Amazon Webstore

Amazon Webstore is a division of Amazon Services, which provides a leading technology and services platform that enables any company to launch and operate an online business.

Overview of Amazon Webstore

Amazon Webstore is Amazon's technology and services platform that enables any company to launch and operate an online business. It does handle websites for top brands, such as Fruit of the Loom, Samsonite, Marks & Spencer, and others, as well as thousands of small and medium-sized businesses.

What Amazon Webstore really does is provide the turnkey ecommerce functionality. It not only provides all of the experience that a consumer would expect to have on an ecommerce website, but fully integrates all of the cart capabilities, the ordering capabilities, as well as payment processing and checkout process, and all of that built around Amazon best practices.

One of the other unique things that Amazon Webstore offers is the fully integrated services of Amazon. Amazon Webstore customers can also utilize Fulfillment by Amazon services. They can also utilize Checkout by Amazon on their websites.

It also shares a listing platform with the marketplace. Sellers who sell on their own website powered by Webstore can also list and sell their products on Amazon.com as well.

There's more services like that, too, including things like Product Ads. The way for sellers to leverage Amazon's technology and services for ecommerce and really with the speed and ease to launch and operate an online business.

Target market segment

Because it is an ecommerce platform, for most companies or most brands, their site on Amazon Webstore is their primary ecommerce website. But it is their own domain. They manage all their product listings and inventory; they control the design of that site by access to Cascading Style Sheets, JavaScript files, etc.

But companies do have the option to indicate on their site even whether that Webstore service is provided by Amazon or whether they white label it entirely. There is the flexibility with Amazon Webstore to utilize it in a different way.

This you'll see with customers like Marks & Spencer, who've launched an outlet site on Amazon Webstore (Marks & Spencer Outlet). So Marks & Spencer's primary ecommerce site is not on Amazon Webstore, but their outlet site is powered by Webstore.

Another example would be Jurlique, an Australian body cream company. They launched an Amazon Webstore website to handle a flash sale that coincided with their appearance on the Today Show, so it kind of stood up for about a 24-48 hour period, took all their traffic and their orders, and then it came down.

And then you see other customers like Fruit of the Loom, which do operate multiple brands with different URLs and domains.

Retailers and online businesses can utilize the speed and flexibility and ease of Amazon Webstore to also pursue microsite strategies, flash sale opportunities, multi-branded site opportunities, etc. But, as I said, for the large majority of our customers, it is their primary domain.

As a Flash sale solution

One can actually operate a flash sale site using Amazon Webstore.

The example is really the reason why it's a value add for its customers, it's quite easy to build and design that website. It's not going to take weeks. One can even do it in days.

But also, they're relying on the back end infrastructure of Amazon, which is really one of the key differentiators and reasons sellers come to Webstore, is that they know that during their flash sale it will scale up to handle the traffic volume, it will scale to handle the order volume, and that they really can provide a great customer experience.

Webstore was not built uniquely to handle flash sales; it is one of the advantages that Webstore has provided to our targeted customers.

Power Seller Platform

There are many examples of brand companies or brand product companies who are not retailers themselves. They are smaller companies that do anywhere from $25,000 to $50,000 to $100,000 in online sales - by no means a large online retailers - they are not necessarily using it for one product category.

Webstore customers range on different categories, from consumer electronics to watches and jewelry to apparel sellers. It has many apparel sellers like Alternative Apparel, or Fruit of the Loom and others. Or Fit Couture, which is kind of a PowerSeller and a noted Webstore customer.

In those examples, it's not just apparel and apparel accessories, or apparel and associated fitness gear. In addition it has sellers on pet products; automotive products; even sellers who use it for selling custom prints. So you can select your specific size, your specific frame, and order what is effectively a custom print. In that particular example there's probably only 700 to 800 different prints they offer but when you consider all the different combinations of size and paper quality and framing they end up with millions of different SKUs.

Fees

Webstore fee model or pricing model, is very much designed around an Amazon model of when our customers are successful, and its fee structure is actually performance based.

What that means is there is a nominal subscription fee for being a Webstore customer. But most of the fees are associated with the performance. As you have sales, then you pay a related fees.

The revenue share fee for Webstore is basically two percent. That fee goes down as sellers choose to list on Amazon as well utilize Fulfillment by Amazon. Their Webstore store fees can actually decline. Then, associated with that, because it fully integrate the payment processing and checkout capability too, all those fees are separate but they're included. And those fees depend on the total volume of sales that a seller has on a monthly basis.

The detailed fee structure is available on its website.