Amazon controls almost 60% of all ecommerce sales. Their reach is enormous and only grows by the year.
If you’re an ecommerce merchant, it’s crucial to watch changes in Amazon selling trends. By staying on top of these trends, you’ll gain an edge over your competitors and boost sales.
So in this article, we’ll go in-depth on the top Amazon selling trends this year. We’ll also show you how to navigate these shifts to your advantage.
Healthcare
Amazon recently bought One Medical—an American clinic chain. This is its second major medical buy since PillPack in 2018.
By buying One Medical, Amazon cements its healthcare presence. According to the senior VP of Amazon Health Services, they want to “reinvent the healthcare experience.”
Amazon’s medical ambitions had stalled before this deal. But now, medical sellers can know they’ll have a future on Amazon after One Medical’s takeover.
Healthcare Methods and Strategy for Amazon Sellers
As Amazon strives to dominate primary care, it will certainly boost medical sales on its platform. By offering medical items now, sellers can get ahead of the curve.
You have three options if you want to sell medical items on Amazon:
- Selling items approved by the FDA for OTC (over-the-counter) sale (Bandages, crutches, etc.)
- Selling items you’ve received FDA approval for
- Joining the Professional Health Care Program and selling Rx items, or items marked for professional use only
Medical items have more regulations than other product types. This creates a higher barrier to entry but less competition for those willing to put in the effort.
Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA)
FBA lets sellers have Amazon fulfill orders for them with two-day shipping. This gives sellers the chance to nix logistics and focus on making great products.
All FBA sellers need to do is bulk ship their products to Amazon. From there, Amazon barcodes and stores it. And when an order comes in, Amazon rushes it to the customer in an Amazon box—like any other product.
FBA Methods and Strategy for Amazon Sellers
FBA’s main perk is replacing the shifting costs of logistics with a set fee. But FBA’s strengths go beyond that, also offering:
- Simple bulk item delivery to Amazon
- Two-day shipping to customers
- Returns handled by Amazon
- Convenience for the customer, since Amazon can ship several FBA products together
- Much higher conversion rates thanks to the perks above
That said, FBA has a few drawbacks:
- Fees for shipping, handling, and storage based on the size of the item
- Higher storage fees during peak shipping times
- Storing inventory in other states can complicate taxes
The good news is sellers may enroll items in FBA as they see fit. For example, you might fulfill soccer balls with FBA, but basketballs yourself.
Some sellers list most items with FBA but fulfill heavy and slow-selling items themselves. Thanks to the flexibility this Amazon seller trend provides, they get the best of both worlds.
Online Grocery
Following its 2017 Whole Foods buyout, grocery has become a pillar of Amazon’s business model. Since then, they’ve added several more grocery services, including:
- Amazon Fresh
- Amazon Go
- Amazon Prime Now (now integrated into its main app)
While Walmart beats Amazon in total online grocery sales, Amazon plays a close second—projected to sell $35B in online groceries this year.
Online Grocery Methods and Strategy for Amazon Sellers
Amazon’s grocery service is open to independent sellers. That said, it’s overlooked by most sellers—making it easier to break into than other categories.
But before you start selling, you’ll need to get approval from Amazon. Apply from your seller profile, and if you meet their guidelines, you’ll be good to go.
While groceries have lower margins, they make up for it with sales velocity. And since Amazon’s grocery market is notoriously undersaturated, now’s a great time to start.
You can source groceries in three ways if you need items to sell:
- Wholesale Sourcing: The most popular way of finding products. But popularity creates problems—higher cost of entry and steep competition.
- Online Arbitrage: Finding good deals on one marketplace and reselling them at a higher price in another. It’s hard work, but it’s the fastest way to source products quickly. Specialized software makes online arbitrage much easier.
- Retail Arbitrage: Going to physical stores to find products to sell for more money. Best for finding hidden gems, but requires physical legwork.
It takes effort to sell groceries on Amazon (keeping track of sell-by dates, ensuring items sell quickly, etc.). Despite this, its high sales velocity and repeat orders keep it profitable.
Advertising
As an advertising platform, Amazon has a wealth of customer data at its fingertips. While Google and Facebook have interest data, Amazon knows exactly what people buy.
Amazon’s large product variety offers marketers an attractive range of ad options. For example, brands can play audio ads on Amazon Music or sponsor products in shopping searches.
And brands have taken notice of its flexibility. Amazon Ads generated 25% more revenue in Q1 2022 versus Q1 2021 as its program catches up with Facebook and Google.
And as its popularity grows, ad prices go up. The average Amazon CPC was $0.88 at the beginning of 2020. Now, that average exceeds $1.20—the time to start is now.
Advertising Methods and Strategy for Amazon Sales
It’s important to know Amazon offers tons of ad types—all with different strategies involved. A great place to start is cost-per-click (CPC) sponsored products.
Amazon CPC works when approached correctly. But if you don’t do it right, you’ll waste your money.
First, don’t use the default settings. Instead, understand your target audience and research your keywords in depth.
If you’re not getting clicks on your ad, your copy is probably off. And if you’re getting clicks with no sales, your product listing might be lacking (not enough photos, bad description, etc.).
Like any paid media platform, getting ads right takes trial and error. So don’t give up if your first ad doesn’t work.
Gaming
Ever since its 2014 Twitch buy, Amazon has invested heavily into gaming. Twitch has paid off, growing from 43 million viewers in 2017 to almost 188 million viewers by 2023.
But Twitch isn’t Amazon’s only gaming venture. They also founded Amazon Games—its in-house video game publishing company.
Gaming Methods and Strategy for Amazon Sellers
Twitch advertising is hard to beat if your target market is gamers between 16-34 years old (75% of Twitch’s viewers). And as research shows, influencer marketing reaches younger people better than traditional ads.
Twitch Influencer Marketing
When you think of Twitch, you think of gaming. But gaming brands aren’t the only ones using Twitch influencer marketing.
KFC, Hershey’s, and Wendy’s have all run successful influencer campaigns on Twitch (Wendy’s even created a streaming channel).
With Twitch, brands can create more down-to-earth ad campaigns than with traditional advertising.
Also, Influencer campaigns on Twitch have the unique feature of being live. Other influencer channels (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) share polished content viewers scroll through in feeds.
But Twitch’s live broadcasting means streamers and their viewers are a part of ad placements.
A streamer can answer viewers’ questions about a product while sharing opinions about it. It would be like having a baseball player talk to the crowd and answer questions about his favorite bat.
Amazon Alexa
Alexa is Amazon’s virtual assistant, performing a huge variety of functions called “skills.” It’s like Apple’s Siri but offers the appeal of integrating into the Amazon ecosystem.
Alexa is most often found on Amazon Echo—Amazon’s hands-free speaker system.
Echo effectively created the smart speaker market, which it dominates with 70% of US sales. Amazon sells Echo at a $5 loss but recovers the investment by making it a part of consumers’ daily lives.
Alexa also works with many third-party devices. Third parties can also add skills to Alexa, like playing music with Shopify or Apple Music.
Alexa Methods and Strategy for Amazon Sellers
Amazon allows direct payment to third-party apps on Alexa via Amazon Pay. This allows companies to create Alexa skills letting customers buy things with their voices.
For example, imagine someone wanted to buy flowers with a 1-800-Flowers Alexa skill.
They’d say, “Alexa, order a bouquet of roses from 1-800-Flowers.” Then, Alexa would confirm the order and charge their Amazon Pay account.
Third-party companies have to develop Alexa purchase skills themselves. But if you’re an Amazon seller, Alexa already supports voice sales of your products.
Alexa selects products based on customer popularity. When someone says, “Alexa, buy a flathead screwdriver,” she’ll most likely choose the most popular one.
There’s no set rule for what product Alexa will pick for the customer. However, it will most likely be either:
- An item labeled “Amazon’s Choice” for the search
- The product with the best reviews for the search
So, to boost Alexa voices sales, get more five-star reviews on your Amazon products.
Follow Amazon Selling Trends to Make More Money
Every vendor serious about increasing sales needs to stay on top of Amazon selling trends.
KFC took a chance on branded Twitch streams and found huge success. Amazon sellers worked hard to meet grocery regulations and made huge profits.
By leveraging trends as they did, you can be the latest Amazon success story.
Lucky for you, we compiled the biggest Amazon developments this year and how to exploit them. Make use of these strategies to maximize your Amazon revenue.
