October 3, 2019
Amazon is at it again! They are bringing brand curated content posts into their customer experience. Why not? It's been shown that UGC highly influences consumers and they believe it to be the most authentic type of content. To support that with some stats, the following Bazaarvoice "Annual Shopper Experience Index" shows influence of user-generated content on omnichannel shopping and cites mobile and social commerce as areas of focus:- Mobile Matters, UGC Ignites the Experience - 57% of all page views across the Bazaarvoice Network came from mobile in 2018, and; when shoppers engage with UGC on mobile, the conversion lift is 136%, slightly higher than it is for desktop shoppers
- Social Commerce Sees Investment from Brands - Nearly half of Bazaarvoice clients said integrating social media and online shopping experiences will be a top priority or increased area of focus over the next 12-18 months
- Visual Content is Table Stakes Today - More than half (59%) of brands and retailers said that featuring photos and videos from customers throughout the shopping experience is standard in e-commerce
Let's take a look at how Amazon describes their new "Posts" feature:
Posts is a new browse and discovery experience on Amazon focused on brand-shopping. Posts help shoppers discover new products and see what’s new from brands by browsing feeds of brand-curated content. Posts link to product detail pages, making each post in a feed shoppable, and each post includes category tags so shoppers can continue exploring posts in related categories.
So basically the same experience you've grown to love on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest and more; you'll now get on Amazon. So ideally all of the social media content production you're doing today, can pay off inside Amazon's walls as well, without creating a whole other platform to manage on its own. Will it be more work? Yes of course. But it the data shows that the investment should pay off. Inside Amazon Posts program, you also should know that you'll get Engagement Metrics (views, clicks and click through rates) and the best part is that it's FREE to participate in.
How do Amazon Posts work?
The "Shopping element of this experience simply turns your social content into a shoppable moment for the consumer. The journey for this takes them directly into the Product Detail Page for hopefully a conversion.
The "Browsing" element seems to follow the same UX pattern as a Instagram and Facebook with secondary doorways back to the Category level, which means getting exposed to your competition. So this means that curating the best content will keep your customer sticky and staying in your feed.
The "Discovery" element of this experience is a familiar one (Facebook carousel ads?), but it seems to be more of a cross-sell feature and again takes you into the feed. This speaks to how important the "visual content" of your feed is as it seems to be the one place that Amazon continues to take the consumer vs. dropping them directly onto the Product Detail page.
The above shows where your Posts content will show up in the Amazon shopping experience. The word "Related" is interesting here as there is a connotation that your Post content may show up on competitor's pages. I asked Chris, our Marketplace Manager his thoughts:
"Apparently the curated content can also be published on competing product pages so I think thats powerful. Historically there has only been brand ads with very limited creative opportunity. Amazon seems to be asking the brands to experiment."
With Amazon building their own Influencer Program, we wonder when these two meet and take advantage of UGC from Influencers integrated into Amazon Posts? We look forward to seeing the progression of this social commerce feature, helping to onboard our own customers into it and seeing all the stats to come.
If you'd like to visit the official Amazon Posts page, click the link to the left. 
