Sunday, September 10, 2006
Two Latest Additions To Amazon That Help You To Sell Better
If you are an affiliate selling books, then most likely you are an associate for Amazon, one of the World's biggest online bookstore. The updates below would be good news to you.
Recently I noticed that Amazon has added 2 free tools to their associate central member area. They are namely the Omakase Links (beta) and aStore (Beta). I have done some testings with these 2 tools and below are my observations.
First Addition: Omakase Links (beta)
This is a javascript which automatically feature products that visitors to the page are most likely to buy. With Omakase Links, you do not need to chose which product, product line or even keyword that best fits a page. The algorithms will optimize product offerings based on what you has been successful with in the past; what that user has been interested in; as well as what the site is about.
You can choose the available options and the format of the ads to be shown on your site. Treat this like an Adsense ads and blend it into your site (eg. match it to the colour scheme of your webpage for higher click-through).
In my testing, I found that the webpage must be viewed a few times (in one niche, it took around 4 times) before Omakase Links will optimize the ads for that page. For example, on 1 of my site focusing on Adsense articles, it was able to show recomendation for Adsense books correctly.
However, on another niche site, irrelevant ads still shows up no matter how many times I viewed the page. This affected my click-through-rate on those webpage. Imagine seeing an Amazon ad on "Teleseminar Marketing" on my Bakery site and you understand why this is not helping in my sales.Nevertheless, this is still a good tool to use on your website. Do TEST it out before you fully deployed it for your niche.
On another note, as this tool uses its algorithm to detect what the site is about, I have a gut feel that you would not be able to place an Adsense ads and a Omakase ads on the same webpage. This could be a violation of Google Adsense TOS if you do so. Google does not allow a similar contextual-text ads to be on the same webpage that its Adsense ads are on.
So for the moment, avoid placing Amazon Omakase and Google Adsense ads on the same webpage.
Second Addition: aStore (beta)
This new aStore can be embedded on your site so when visitors order they never leave your site and it appears as though the shopping cart is right on your domain. One of the ways Amazon suggests doing this is with an iframe. Below are my observations of this new tool:
Recently I noticed that Amazon has added 2 free tools to their associate central member area. They are namely the Omakase Links (beta) and aStore (Beta). I have done some testings with these 2 tools and below are my observations.
First Addition: Omakase Links (beta)
This is a javascript which automatically feature products that visitors to the page are most likely to buy. With Omakase Links, you do not need to chose which product, product line or even keyword that best fits a page. The algorithms will optimize product offerings based on what you has been successful with in the past; what that user has been interested in; as well as what the site is about.
You can choose the available options and the format of the ads to be shown on your site. Treat this like an Adsense ads and blend it into your site (eg. match it to the colour scheme of your webpage for higher click-through).
In my testing, I found that the webpage must be viewed a few times (in one niche, it took around 4 times) before Omakase Links will optimize the ads for that page. For example, on 1 of my site focusing on Adsense articles, it was able to show recomendation for Adsense books correctly.
However, on another niche site, irrelevant ads still shows up no matter how many times I viewed the page. This affected my click-through-rate on those webpage. Imagine seeing an Amazon ad on "Teleseminar Marketing" on my Bakery site and you understand why this is not helping in my sales.Nevertheless, this is still a good tool to use on your website. Do TEST it out before you fully deployed it for your niche.
On another note, as this tool uses its algorithm to detect what the site is about, I have a gut feel that you would not be able to place an Adsense ads and a Omakase ads on the same webpage. This could be a violation of Google Adsense TOS if you do so. Google does not allow a similar contextual-text ads to be on the same webpage that its Adsense ads are on.
So for the moment, avoid placing Amazon Omakase and Google Adsense ads on the same webpage.
Second Addition: aStore (beta)
This new aStore can be embedded on your site so when visitors order they never leave your site and it appears as though the shopping cart is right on your domain. One of the ways Amazon suggests doing this is with an iframe. Below are my observations of this new tool:
- You can add a maximum of 9 products on 1 storefront. You choose and decide which 9 products (eg. books, CD etc) to be included. One suggestion to consider, group your storefront on 1 topic so that it serves you better.
- You have 8 themes to choose from. You can also change the colours of the background, fonts and what to displayed. You can also set the title of your stores and make it to fit into your site. However in my testing, I found that you can only setup 1 Amazon aStore. You cannot customize multiple stocks for different niches. If you need that functionality, wait for my review in next issue. I am experiment using another tool. You can see that separate testing page at my Internet Book Store here.
- aStore allows you to present your Amazon store in 3 ways (I test out 2 of the methods):
- As a simple link to your store as a standalone site
- Embed the store using an inline frame
- Embed my store using a frameset.
The later 2 options would blend better into your website. - I noticed that due to the way Amazon is displaying the store, your page is recommending to be at least 700 pixel wide. If you have a smaller width, part of your store will be hidden (see my example above). You should also add some content for the embed store so that the search engine can spider your storefront.
These two additions by Amazon is definitely a good step towards helping its affiliate in promoting its products. You no longer need to play around with datafeeds handling if this meets your requirement. Do test around this tool.
Learn more about these new Amazon tools by becoming their associate. Signing up is free.
About the Author:
Keith Choy runs the WealthMountains Infopreneur Portal which offers tips, tools and news on path to multiple streams of income. To sign up for his WealthMountains Newsletter, go to http://www.wealthmountains.com/news.htm
Tags: Omakase Links, aStore, Amazon
