Brian McBride, Vice President for Amazon delivered an excellent keynote at this year’s Internet World 2011. He discussed their usage of search engine optimisation, google adwords, affiliate schemes and creating their own “ecosystems” to encourage competition and drive down prices.
He revealed that one of the secrets to success for Amazon was that they aim to have the biggest selection of products on the internet.
Groceries has become the largest online catergory generating billions. Electricals come in second. 44% of their traffic comes from international customers while 56% comes from North America. So what do these stats mean for other ecommerce businesses?
It gives us a good gauge and outlook of the trends of internet retailing.
We all know that Amazon invests heavily in affiliate schemes but McBride also understands and explains the importance of search engine optimisation, demonstrating their usage of google pay per click, google base product feeds and google organic listings.
For me, one of the most important aspect of the talk was his stress on the following:
- Selection (the wider the selection of products the bette. if customers can’t find it, they cant buy it. Introducing merchants allows them access to more products they would otherwise not have access to, thereby increasing the product inventory)
- Price (customers really do care about price)
- Availability (it really makes a big difference of a product is available now, later or 2 weeks later)
- Convenience (how easy is it to browse, buy and have the product delivered)
- Information (product information has got to be clear and verified)
-Discovery (give the customers a chance to discover other products or catergories within the site)

McBride mentioned that “unlike other shopping sites out there, Amazon retains the ownership of the content.” They mantain and control the product descriptions. He gave the example of “other sites” that allowed sellers to add their own content of the product (ebay comes to my mind), resulting in the same product having multiple listings with different or inaccurate product descriptions. Amazon wants to make sure all product descriptions are clear, standardized and verified. I thought this is an excellent idea because you dont want to dilute customer’s trust buying with you because of conflicting / confusing product descriptions.

Another thing that McBride pointed out was on the emerging market of mobile shopping: Amazon has generated about £1billion in sales via mobile shopping. They have developed apps optimized for different smartphones, allowing users to browse, shop and buy fast, safely, easily and securely.

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Content, eCommerce, Google, Search Engine Optimisation