“Should I be selling on Amazon or through my own online store?”.

This is a common question asked by online sellers. The answer? Both.

Today, successful online sellers are those that are reaching out to meet their customers everywhere they shop online, embracing multi-channel selling and giving their products as many chances as possible to be seen, bought and loved by more customers and there’s no better way to get started than by adding Amazon to your channel mix.

Whether you’re just starting out or you already have your own successful online store, here are five reasons why you should consider selling on Amazon.

1. Prospects Use Amazon to Search for Products

You may have heard this figure before, but its importance cannot be understated – 49% of US customers begin their product searches on Amazon, compared to just 35% on search engines.

If you’re not already selling on marketplaces this figure alone should be enough to make you take pause, but it’s not just searches that are happening on Amazon: In 2018 Amazon alone is tipped to take half of all eCommerce sales.

With roughly half of all customers starting and ending their purchasing journey on Amazon, it’s more vital than ever to have a presence in the marketplace.

In 2018 Amazon alone is tipped to take half of all eCommerce sales.

2. Customers Use Amazon Reviews as Social Proof

When a customer buys a product from a retail store, they generally do so with a lot of confidence that they’ve chosen the right product.

They buy from stores in their local area, from people they meet in-person in stores they’ve probably bought from before. They get to touch and see the product before buying it and they know if it doesn’t work out they can come back and return it in person.

Shopping online, however, is a leap of faith; customers are buying from someone they’ll never meet, from a brand they’ve perhaps never encountered and buying a product they’ll never get to touch until it arrives on their doorstep. Not a lot of social proof, right?

Because of the added uncertainty, online shoppers need something else to give them that same confidence they would have when shopping from a physical store.

They need to know someone else has taken a risk on this product or seller and that it paid off.

They do this by reading customer reviews.

Eight out of ten customers say that they will read online reviews before making a purchasing decision, and whilst we all get our reviews from different sources, when it comes to the most trusted sources of online product reviews Amazon reigns supreme with over 50% of consumers finding them to be the most reliable and trustworthy source of product reviews.

In contrast, reviews published by a brand on their own online store lack the editorial integrity of third-party reviews on marketplaces and review sites.

Your customers will seek out reviews for your product, and if your online presence begins and ends at your online store that’s a major red flag for any savvy shopper.

By selling on Amazon, you’re providing a forum for reviews and even user-generated content (photos and videos) to be posted alongside your product to help customers make informed decisions.

Even if they aren’t buying your products from marketplaces, your Amazon listings can still be a crucial piece of your customer’s journey from discovery to purchase.

3. People Try New Brands in Trusted Spaces

Trust is a major consideration for online shoppers, and not just for the products they buy but also the sellers they’re buying them from.

The online shopping experience has improved over the last decade, but some shoppers are still wary from a time not so long ago where eCommerce was plagued by credit card fraud.

More savvy customers are generally able to tell the difference between the safe places to shop online and the scams, but there are still plenty of customers out there that will only buy from sellers and online stores that they already know – from their own experience – that they can trust.

Selling on Amazon is a great way to bridge that gap between your lesser-known online store and these more skeptical customers.

Customers that shop from Amazon don’t have to put their trust in the sellers, they trust in Amazon to keep the bad sellers out and to protect the customer’s rights when a seller does break their trust.

By selling on Amazon you can reach customers that wouldn’t otherwise have felt confident to shop from you directly.

By providing them with that first, initial positive interaction with your brand, your product and you as a seller then they will feel confident to deal directly with you in the future through your online store.

4. Amazon Sponsored Products have High Conversion Rates

If you’re already using a variety of paid channels to drive traffic to your online store, such as Google Ads or Facebook, you might be surprised to learn that Amazon’s own PPC advertising platform Amazon Sponsored Products has been shown to have some of the highest conversion rates for eCommerce of any ad platform.

This is because the ‘customer intent’ on Amazon is so high. Customers go to Google to research, study, compare and many other things as well as to shop, but customers on Amazon are there for one thing and one thing only – to shop.

With such a large share of eCommerce searches and sales occurring through Amazon and an advertising platform that has CPCs (cost per click) lower but conversion rates higher than industry averages, Amazon Sponsored Products as a marketing channel for new customer acquisition is reason enough to consider selling your products on Amazon.