed upon, it will not change even if costs increase. This provides Sellers with financial stability and predictability.

Navigating customs requirements can be daunting for Amazon Sellers, considering the numerous regulations and laws they must follow. With Supply Chain by Amazon, Sellers have access to a team of experts who will work closely with them to reduce the dutiable values of imports and identify the most favorable product classifications. Leveraging techniques such as Entry Type 86, Sellers can minimize or eliminate taxes and duties, resulting in substantial cost savings.
The booking process for Supply Chain by Amazon is quick and efficient, with bookings taking less than a minute to complete. All necessary edits can be made online, ensuring Sellers a seamless and hassle-free experience. Additionally, Sellers can take advantage of upgraded tracking capabilities, enabling them to monitor the progress of their shipments at every stage.

2. Buy with prime Integration with Shopify

Buy with Prime is a program that allows merchants to add a Buy with Prime button to their D2C website experience, further showcasing the Prime benefit so many customers know and love. Amazon’s Buy with Prime team has made many improvements to the product over the last year. 

What’s new?

The newly announced collaboration between Amazon and Shopify simplifies the D2C conversion process, enabling merchants to provide an exceptional shopping experience and drive business growth.

The strategic partnership between Amazon and Shopify has paved the way for seamless integration, making it effortless for Sellers to leverage the power of Buy with Prime on their Shopify stores. The installation process is now streamlined, eliminating the need for coding or complex setup. Merchants can efficiently manage their businesses by leveraging their existing Shopify settings, customizations, and supported third-party app integrations. With inventory, pricing, and promotions automatically synced within their Shopify admin, Sellers can save valuable time and resources, allowing them to focus on propelling their businesses forward.

By combining the expansive reach of the Shopify platform with the convenience and trust associated with Prime, Sellers can significantly enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty, establishing a competitive edge in the dynamic ecommerce landscape.

“Whether you’re a new or more seasoned Seller, you can benefit from the latest releases Amazon is rolling out to accelerate your growth. I’m particularly excited about the Shopify x Buy with Prime integration, as this will unlock incremental value for merchants who want to improve their D2C conversion performance. Amazon can be complex and Media.Monks can help you navigate and grow your business.” – Christina Bender, Media.Monks, Senior Director of Partnerships

3. Seller Analytics, Dashboards, and A/B Testing Features

Customer Loyalty Analytics Dashboard

The Customer Loyalty Analytics Dashboard allows Sellers to analyze customer behavior and track customer loyalty metrics. The dashboard provides deeper insights into customer retention, repeat purchase rate, and customer lifetime value, among other key metrics.

What’s new?

Brand Tailored Promotions –

This new promotional feature allows Sellers to identify high-intent customers and launch advertising campaigns to capture this valuable audience. Through Brand Tailored Promotions, Amazon Sellers can now offer promotional discounts ranging from 10% to 50% off on products to their ideal customers, boosting loyalty and conversions. 

New & upcoming feature launches for A/B Experiments 

Amazon has significantly refined its A/B testing capabilities within Seller Central, emphasizing the importance of conversion rate optimization for Sellers aiming to achieve success on the platform. Leveraging A/B testing has become vital in maximizing conversions and unlocking the full potential of selling on Amazon.

Among the exciting additions is the expanded capability to test the main image and all supporting images. This change empowers Amazon Sellers to create visually compelling product displays to better communicate the brand’s value and competitive advantage.

Upcoming advancements include the introduction of Multi-Variate and Multi-Attribute/Simultaneous Experiments. The Multi-Variate feature allows Sellers to test multiple combinations (e.g., titles, images, and attributes) simultaneously, fine-tuning product listings for optimal performance. Additionally, Machine Learning Recommendations will leverage insights from over 571,000 past experiments, providing strategic guidance and the power to harness data to improve product listings and maximize conversions.

These features are designed to enhance the experimentation capabilities, increase product listing effectiveness, and drive success for brands selling on Amazon. Stay tuned for these exciting updates, as they will be available to Sellers in North America, Europe, Japan, and India.

“Amazon’s expansion of the Manage Your Experiments (MYE) tool is a welcomed and quite timely change. The sudden widespread availability of generative AI in 2023 has changed the game for Amazon marketers. Pre-AI, there was value in knowing what to do and how to do it. Post-AI, a bad writer can generate good copy. Knowing how to do something has less value than it did before. As such, knowing what to do has become even more valuable. Amazon marketers need to know precisely what to do, i.e. ‘This length, this SEO strategy, this tone, and these value claims will work best for this text field in this category.’ How do we learn what to do with that level of precision? Testing. And historically, MYE had some pretty painful constraints in what we could test organically. These updates are removing some of those constraints, and that’s hugely exciting for us at MediaMonks.” – Matthew Boardman, Director of Ecommerce Content

4. Amazon Shipping

Amazon Shipping has been launched as a ground shipping service option for Sellers. As with any online marketplace, the delivery experience on Amazon plays a crucial role in customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Notably, Amazon provided compelling statistics surrounding the impact of delivery experience on customer behavior. Reports indicate that 85% of customers with a poor delivery experience would not consider shopping with that retailer again. On the other hand, 82% of customers who have had a positive delivery experience are likely to share their satisfaction with family and friends. Furthermore, data indicates that customers pleased with their delivery experience are 12% more inclined to place subsequent orders compared to those who are dissatisfied.

From a cost perspective, the average shipping cost has increased by 9.7% in 2023 and 81% over the last decade. Carriers have already announced increased costs averaging 5.4% for 2024 and that figure excludes surcharges. Enter Amazon, who will utilize their expansive last-mile delivery network to help control costs and provide a more predictable margin for Sellers no matter what platform they merchandise on.

To succeed on Amazon, Sellers must prioritize exceptional delivery service. Ensuring packages are reliably delivered on time cultivates customer loyalty and encourages positive feedback and referrals. With rising shipping costs expected, businesses must optimize their shipping processes and provide an outstanding delivery experience to drive customer retention, generate positive word-of-mouth, and fuel future sales.

What’s new?

As part of Amazon Shipping, Sellers now have the option to entrust their packages to Amazon carriers, who will conveniently pick up products directly from the Seller’s fulfillment center and handle the delivery to the customer’s doorstep. Amazon will also ship orders from Seller D2C websites and other selling channels, similar to Etsy. 

5. Amazon’s Generative AI Capability for Listing Seller Content

Last but certainly not least, Amazon’s recent announcement of its generative AI (artificial intelligence) dashboard for managing product listings has sparked significant excitement. This cutting-edge AI capability simplifies and accelerates the process for Amazon Sellers to create high-quality product descriptions, titles, and listing details. By leveraging large language models (LLMs), this innovative tool generates comprehensive product descriptions and aims to improve conversion rates.

Scott Miller, Director of Business Management, who attended Amazon Accelerate, says, “Amazon continues to remove barriers to entry for enrolling new products on the platform, benefiting both new and experienced Sellers. This tool expedites the product loading process and generates impactful bullets and titles for listings, ultimately leading to higher sales on the platform.”

💡 Media.Monks POV💡

While this launch presents numerous benefits for Seller efficiencies, our content team strongly advises Sellers to review and verify the content generated by this AI capability. Ensuring that the produced content follows best practices, avoids triggering content suppression, and aligns with the brand’s SEO strategy is essential. Double-checking and comparing the suggestions against the targeted SEO keywords will ensure maximum impact and effectiveness.

The introduction of Amazon’s generative AI capability for listing content marks a significant step forward in empowering Sellers with efficient and practical tools to enhance their product listings on Amazon. Our SVP of Global Commerce, John Ghiorso, has closely monitored the generative AI domain. Here are his insights on Amazon’s foray into generative AI:

Why work with us?
Your brand will have a custom-built Amazon Marketing Stream dashboard that our team can utilize to access accurate data to implement intraday bidding strategies – further dialing our focus in on driving higher campaign efficiencies (i.e., ROAS, conversion rate, etc.). While this is something only our team can access, we’ll be sure to share findings with you to ensure we’re all on the same page. 

To wrap it up —

With the conclusion of Amazon Accelerate 2023, it’s evident that the event was packed with pivotal announcements and insights set to redefine selling on Amazon. From the transformative  Supply Chain by Amazon to the seamless Buy with Prime integration with Shopify, Amazon continues to pave the way for Sellers to succeed in the competitive ecommerce arena.

As an agency committed to helping Sellers navigate the Amazon ecosystem, we remain dedicated to providing strategic insights and practical strategies to support your growth and success on the platform.