Attendees learned about more than 30 new product launches, including a fully-automated supply chain solution, Buy with Prime and Shopify integration, and more ways to sustainably sell on Amazon
Independent sellers – most of which are small and medium-sized businesses – make up over 60% of sales in the Amazon store, and supporting the success of this community is critical. Amazon Accelerate, our premier annual seller conference which took place September 13 – 14, is one of many ways we help sellers fuel their business growth and build a stronger community. This was the fourth annual Accelerate, and our biggest yet, with thousands of sellers in attendance live in Seattle and tens of thousands joining virtually. Participating sellers heard about exciting new product launches, gained valuable insights on how best to grow and scale their business, and had the opportunity to network and connect with Amazonians and other members of the selling community.
Sellers are engaging more than ever in our store, and in 2022, independent sellers in our U.S. store sold more than 4.1 billion products, an average of 7,800 every minute.
Here are some of the more than 30 exciting new launches we shared at Accelerate 2023, all designed to continue to build on this successful partnership:
1. Improving logistics and warehousing through an innovative, fully-automated supply chain solution: We are always innovating to provide sellers with powerful capabilities that leverage Amazon’s scale and technological innovation to save time and money – enabling sellers to spend more time focused on inventing amazing products and driving customer delight. Supply Chain by Amazon will provide an end-to-end, fully automated set of supply chain services that will provide sellers with a complete solution to quickly and reliably move products from manufacturing locations to customers around the world. Sellers can benefit from Amazon’s advanced logistics, warehousing, distribution, fulfillment, and transportation capabilities to keep products in stock, ship faster and more reliably, and significantly lower costs. New capabilities are available now, and we have many more coming in the next few months. And we’re going to keep enhancing Supply Chain by Amazon for many years to come.
2. Expanding opportunities to reach customers in Amazon’s store and beyond through new capabilities: Reaching and converting new customers is critical for sellers to grow their business. That’s why we introduced Buy with Prime a year ago, to help merchants grow their ecommerce business on their own websites using the trusted and convenient shopping benefits of Prime that provides members the products they want, quickly and reliably. At Accelerate, we announced expansions to the Buy with Prime product suite, starting with the Buy with Prime app for Shopify, a new integrated app to help merchants grow their business using Buy with Prime on their Shopify stores and simplify the day-to-day merchant experience. Not only will this integration make it easier to install Buy with Prime on Shopify stores, but our native integration with Shopify makes it easier for Shopify merchants to manage their businesses, with their inventory, pricing, and promotions automatically synced. We also revealed Reviews from Amazon, helping merchants display their Amazon reviews on their own website at no additional cost, and Buy with Prime cart, giving shoppers the ability to purchase multiple Buy with Prime products in each transaction.
3. Making it easier for sellers to write engaging, effective product listings through generative AI: Compelling product listings attract customers and drives sales, but the task of creating product titles, bullet points, descriptions, and all the other attributes that enrich a listing can be time-consuming. We are making this process much easier by leveraging the latest advancements in generative AI to simplify the listing creation and management experience. These new capabilities will make it faster and easier for sellers to list new products and enrich existing listings, providing customers with more complete product information to help them make confident purchase decisions and ultimately drive sales. The new capabilities use large language models (LLMs), a type of machine learning model specifically trained on large amounts of data that recognizes, summarizes, translates, predicts, and generates text and other content, providing sellers with comprehensive product data that is automatically generated in the Amazon listing format.
4. Supporting sellers’ sustainability goals: Sustainability is important - to customers, to selling partners and to Amazon – so we’re making it easy for sellers to infuse sustainability practices into their business. The new Sustainability Solutions Hub provides a centralized destination for sustainability in Seller Central to help sellers with their product and packaging sustainability efforts. The Sustainability Solutions Hub provides sellers with information to get started with Amazon’s sustainability programs including Climate Pledge Friendly, Amazon Renewed, and Ships in Product Packaging. The hub will be available to all sellers in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK, and U.S. later this year.
5. Providing sellers with powerful data and insights for more meaningful customer engagement: With the right insights, brands can better engage with customers and create products that resonate to reach both current and potential customers. Customer Sentiment Insights is a powerful tool that enables sellers to leverage category-level customer feedback to support new product development, and upcoming enhancements will provide the ability to select different time periods, analyze trends over time, and benchmark customer sentiment for all products against best sellers in their category. Plus, the new Customer Loyalty Dashboard will help brand owners build stronger relationships with customers by giving sellers the ability to dive deep into behavior like customer purchase patterns, as well as integrating with other Amazon tools to offer promotions, coupons and discounts to high-intent customer audience segments.
6. Recognizing sellers creating positive community impact: When independent sellers succeed in creating successful businesses in Amazon’s store, they also create jobs in their communities and drive a number of other benefits in their local communities and economies. In 2022, selling in Amazon’s store enabled independent sellers to create an estimated 1.5 million jobs in the U.S. As a result, the amazing partnership between independent sellers and Amazon not only benefits consumers, small businesses, and Amazon—it is also a force multiplier that benefits local, national, and global communities. This year, Amazon honored a few of the many sellers who make substantial contributions in their community and embody being a force for good: Hustle Clean, Gifts Fulfilled, and Nyssa. We surprised each independent seller with a grant of $50,000 to continue driving their business and giving back to their communities.
Dharmesh Mehta, VP of WW Selling Partner Services, and Claire O’Donnell, Director of Selling Partner Empowerment, Communities & Trust, surprise Eden Laurin CEO and co-founder of Nyssa, Justin Forsett, CEO and co-founder Hustle Clean, and Kim Shanahan, founder, Gifts Fulfilled, with a $50,000 grant each to continue growing their business and their community and social impact work.
What sellers on the ground had to say
Amazon supports and invests in the success of our seller community. Without our selling partners, the Amazon experience that customers have come to know and love would not exist. At Accelerate, sellers have the opportunity to expand their networks, join educational breakout sessions that cover relevant topics across the selling journey, hear directly from Amazon executives, and be inspired by the lessons and successes of their peers.
“Our business wouldn’t have been able to thrive without the vibrant Amazon Seller Community,” said Leslie Pierson, president, Hot Taco. “We love that the Seller Community is open and supportive, and we’ve received a lot of help from other sellers over the years. We like to pay if forward and we love being able to help newer sellers as well.”
While sellers like Pierson are familiar with Accelerate, many joined Accelerate for the first time to take advantage of the breakout sessions and learn best practices. Patrick Jones, founder of home fragrance company Outdoor Fellow, noted that while it was his first time tuning in virtually, he attended over ten breakout sessions. “I put most of my focus on the advertising and content sessions as those are two areas that I wanted to gain insights. After the sessions, I immediately implemented a Sponsored Brands campaign to run alongside my Sponsored Products campaign and I created a new A+ brand story content type and applied it to all of my current ASINs. While it’s too early to see how the new A+ content has improved the listings for SEO and listing rank, I’m already seeing a significant lift in visitors to our Brand Store from the Sponsored Brand campaign. I’m excited to see the results in a few months.”
This year’s Amazon Accelerate included thousands of sellers that came out to Seattle in person, and the tens of thousands that joined virtually, making it our biggest ever Amazon Accelerate. Anyone who is interested in learning more about Accelerate or selling on Amazon can still stream all of the keynotes and many of the breakouts from Accelerate 2023 on-demand for free.