Amazon Storefronts: The Ultimate Guide to Creating Your Branded Store [2024]

Amazon Storefronts empower brands big and small to stand out in a competitive marketplace.

Like having a website all to yourself, a branded store is a place where you get your own piece of real estate to design for whatever you need. A place where no competitors show up and no advertising can (currently) intrude.

In a branded space that fosters loyalty and trust, businesses can showcase their entire product catalog without customers having to search around on the usual Amazon marketplace associated with the e-commerce platform.

⚠️ Amazon Stores were previously called Amazon Storefronts. Some sellers also refer to them as branded stores. They are all the same thing, but we wanted to clarify this to avoid any confusion. Stores are what Amazon now officially calls them.

With a store, you can do a multitude of things such as seasonal promotions, single product landing pages, and more which we’ll dive into in this article.

We’ll give you a full introduction to everything you need to know about Amazon Stores. We’ll keep this updated as new things come out so bookmark this tab and check back again when you have questions or want a refresher.

What Is an Amazon Storefront?

As we mentioned above, Amazon stores are one of the many tools available for brand-registered sellers to help brands build brand awareness on Amazon. 

It’s a completely free way to build a store on the Amazon Marketplace that customers can either find through each of your individual listings or that you can drive traffic to via promotional links. It’s quickly becoming one of the most powerful tools in Amazon Brand Management for growing brand awareness and increasing sales. 

Why Did Amazon Create Them?

Beyond just the trend for businesses needing more tools to grow a brand, there are other motivating factors for Amazon to provide storefronts.

The big one is competition. While not exactly the same thing, Stores serve as a counterweight to Ebay, Shopify and other platforms that are more small business friendly and already offer these tools. 

Ebay, Shopify, Etsy and other online marketplaces all have strong seller-focused cultures as opposed to Amazon’s customer-centric one. This has led sellers to adopt these competitors at a much greater rate as they’re easier to use, have better customer service and allow the seller to build a more sustainable business (and brand). 

This is why (I believe) Amazon has begun to develop not just more tools for brands, but for sellers as well. At some point they realized that their 3^rd party sellers are the future and that not only are they just sellers, but customers too.

What are the benefits of having an Amazon Storefront?

There are many benefits to having an Amazon Store. It’s a worthwhile investment that can:

1. Build brand awareness
2. Promote new products
3. Drive offline traffic
4. Show off your whole catalog
5. Bring customers in from links in your Brand Story
6. Increase average order value
7. Increase the effectiveness of sponsored brand ads

Build Brand Awareness

As I said previously, Amazon Storefronts are – first and foremost – a branding tool.

They are there for customers to discover you, what you sell and what you believe in. Far more than any listing copy or A+ content can provide (although Amazon’s newest module, the Brand Story, offers a sneak peek into your brand and can also direct customers to your branded storefront).

You have a lot more control over your messaging, page design and results. It gives you a way to sell and drive traffic outside of the search and advertising ecosystem. 

While it’s a simple point, it’s true. If you want to build a brand on Amazon then a storefront is going to be the key. 

Promote Your Products

An Amazon Storefront is in many ways like a website (with fewer options). You have your header up top, a home page, navigation and the options to add images, text, videos, and links to your pages and products. What this means is that, like any website, you can change your images, text and overall marketing strategy with each passing season, holiday or promotional event.

You now also have the option to include shoppable images to display your most popular products. When you hover over any point, you have the option to click and learn more about that product:

When combined with the options we will talk more about below, such as driving offline traffic and sponsored brand ads, your storefront becomes a key part of your marketing and growth strategy on Amazon. 

Here is a short list of some things you can do: 

• Christmas promotion (holidays) 
• New Year’s promotion (fitness & health messaging) 
• Black Friday / Prime Day Sales 
• Raise awareness of a new product you’re launching 
• End-of-Season Sale 
• Cross-Sell / bundle promotions or coupons 

Despite the simple layout in storefront pages you still have a lot of options for what you can do and are really only limited by the creativity of your marketing and design team. 

Drive Offline Traffic

On Amazon, sales beget sales. It doesn’t matter where the sales come from, whether on search or on your storefront. If a product sells, its BSR will increase and its rank with whatever associated searches, keywords & customer profiles will also increase.  

This means that while you may receive more money for driving customers to your website (which you should still do), driving sales on Amazon will feed the Amazon flywheel which means that one sale will create more sales down the line. 

The Amazon storefront gives you a place to drive that traffic that won’t result in customers stumbling across competitors or getting distracted by an ad. You can link to it from your website, promote the link on social media or even run Facebook ads to special landing pages you’ve designed on your store.

Another upside to having an Amazon store is that you also get your own Amazon.com web address (amazon.com/yourbrand) to use in these types of marketing campaigns.

The fact that you can create a special page to drive traffic for Amazon sales is especially powerful. The hardest part of Amazon is competing with all the other products in search results and on the listing pages. Stores solve this issue, allowing you to design the experience your way and drive conversions and sales. 

Display Your Whole Catalog

The biggest downside of a search engine like Amazon is that you can only show up once at a time and only for that specific search term the customer is searching for. In addition to that, you can’t control the advertising slots on your page or the listings that will show up. This makes it incredibly hard to market the rest of your product line to customers.

Storefronts solve this issue.

Amazon storefronts allow you to show off your entire catalog on one page, split your catalog into different pages and/or highlight specific products on specific pages all easily seen on the product page tabs. 

This means you can adapt your storefront every month based on your business goals. 

Need to sell through a product quickly? Run a promotion and highlight it on your storefront’s home page. 

Want to bring awareness to your new product? Design some new graphics and put them at the top of your home page with a link to a dedicated page on your store.

Have a new product or want to explain some of its features? Try adding a video to clarify all the benefits a customer could get out of using it.

With some time and effort, storefronts give you the adaptability of a website on the Amazon marketplace that can help you promote your entire catalog. 

Link from your Brand Story

Amazon Brand Stories were released in 2023 as a new part of A+ Content. They’re free to create and they usually appear above A+ Content.

One of the modules you can use to your advantage is the one that displays 4 ASIN images that offer a direct link to your store.

Anyone that’s browsing your product listing page will be brought directly to your store where there are no competitor’s ads or products. Awesome!

Increase Your Average Order Value

With the ability to design landing pages, show off promotions and display your whole catalog it becomes easy to see how you might raise the average order value of your account. 

An Amazon Storefront is an opportunity to build trust with the customer and/or give customers who already trust you the opportunity to try more products from your brand. This is where the branding advantage comes into Amazon stores. 

If someone on Amazon is searching out your brand on the search results then they may not know what they’re looking for which likely means a lost sale. If someone has landed on your storefront then they likely clicked through to your brand because they are curious about you. 

If they’re going to go through the effort of clicking through to your storefront then it’s very likely that they either already trust you or are very close. Which means you may have a customer with a long customer lifetime value (CLV). A loyal customer that will keep buying from you, seek you out online, and talk about you to their friends & family.

Increase the Effectiveness of Sponsored Brand Ads

One of the keys to success is a well-structured and organized advertising strategy on Amazon. One that is effective and reaches its goals of not just converting sales but building your brand. 

This is the purpose of sponsored brand ads. The most well-known of which is the previously called “headline-search Ad”. 

Of course, one of the difficult parts of these ad types was that you had to link your product pages to them.  

But now you can link them to your store. 

This means that you can drive traffic on Amazon search results directly to your storefront (which is hopefully a well-designed landing page) that does not have competitor listings on it, shows off your whole catalog and is engaging in a way that does not have them immediately clicking off to other search results. Customers can add multiple items straight to the cart from your storefront and check-out. Easy as that. 

When should you make one?

There are a couple things you’re going to want to have before creating your Amazon Storefront. 

First, you’ll need Brand Registry (Read: Is Brand Registry Right For You?)

Second, you’ll likely want more than 3 SKUs to justify the investment. Storefronts are not cheap, so unless you are specifically building off of the success of a single product and can afford it, you might want to wait until you have a catalog of products that allows you to take full advantage of a storefront. 

If you have 3 SKUs then you can display your whole catalog and cross-sell, take full advantage of sponsored brand ads and build out multiple, engaging landing pages on your storefront with products that build real value in someone’s life. 

If you have those two above then you’ll still want to have a plan on how to use it as well as a designer that can make you one worth showing off. A store is basically a website, so don’t make one if you can’t afford to get it right. Otherwise it’s a waste of time and money. 

How to Create an Amazon Storefront

We won’t go into the full design process here as you can find detailed information on Amazon’s store creation guide but here are the steps you will have to take. We’re assuming you already have a storefront strategy and a designer you are working with to create visually-appealing graphics. 

1. Go to Advertising>Stores in your ad console, Vendor Central or Seller Central dashboard 

2. Amazon will show you a list of your brand-registered brands. Choose the brand you want to create a storefront for 

3. Select a template that you want to use (this should already be decided in your design phase) 

4. Build your home page 

5. Build out your storefront pages (if needed) 

6. Double-check that everything is linked properly and that your storefront is easy to navigate 

7. Preview the store to get a feel for it 

8. Submit your store for approval 

9. Wait 1-3 days for approval

How You Can Design a Better Amazon Storefront

If you’re going it alone for setting up a storefront here are some things you should consider: 

1. Determine your strategy 

Are you focusing on driving online traffic, taking advantage of sponsored brands, launching a new product or looking to raise awareness of your whole catalog? Your strategy determines what you will do and how you will implement it.

2. Look up great examples of other Amazon Storefronts that you can get inspiration from

Look at your competitors and consider starting with that as a base model, then tweaking it to fit your brand.

3. Make navigation easy

This is all about creating a friendly user experience. Use easily identifiable names for sections and use links where necessary. Group products to create collections that make sense.

4. Take advantage of your top banner to resonate with your target customers’ values 

Your top banner helps customers know immediately if they’re in the right place. Try to design a banner that resonates with them and makes it clear what you’re selling.

We love this example from PetLabCo below. Notice their simple navigation as well.

5. Consider video if you have it

Video is thriving. It helps customers get a feel for your brand and product. Some of our favorite examples feature a high-quality video right above the fold (meaning below the main navigation bar).

6. Think about images on your storefront the same way you think about images for your Amazon listing

Images are what sell. Take the time to get the right photography (send our Amazon product photography guide to your photographer to get all the photos you need from the get-go). Then use those high-quality images throughout your store.

7. Optimize for mobile

The great thing about building a store on Amazon is that you have both mobile and desktop options when building. Consider how customers will view your store from a smaller screen and adapt accordingly.

Start small. Just a homepage is enough to get started as long as you do a great job. 

How to maintain Amazon Storefronts

Amazon states in their documentation that you should keep your storefront updated frequently. Create a process for reviewing the performance (more on that next) and planning out new designs based upon your brand’s strategic objectives in the coming months.  

I recommend reviewing and refreshing it every month. There’s always at least a small improvement you can make to increase conversion or test an idea. 

In addition to that it will be important to keep an eye on which products in your catalog are on the storefront. Amazon will not remove the listing from your Storefront the same way they do in search results when you are out of stock. That is your responsibility so make sure to take out anything that is not in stock lest you end up giving the customer a bad experience. 

How to Measure Storefront Effectiveness

One of the coolest features of Amazon storefronts is the ability to see some of the numbers behind it. 

You’ll find that store insights are very similar to a website’s e-commerce insights. Insights provide a basic overview of traffic and sales that you can view over time, broken down by specific pages or by specific traffic sources. 

You can tell if traffic (and thus sales) is coming from organic traffic on Amazon, via sponsored brand ads or from any of your custom source tags.

Custom source tags are particularly helpful as they allow you to measure your offline traffic. You can use specific tags for specific campaigns to measure their effectiveness both in driving traffic and sales. You can use the link above to learn more about them. 

Store insights is something you should be looking at regularly to see the effectiveness of your campaigns. Make sure you are working the available KPIs into your Amazon strategy’s strategic objectives. 

Closing Summary/Key Takeaways

Here are some of the key takeaways: 

• Amazon Storefronts are for building your brand 
• Storefronts are the only place where you have ALL of a customer’s attention 
• They’re a great tool for driving offline traffic and promoting sales 
• Storefronts are an investment and should be treated like one 
• Backend Analytics offer you insights to promotional campaigns and how your pages are doing 

We mentioned it earlier but here is a link to some great examples of Amazon storefronts and if you want to dive into the documentation you can find that here.