Shopify and Amazon, as two relatively large e-commerce platforms at present, have different emphases, advantages and disadvantages. So, how should cross-border merchants choose? The author of this article analyzes the differences between the two and hopes to help you make a better choice.
The author has served as a product manager in both Shopify app and Amazon ERP companies. I have a rough understanding of these two overseas e-commerce platforms. Some friends have asked me about this information. I hope this article will be helpful to everyone.
1. Overview
1. Development history
1) Amazon
Amazon , an e-commerce platform, was founded in the United States in 1994. At the beginning, it only operated online book sales (it was decided that Amazon would support product follow-up sales, which will be mentioned later), and now it has expanded to all categories.
2) Shopify
is an e-commerce SaaS service provider that helps merchants build independent websites. It was founded in Canada in 2004. Initially, the founder developed website programs to sell his own skateboards, and then gradually became a service provider.
2. Market-oriented
1) Amazon
has 400 million active consumers worldwide, covering 65 countries, and 3 million merchants worldwide.
2) Shopify
Data in 2021 shows that Shopify serves 175 countries/regions, has 1750,000 registered merchants, 50%+ of the merchants are in the United States, and covers more than 300 million consumers.
Among them, the United States has the largest market share of and , with Amazon accounting for 41% and Shopify ranking second with 10.3%.
3. Consumer scenario
In the common perception, independent websites are more suitable for building brands than Amazon. The common path of platform consumers and independent website consumers:
Nowadays, social media is popular, many merchants will place advertisements. The consumer path: Attracted by advertisements/activities → Go to the landing page → Hot-headed and make quick decisions . In this consumption scenario, Amazon and Shopify Each has its own characteristics:
- Amazon has determined after-sales guarantees for consumers, and consumers dare to place orders immediately (compared to small and medium-sized merchants without brand strength, this is a larger influencing factor).
- But on the product page, Amazon will provide more recommended products. Consumers may be attracted by similar products provided by other merchants or start comparing prices. Then it will be more difficult to convert traffic. However, Shopify does not have such troubles because the entire website is owned by one merchant.
2. Operation focus
The above has a simple understanding of Amazon and Shopify. Let’s focus on the differences between the two platforms from the perspective of merchant operation.
1. Why are the focuses different?
1) Positioning
- e-commerce platform (Amazon): Many merchants enter a centralized e-commerce platform at the same time and sell goods to consumers through platform channels;
- Independent Station (Shopify): Merchants build their own brand official websites to directly face consumers. Merchants build their own websites and decide the brand’s development strategy and marketing model;
2) Traffic
Amazon As an e-commerce platform that integrates retailers, in order to retain merchants, the platform will place ads to increase its visibility, and merchants on the platform will bring their own traffic;
and Shopify is an independent website, and the websites are independent of each other, and merchants need to place ads themselves, otherwise there will be no traffic.
3) Rules
Amazon In order to ensure the stable development of the platform and protect the interests of consumers, sellers, and the platform, there will be more restrictions than Shopify. Amazon merchants need to have a clear understanding of the platform rules.
4) The auxiliary tool
Amazon provides merchants with all back-end services required in the transaction process, such as payment, logistics, warehousing, etc. Merchants can focus on products and front-end marketing.
Shopify is also working hard to provide consumers with better services and experiences, but it does not restrict consumers to only use official services. Shopify has created an app ecosystem, and merchants can use the app to optimize store operation effects (most require paying additional subscription fees).
2. Preparation work
1) Product selection
Amazon involves the sale of all categories. The website design is more traditional and focuses on efficiency, and is more inclined to the sale of standard products, such as 3C, daily necessities, etc.
If you are working in the fashion category, I would recommend using Shopify. You can design the website according to the brand tone, and independent sites have better room for premiums.
rules . There are many Amazon rules mentioned above. Here are 2 examples to illustrate.
① Multi-store association
Merchants often create multiple stores to sell in order to obtain more traffic. However, Amazon explicitly prohibits multi-store sales. If the login IP, merchant information, etc. are found to be similar, the stores will be deemed to be associated and the account will be banned.
② Follow-up selling
Amazon was developed from the online bookstore. Books are standard products. There are multiple merchants selling a book at the same time, so Amazon supports follow-up selling. As the name suggests, follow-up selling means that other merchants can put their product links on your product details page (listing).
is like a product details page with multiple products. Amazon will adjust the products attached to the golden shopping cart (one-click purchase) according to the sales situation. It may be your product details page but the golden shopping cart belongs to someone else. Recommended merchants to build brands will not give others the opportunity to take advantage of loopholes.
3. Before consumers enter the store/product details page
mentioned above, Amazon brings its own traffic, so Amazon merchants focus on how to get platform traffic into their own pages (competition for existing traffic), while Shopify needs to attract more traffic from outside the site (incremental traffic).
1) 80% of Amazon
traffic comes from search. The focus of merchants is how to let consumers see it on the search results page. There are two display orders on the search results page. One is to arrange according to Amazon's A9 algorithm, and the other is to place advertisements. The
A9 algorithm is similar to doing SEO on the Amazon website. It will be based on the relevance of the search results (title, keywords, description), merchant ratings (including product ratings and store ratings), services (such as delivery time), whether to use Amazon warehouse management (FBA), and whether there are labels (Best seller, Amazon choice).
Amazon advertising is divided into product advertising, brand advertising, and display advertising. You don’t need to bid high to be displayed in the first place. Ad quality score will also be considered, which is related to the click-through rate of the ad, the conversion rate of the ad, the completeness and quality of the product list.
2) Shopify
Most merchants will divert traffic to independent stations through traffic platforms, such as google, facebook, ins, tiktok, etc. Shopify is also cooperating with social media, such as Facebook, to display product information (pictures, titles, prices).
When consumers click on the ad link and jump to the landing page, some merchants will also use technical means to optimize the page loading speed to avoid losing consumers if the page loads for too long (by the way, the more apps are installed, the slower the page will load, and generally no more than 10 apps will be installed).
4. Consumers browse-add-purchase-place an order
Both Amazon and Shopify merchants need to guide consumers through some marketing methods, such as coupons, activities, and free shipping. After all, price is a major factor that affects consumers' orders.
In addition, there is another difference between Shopify and Amazon. Amazon strictly prohibits merchants from asking for positive reviews and reviews (organizing purchases to give positive reviews); while Shopify has independent reviews due to the independence of the website. In addition to managing real consumer reviews (deleting negative reviews), it can also batch upload custom reviews through the app.
3. After-sales service
The positioning of both is also reflected in the after-sales aspect.
- Amazon provides official warehousing and logistics (FBA) and strongly requires merchants to use this service, which even affects product rankings; Shopify merchants provide official warehouse and logistics services, but currently only support orders from the United States, Canada and Australia, and more merchants find logistics providers to ship their products themselves.
- In order to protect consumer privacy, Amazon restricts viewing of consumer information on the merchant side. Consumer information can only be retained for 30 days. If you have any order problems after 30 days, you need to contact Amazon officials. It is difficult for merchants to integrate consumer information for precision marketing and user development. Consumer information in Shopify supports merchant management, and merchants can place advertisements, send emails and other marketing behaviors based on consumer attributes.
4. Summary
The above lists the focus of merchants on the Shopify and Amazon platforms. Some readers will want to ask, as a seller, which platform should I choose? Some people will say, I heard that Amazon has many restrictions and the account is blocked at every turn, so I want to do Shopify. There is no standard answer to the choice of
. It also depends on the nature of the business. It is not even a choice between two, but can achieve the effect of 1+12.
First of all, let me explain that although Amazon has many restrictions, these restrictions are based on the interests of consumers, merchants, and the platform. For example, if the product quality is not good enough and the return rate is high, fake orders will increase the ranking, fly orders, engages in private domain, it can be seen that the account is not blocked intentionally out of thin air, so as long as the operation is standardized, there will not be any big problems.
Next, let’s talk about the nature of the merchant recommendation platform:
- If you are a supplier with lower costs than other merchants on the platform, you can consider Amazon. You don’t need to consider how to generate traffic. You can attract enough consumers with the price, making small profits but quick turnover.
- If you are a brand-oriented merchant, we recommend Shopify, which can better differentiate and obtain high profits; secondly, consumer data can be kept in your own hands, enabling precise marketing and improving marketing efficiency.
Finally, I have seen some merchants combine the two platforms before, for reference:
- Amazon is a product selection platform. By studying the search volume, number of reviews, and number of merchants on sale on Amazon, you can understand the demand and supply of the product, and have a basic understanding of the product.
- Amazon prohibits exporting traffic to the platform, but Shopify does not prohibit it. Therefore, some merchants use Amazon as the main battlefield and use the Shopify landing page as the traffic entrance. Click the main button to divert traffic to Amazon.
The above is my brief understanding of these two platforms. I hope I can shed some light on this and get advice from the big guys~
This article was originally published by @Qing on Everyone is a Product Manager. Reprinting without permission is prohibited.
title picture comes from Unsplash, based on CC0 agreement
The opinions of this article only represent the author's own. Renren is a product manager platform that only provides information storage space services.
