Episode Summary:

Working from Amazon’s backyard allows our team to talk shop with the most prominent players in retail and eCommerce, diving deep into various business strategies and features through exclusive interviews, first-hand experience, and more.

From a studio located in Amazon’s backyard, eCommerce Deep Dive elucidates the complex eCommerce industry through the candid accounts of those who have spent their careers shaping it. This month, we cover the latest and greatest from Amazon.

November consisted of Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and new Amazon Seller benefits and advertising features.

Let’s dive into the latest Amazon updates: 👇

Cyber 5 Recap

Inflation concerns throughout 2022 added a degree of uncertainty to this year; however, results across the board appear to be strong.

From a retail industry perspective, the noted inflationary concerns did not overwhelm the retail holiday period for brands and retailers, as sales for Black Friday jumped 2.3% YoY, according to Adobe Analytics, with sales hitting a record $9B during the day.

Internally, we noticed a few things due to not running deals or only running a small assortment of deals, including a drop in conversion and barely any sales lift this year. In contrast, the brands that leaned into special pricing across multiple products and categories saw an increase in conversion rates and total sales.

💡 TLDR; the size of the discount didn’t matter as much in the past as it did this year.

Amazon Clinic

As a broader push into healthcare and consumer services, Amazon launched this virtual medical service to provide virtual care in 32 states. Customers can use this message base service to get treatment for common health conditions such as allergies and hair loss.

Official release from Amazon: here.

Here’s SVP of eCommerce John Ghiorso’s thoughts on this:

“As the retail business starts decelerating, Amazon will look to other large consumer sectors to disrupt. Since they’ve already conquered most consumer product categories, they will need to push into consumer services. Healthcare, pharmacy, banking, travel, and insurance are all big enough to build a $100B+ incremental business and will garner Amazon’s attention.”

Follow John on LinkedIn to get industry insights and predictions on the future of eCommerce.

👀 Spoiler alert 👀
One of his predictions already came true! Read about it here. 

New Benefits for Amazon Sellers

Unsurprisingly, Amazon continues to improve its capabilities to provide a seamless retail experience for everyone involved. To dive into Amazon Seller-specific features, we compiled 4 of November’s updates below:

1. Account Health Insurance

For Sellers who consistently achieve a high Account Health Rating, this new program will no longer deactivate their seller accounts so long as they directly work with Amazon to resolve outstanding issues.

Though the initial launch was planned for 2023, some Amazon Sellers received communication in November that they were eligible for this program and saw banners in their Seller Account.

2. Deals for Multiple-Brand Accounts

This new feature was released to help Sellers with multiple brands under a single account create and manage deals across their Amazon stores seamlessly. Sellers can now manage deals across their brands in one place, without logging in and out of store-specific accounts.

3. ASIN-Level Reporting

Ad Managers now have access to ASIN-level reporting and tracking across all ad types within Amazon Advertising. This new report allows for further campaign optimization to take brands’ ad strategy to the next level.

4. Product Detail Page Beta Testing

Our Client Teams have observed that Amazon is quietly beta-testing a new feature for the Media Gallery on the Product Detail Page. This is notable because it could effectively increase the number of images Amazon Sellers use to influence shoppers.

In some cases, the Media Gallery is scrollable on desktop, and all ten (10) images are visible pre-click (as opposed to only six (6) images visible pre-click).

And that’s a wrap. Thanks for tuning in!

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