We recently hosted our first 10in20 “New year, new opportunity” webinar, highlighting some big bets you can incorporate now to help meet your growth goals for 2019.
What is 10in20? It’s a monthly series where we cover one topic in 10 questions, points, or ideas, and we do it in 20-minutes or less. Why so short? We recognize you’re busy managing your business -- juggling day-to-day operations while looking ahead to drive future growth and innovation. Because your time is precious, we’ve condensed our thought leadership webinar series from the typical hour into 20 minutes.
We appreciate those who were able to spend a small part of the day with us walking through opportunities to further activate your store in 2019. If you missed our live webinar, no worries – you can still tune in here.
There’s a lot to think about when managing your businesses growth, and can be challenging to decide where to place your bets. We don’t have all the answers, but we are invested in helping you grow. Coming into the first months of the new year, we focused this initial webinar on big bets for 2019, each with the potential to be a multiplier for your business beyond this year. Below is a brief recap of some areas you could focus in 2019 at a glance.
Big bets for growing your business in 2019
1. Harness automation for scale
2. Revisit fulfillment
3. Manager returns
4. Meet your customers where they are
5. Drive discovery and commerce with social media
6. Expand into new marketplaces
7. Cross into new selling territory
8. Activate intelligent solutions
9. Consider service bots
10. Choose your reality
So whether you’re thinking about investing in new technology, expanding to new regions, or innovating with augmented reality, the time is now to place your bets. Check out our webinar recording for more detail.
Q&A
During the webinar we received a number of questions about Amazon Pay, the presentation and commerce in general. We wanted to take the opportunity to share answer to a few of the questions that came up:
Q: How did you arrive at this list of big bets?
In the first quarter of the new year, many businesses are still assessing ways they are going to meet their goals and evolve in what continues to be a disruptive retail industry. We developed this list of big bets through the lens of growth opportunities for your business in 2019 – reviewing key trends happening in the industry, starting with our merchants and understanding the ways we can help them meet their business goals in 2019, and finally discerning what business can do quickly that could be multipliers.
Q: Is Amazon Pay available globally?
No matter where customers are located, their log-in information and Amazon.com identity follows them, allowing them to use Amazon Pay for whatever they love, wherever they find it. Amazon Pay is available in many parts of the world including the US, the UK, Japan and throughout much of Europe. Millions of customers in over 170 countries have used Amazon Pay to complete a transaction. For merchants with operations in the EU, we recognize that expanding to a new region is no small task, so we’ve put together a short post highlighting ways you can make the global buying experience easier to increase conversions, minimize refunds and reduce chargebacks. Check it out here.
Q: What’s an area where I can start making an impact today?
As you are considering where to place your bets for the year, it can be helpful to start small – focusing on a few easy ways to make an impact on your business. At Amazon we are obsessed with creating better experiences for our customers. By making it more about them and personalizing the experience, there are some simple ways to start doing this today. As we mentioned in our first bet around automation, one way you can start now is through some simple email marketing tactics. For example, setting up an automated welcome email experience can be a great way to make a good first impression with new customers.
Other areas to consider include extending your offering to an online marketplace to drive more sales and generate more traffic to your web store. These online shopping centers can offer a great way to diversify income streams, bolster brand awareness, and test out new products quickly.
As you are looking at the rest of the list, there are some fairly large considerations or bets. Starting with one or two of these areas to dive deeper can help you evolve your business early in the year to prepare for big retail holidays in the second half of the year.
Q: I already have too many payment options. Why should I add Amazon Pay?
According to a checkout optimization report by the Baymard Institute, 8% of people abandon a site because there weren’t enough payment methods that they preferred1. Sometimes, it’s not even about too many, but offering the right options. It’s important that you make it as easy as possible for people to check-in and check out on your site. With Amazon Pay you’re making it easier for hundreds of millions of Amazon customers to check-in and check out using the information already stored in their accounts (both shipping and payment details). There isn’t a magic number of payment methods. Xsolla offers over 700 payment methods, making it easy for game developers to pick and choose which payment options they want to offer gamers in different markets around the world.
Speaking of checkout optimization, mark your calendar for our next 10in20 webinar on Checkout Optimization. March 20, 2019 at 10am PST.
Watch this 10in20 webinar and gain access to our full library of thought leadership webinars now.
1Baymard Institute Usability Study, 2018.