Elevating the Amazon Retail Experience for DTC Ecommerce
How a new integration with Salesforce and Buy with Prime can help retailers grow and scale while enhancing their customer experience
Amazon has revolutionized the shopping experience, and we can’t get enough. Now customers everywhere expect fast, easy, and relevant experiences no matter where they shop. Retailers have invested in convenience to meet their customers’ increasing expectations, but now retailers don’t have to — the Amazon Prime shopping experience can now be available on a retailer’s direct-to-consumer (DTC) site.
Amazon and Salesforce recently announced the launch of a new Salesforce integration for Amazon’s Buy with Prime retail technology, which means enterprise users of Salesforce Commerce Cloud will have an app exchange product to extend Buy with Prime functionality directly into their site.
So, what does that mean for shoppers and retailers?
Expanding the Amazon Prime shopping experience
Buy with Prime extends Amazon’s customer obsession outside the walls of its direct marketplace. Buy with Prime was launched in April 2022, and it offers services for Prime members to get their products with fast, free delivery and free returns on eligible items. Retailers own their DTC shopping experience, retain their customers’ data, and have complete control over their brand, but now they can potentially uplevel their customers’ experience by adding Prime services.
Until now, due to the complex systems and infrastructure requirements of enterprise retailers, activating Buy with Prime has required extensive custom development. Small and medium-sized businesses with simpler infrastructures have been the primary target customers to date, and a recent integration with Shopify has continued to expand Buy with Prime’s reach. The new Salesforce integration provides an easier path forward for larger enterprise brands to implement Buy with Prime services.
Customers can shop with Amazon Prime anywhere
What does this mean for shoppers? They can get the fast, seamless, and convenient shopping experiences they are accustomed to from Amazon Prime directly on retailers’ direct-to-consumer sites. With Buy with Prime, when customers browse for products on a retailer’s ecommerce site, they can see exactly which products are eligible for Amazon Prime benefits.
Checkout is fast and seamless, as customer can use their Amazon Prime wallet and not waste time entering contact information, shipping address, or payment information to complete their order. Then they can expect fast and free Prime shipping speeds.
And if a customer changes their mind and wants to cancel their order? No problem — they can do so through their Amazon Prime account (or directly on the retailer’s DTC site) right away. If a customer wants to return their order, they can use Amazon Prime for that and drop off their package at the many locations Amazon provides. Customer service is also available for customers through the Buy with Prime experience.
What’s in it for the retailer?
There’s clear value for the customers, as Amazon Prime services help enhance the shopping experience through speed, ease, and convenience. But what value do retailers get from this service?
- Focus on your competitive advantages: Retailers can focus on what they’re good at and outsource the fulfillment and checkout experience to a company that is arguably the best in the industry. That means that retailers can focus on providing their customers the best product, service, and experience they can and let Amazon Prime take care of the rest.
- Leverage Amazon’s size and scale: Retailers can take advantage of Amazon’s scale and sophisticated fulfillment networks to leverage the costly and complex systems Amazon has built so that they don’t have to build them themselves.
- Single cart for the shopper: The Salesforce cartridge also supports Amazon Prime and non-Prime carts, so everything exists in one place. Amazon fulfills orders for Prime-eligible orders and non-Prime-eligible orders if the retailer is a customer of Multi-Channel Fulfillment (a separate Amazon fulfillment offering).
- Leverage Prime brand equity: Some retailers may experience increased conversion and increased customer trust through the association with Amazon Prime. Amazon Prime badging and branding can be available on product listings, alerting customers to Amazon Prime benefits like fast Amazon Prime shipping and easy returns.
- Gain insights into Buy with Prime orders: Retailers can gain access to Amazon Prime order data for Buy with Prime orders. This provides retailers valuable insight into Buy with Prime orders and allows brands to compare performance and insights against their other channels and checkout experiences.
Since the launch of Buy with Prime, early customers have seen positive customer satisfaction scores, new customer acquisitions, increased conversions, increased retention, and more repeat purchases.
What’s the catch?
The Salesforce integration is built specifically with enterprise customers in mind, as Buy with Prime seeks to expand beyond small and medium-sized businesses. There are still some limitations, and more feature development is expected as the product continues to mature.
For example, Subscribe & Save features are not out of the box, and custom payment options outside of the Amazon Prime wallet will require custom development. Retailers can also expect an added service fee, so it’s important to assess the viability of incorporating Buy with Prime in their larger ecosystem and ecommerce strategy, especially if they don’t already fulfill with Amazon in some capacity.
The future of retail experiences
While there are considerations to weigh to determine if this service makes sense for a retailer, providing customers with the speed and convenience they have come to expect is a big win, especially if a retailer lacks the infrastructure and sophistication — or the desire — to build these processes themselves.
The Salesforce Commerce Cloud cartridge makes it easier than ever for enterprise retailers to implement this service and try it for themselves. In fact, there is room to test Buy with Prime with a subset of inventory to determine if the experience, costs, and mechanics of Buy with Prime make sense for the retailer.
If retailers are interested in driving DTC activity or upleveling their Amazon strategy, this enables brands the opportunity to amplify their ecommerce experiences.
As a Buy with Prime Partner, AWS Premier Partner, and Salesforce Platinum Partner, Slalom is uniquely positioned to help retailers navigate the solutions above. Learn more and reach out today.
