Your Amazon Store Is Stealing Your Website Sales!

Regina: 00:00:11

Hi everyone, Regina here with Starter PPC.

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I want to talk to you guys today

about your Google ads, possibly

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feeding sales on your Amazon

store , this is not ideal, right?

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Because when you're selling things on

Amazon, you're paying a commission to

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Amazon and probably some fulfillment

costs , that are not the cheapest, right?

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Cause I know that Amazon

sellers, you have to ship.

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Your inventory to an

Amazon fulfillment center.

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If you want it to be like prime eligible

and have fast shipping and basically win

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the sales, win the sale over competition.

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Those fulfillment centers charge a

premium for fulfillment services.

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And then on top of that, Amazon

charges commission for the

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opportunity to use their platform.

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So if you are paying for Google ads

and you're trying to send people

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to your site and you're trying to

convert them at a certain return.

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And you've calculated that return

that you need based on the profit

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margin you're getting on your website.

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It would be really bad, right?

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If your Google ads was somehow feeding

sales on your Amazon store instead of

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on your website, because on your Amazon

store, you need a much higher return.

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And so it's probably not a

profitable way to go about getting

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sales on your Amazon store, right?

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By buying Google ads clicks.

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We're going to talk about an example

of one of our clients who sells

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on Amazon sells on their website.

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We've been running Google

ads for them for many months.

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They came to us saying,

why are sales down?

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our Amazon store is doing great.

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Why can't we get a decent

return on Google ads?

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And so we did a deep dive into it.

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We found that their

product on their website.

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With shipping costs

49 , to get to customer.

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Whereas the same product on their

Amazon store costs only 45, right?

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4 cheaper.

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And it gets to their customers

overnight or depending on

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where people live in the world.

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Sometimes it might be one day

shipping or two day shipping, right?

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Not three day and not

three business days, right?

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Because Amazon.

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Nowadays they deliver on

Saturdays and Sundays three

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business days is a long time.

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If you hit a weekend, on Amazon for

me here in San Diego, I can buy that

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product for 45 overnight shipping

on top of that, Amazon as a customer

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is great for me because I don't have

to punch my email address into some

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unknown website, my phone number

into some unknown website, right?

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A Shopify store where.

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It's insecure.

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It could, my phone number could

be sold to a bunch of spammers.

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They can take my credit card information

and identity theft, et cetera, et cetera.

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So small websites doesn't happen

very often, but it's nerve wracking.

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So Amazon feels safer and easier

as a customer saves time, gets the

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product faster, costs 4 less, and

it doesn't expose you to unknown

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threats of sketchy websites.

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So we went to our client and said, Hey,

why is it cheaper on Amazon to order

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this product than on your website?

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Ideally it should be

cheaper on your website.

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I'm going to show you all the

data that proves that this is

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detrimental to your business return.

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Your Amazon store might be doing great so

first of all, here in Google analytics.

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I'm over here under landing pages

on Google GA4, and I've edited

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some of the fields so we can see

bounce rate, engagement rate.

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What I'm going to do is just search

for checkout so we can just see any

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page that has checkout in the title.

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Here's what's happening.

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Hi there.

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Quick interruption.

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Do you know the main thing that

prevents small business owners from

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getting their Google ads account

into a position to grow and scale?

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Budget.

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A lot of businesses, especially

those that are just starting

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out, have limited budgets.

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And so because of this, they're turned

away by most ad agencies because most ad

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agencies have minimum budget thresholds

that they're willing to work with.

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So what happens is the business owners

end up learning Google ads themselves.

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And the problem with that is

that most of the advice online is

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geared towards larger accounts.

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: 00:04:05

And the advice doesn't have any of those

strategies or tricks that can kickstart

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the algorithm into giving a small

account a leg up over larger competitors.

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So it often just doesn't work.

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And the business just ends up

losing money month over month.

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Because we know that every dollar saved

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com.

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Okay.

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Back to the video.

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Overall, for all the pages that

have checkout in the title, which is

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basically Check out contact information

and check out payment and check out.

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Thank you.

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The bounce rate from August

compared with July, right?

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So month over month went up by 35%.

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So the bounce rate was 33%, which is a

pretty high bounce rate to begin with.

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Now it's 45%.

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You guys, almost 50 percent of people

are getting to the checkout and bouncing.

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And guess what?

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The Amazon store looks great.

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So you can imagine what happens, right?

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People are shopping on your website.

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They just interacted with the

Google ad shopping on your website.

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They get to the part where they have

to pull out their credit card, type

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in information, give away their email

address, give away their phone number.

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They see the pricing, they see

the shipping and they think, I

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wonder if I could just get this

on Amazon, I'm already going to.

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Buy a few things on Amazon today.

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Anyways, I'll just bundle it

all with the same order, right?

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So they open a new tab, go to Amazon,

search for the same product name,

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and they buy on there instead.

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And your Google ad dollars just paid

for a very expensive conversion on

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Amazon, where not only did you make

less money because the pricing is

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lower, but you made less money because

your profit margin is lower, right?

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The commission that you pay to

Amazon and the fulfillment costs.

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So the client said, Oh yeah, I

changed the pricing a month ago.

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That's why we were looking at

month over month numbers here.

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A month ago, the pricing on

Amazon was changed to be lower

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than the pricing on the website.

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What we're now asking the client to

do is put the pricing on Amazon higher

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than the pricing on the website.

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This is going to deter

people from bouncing.

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Even though you'll get a lot of people

who get to the page and think, I wonder

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if I can buy this on Amazon and not have

to wait three days for shipping and not

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have to enter my credit card information.

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There's a lot of people that will go check

Amazon, see that it costs more money.

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And go back to the site because they

would rather save those 4, right?

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So it should be the 4 less on

the website, including shipping.

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Then the Amazon costs, so it needs

to be much higher than Amazon.

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I know this is a tough thing to ask

because I think on Amazon, oftentimes

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you're dealing with competition, right?

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You're dealing with people that are

selling similar products for less money.

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And that's really tough.

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This is why Amazon makes it very

difficult for small business to succeed.

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But if you want to build a brand

and you want your website to work, I

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don't have any other advice for you.

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The website where you sell your product.

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Basically if you set your numbers

to what they need to be on Amazon,

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your competitors will probably raise

their pricing as well to match.

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So it's a race to the bottom, but you

got to hold strong and know your numbers.

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Okay, let's look at a few other

numbers while we're on it.

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So in addition to the bounce rate going

up by 35%, let's see the damage that

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was done in the Google ads account

just based on that number alone.

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So here I am looking at again, August

compared to July month over month.

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And I can see that first of all, the

cost stayed about the same, right?

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2 percent decrease is

pretty much the same cost.

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Now.

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Cost per click went up by about

6 percent and cost and click

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through rate went down by about 5%.

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These are minor fluctuations.

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You guys, I'm not exactly sure what's

causing them, but a 5 percent increase

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or decrease here or there., definitely

important to note, which is why I left

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these columns here, but it's negligible

compared to what I'm about to show you.

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Average order value

actually went up by 6%.

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Again, this is just a common fluctuation,

5 or 6 percent here or there.

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But the fact that average order value

went up is usually a good thing, right?

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That's an easy way to get a higher return.

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CPC went up 5%, click through rate went

down 5%, average order value went up 5%.

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Conversion rate went down almost 40%.

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Conversions went down 20%.

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This brings our ROAS to a decrease of 13%.

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And it brings our cost per acquisition,

our cost per conversion up to by 22%.

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So bottom line, the biggest

number that, that went down

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right here is conversion rate.

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And that affected our return

conversion rate went down.

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Why?

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Because people are bouncing 35

percent more often on the checkout

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page and going and buying on Amazon.

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If you don't believe me, try an exercise

where you decrease your Google ads spend

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and watch your Amazon stores revenue

decrease by not a similar percent, but.

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You'll see a noticeable difference.

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If you decrease your budget significantly

in Google ads for a few weeks you'll see

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that decrease in your Amazon revenue.

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So make no mistake.

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Your Amazon store is not

just getting organic sales.

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It is being fed by your Google ads.

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And the only way to combat that

is to set your pricing higher on

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Amazon store than your pricing

on your website with shipping.

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All right.

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This has been a lesson in Amazon

pricing and how to keep your.

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Amazon store from stealing

your conversion, stealing your

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conversions from your website.

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Best of luck to you.

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If you liked this video, don't

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Thanks for watching.