Amazon

Amazon Webstores Review

By Tinuiti Team

Jun 14 2013

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If you’re interested in creating or transferring your online store, this unbiased Amazon Webstores review will help you learn the fundamentals as well as your fit with the ecommerce platform.*

Curious about how other platforms measure up? Check out reviews of top ecommerce platforms here.

Amazon Webstores Review: What Kind of Merchant Should Use the Amazon Webstores Platform?

Amazon Webstores is a new all-in-one ecommerce solution for online retailers.

Webstores opens its services up to retailers of all sizes because their 2 plans both include unlimited storage, bandwidth, and SKUs. Retailers have the option of signing up to sell on their own site AND sell on Amazon.com or solely just selling on their own website.

As you can imagine, Amazon.com encourages selling on their own site, and so we see a 1% transaction fee for the former plan and a 2% transaction fee for the latter.

However, retailers who sell on Amazon Marketplace still have to pay Marketplace’s separate selling fees. Amazon tacks on 2 other fees, called “payment processing and fraud protection fees,” regardless of whether you sell on Amazon.com, and so it can get a little confusing. Check out the overview of Amazon Webstores’ pricing here.

Ultimately, when comparing ecommerce platforms, it becomes clear that Amazon Webstores is ideal for small to medium-sized businesses because smaller businesses can benefit from the built-in market that comes with Amazon Marketplace integration and larger businesses will unfortunately see transactional fees pile up very quickly.

Amazon Webstores Review: Good Amazon Webstores Features [ws_table id=”44″]

Amazon Webstores Review: Bad Amazon Webstores Features [ws_table id=”45″]

You can view all of Amazon Webstores’ features here.

Amazon Webstores Review: Submit Your Product Feed from Amazon Webstores to Google Shopping

If you’re looking to market your Amazon Webstores products on Google Shopping, it’s worth your time to check out this webinar on Google Shopping integration.

Amazon Webstores Review: Notable Amazon Webstores Examples

Russell Athletic (Sports Apparel and Equipment)

Fruit of the Loom (Apparel)

Argo Tea (Tea)

Amazon Webstores Review: Our Amazon Webstores Review Bottom Line

Using Amazon Webstores is like trusting the wise and experienced guy you met in an alley: he knows what he’s doing and will help you some of the way, but he has his own ulterior motives. Bad analogy? Well, just know that Webstores is designed and catered for the inexperienced retailer who prefers the “set it and forget it” approach, and the multitude of fees you’ll pay for that kind of service will pile up quickly.

Amazon Webstores will provide a very user-friendly, hands off (for you), and complete kind of experience, but in any case where a smaller retailer puts his/her business in the hands of the largest internet retailer in the world, there is likely going to be some sort of bullying down the line.

Amazon Webstores Ecommerce Platform Comparison Grade: C+

View the master list of our ecommerce platform comparison to make the most informed choice when choosing your ecommerce platform software.

How do you think this shopping cart stacks up against the rest? Have your voice be heard and your opinion known! Email [email protected] and request to have your experience be part of this Amazon Webstores Review.

*Note: Grades are subjectively based on analysis and comparison to other ecommerce platforms, based on availability, significance, and functionality of the platform feature and overall value.