By Phil Grier
Aabaco Merchant Development

I recently spoke at the first annual PROSPER Show, a new conference held in Salt Lake City, which included 90+ speakers and 12 ex-Amazonians. While there, we attended many of the panels and in this blog series will share the tips, tricks, and best practices for successfully selling on Amazon as shared by industry experts. Many of these best practices can also apply to your own branded website! This is the first of 8 posts in the series.

John Rossman is an ex-Amazonian who wrote The Amazon Way: 14 Leadership Principles Behind the World’s Most Disruptive Company. He was the keynote speaker and focused on what Amazon does as a business that sets it apart and drives success for them. Many of these principles also apply to small business owners. For example, trust is actually more important to your customers than selection or price. How well does your site establish trust with your shoppers? Things like design, professionalism, making sure checkout is secure, and a general feeling of safety are all important to build trust with visitors.

Amazon reinvents toward simplicity. As your business grows, it’s much easier to scale if you spend time looking for convoluted processes you are following and making them simpler. Avoid applying a band-aid if there might be a completely different and more simple way to do things. Don’t let “we’ve always done it this way” get in the way of doing things a smarter way. You can’t reinvent your business by defending the status quo.

Automation is a key to scale as well. The less you are doing manual work in your store, the more time you’ll have to focus on growing the business. Things like order management, shipping, inventory, and other backend processes can be outsourced to a connected service that specialize in those fields.

Put your customer experience at the heart of site changes. When you are thinking about changing how you calculate shipping, or what items to add to your site, think from your customer backwards. Getting customer feedback is vital to this process: not only collecting it, but taking action on it. Use a test, measure, and proceed process for taking that action. If you are measuring the results of your tests as you go, your customers, your conversion, and your bottom line will let you know if your changes are working out.

Finally, make a plan for what your business will look like in the future and work it backwards to today. This will help you identify the biggest obstacles and overcome them. Be careful not to get stuck in the planning phases and deliberate too long without taking action. One of the most detrimental things you can do is nothing, because the competitors are innovating, learning, and gaining incremental advantages. Don’t get left behind!