Amazon's Buy with Prime program is going to upend every ecommerce store and ecommerce generally.
Because it's all about the customer journey.
Buy with Prime allows you to let people take advantage of Prime to order items on your website. It's 2 clicks to checkout using their existing Amazon login. No discounts, no sales, just good old fashion high level of service.
It’s all about the shipping and return experience.
Current Customer Journey Problem for DTC Stores
38% of people search for products on Amazon
The rest will end up on Amazon to compare.
It’s no wonder that Amazon’s advertising unit has had exponential growth the last few years.
So when someone makes it to your webstore and you don’t have a “Buy with Prime” button under the product, they are going to leave and go see if it’s sold on Amazon whether by the company directly or a 3rd party vendor.
This leads to people comparing the product your brand sells with other available products when they go to Amazon.
Amazon is all about a sale, they don’t care where it comes from or who it comes from.
There’s 112 million Prime Members in the United States.
From a customer journey perspective most people look to see if something is sold on Amazon even if they started their journey on a company’s direct website. If you’re looking for a specific product and you’re pretty much sold on it, you still reflexively check Amazon if you’re a Prime Member for the Shipping and Returns.
What does 112 million Prime Members mean?
There’s only 258 million adults in the US.
That’s 43% of the US Adult population are on Prime.
For context Instagram has 143 million users.
If you’re early on in your journey and you didn’t search Amazon first, you will eventually end up there to do some degree of comparison and research.
It's not about price, it’s about the perceived value of convenience and having already spent money on a Prime Membership. It’s a sunk cost that you’re paying for with added benefits of default savings over what most DTC websites can offer.
Two of the top 3 reasons for Amazon are Shipping and because they are a member.
More importantly, Unique items that you can’t find anywhere else isn’t a reason for shopping.
Now combine the unique items with fast, free shipping. You’re going to win.
It's the customer journey we already take.
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So Buy with Prime offers -
1. Free 2 day shipping
2. Free returns
3. Two click checkout
On any ecommerce website.
Brands are going to win -
1. Less people will comparison shop on Amazon
2. More people will purchase taking advantage of a post purchase process they already enjoy and are accustomed to
3. Price becomes less relevant so more intent based purchases
It's the customer journey, it's about ease of experience in ways that most stores can't compete natively.
Nearly all DTC websites have to require a minimum for free shipping and have to charge for returns else lose a lot of money.
These two things greatly impact consumers' willingness to purchase something from a store directly. They've also been trained to get things fast with 2 day shipping.
If it’s an option, the average consumer will click Buy with Prime at least 40% of the time. The only reason to buy directly from a brand would be, goods not available via Buy with Prime, a discount to be used that makes the wait worth it, or a large order with multiple products (for now).
(I see Buy with Prime working across multiple items in a cart in the long run once out of beta.)
Buy with Prime is set up on individual item purchases, it's still in beta. With the majority of people's first orders being one off purchases for individual purchases it will win a lot.
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Now here's the downside - when a transaction goes through Buy with Prime, you only get the order info when they transact.
No more post purchase surveys.
No more cross sells, up sells in cart.
No more SMS collection during checkout.
No more shipping experience.
Attribution? Gone.
The direct Amazon experience accounts for 37.8% of all ecommerce in the US already.
This only leaves customer experience generally.
How well do you know your customers?
What this means for the future of ecommerce strategy -
Things are changing and will continue to change, but at the end of the day, as a brand, you have one goal, get your product into as many hands as possible.
Don’t sleep on the 43% of Adults that have access to Amazon Prime in the largest economy on the planet.
