For years, Amazon has been stealing search share from Google. Now the company is doubling down on its reputation as the best place to start any online shopping journey with a new feature that will show customers products not available on Amazon.com when they search for a specific brand.
The new experience — currently being beta tested with a select group of U.S. users and brands — will showcase a selection of products in search results, including items not sold in the Amazon store. For these products, customers will be linked out to the brand’s website.
“We’re continuously working to expand selection and make shopping even more convenient for customers,” said Rajiv Mehta, VP of Search and Conversational Shopping at Amazon in a statement. “We’re testing bringing more selection and brands into our search results to help customers find even more of what they want and further improve our shopping experience for customers.”
How Amazon’s New ‘Brand Direct’ Searches Work
The experience is limited to search queries related to a specific brand or product. When a customer initiates that kind of search, results will show a range of products available on Amazon.com as well as select products not carried by Amazon but available directly on the brand’s website. Customers who click “See More” on those non-Amazon listings will receive a notification that they are leaving Amazon and be redirected to the brand’s website.
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To create these off-Amazon listings, Amazon said it pulls the product information and price directly from brand websites. While the information is refreshed “regularly,” the company did caution that Amazon listings might not reflect recent changes made on a brand’s website. Amazon also said that it will not share any information about customers with the brands they link out to, and conversely it will not collect data about how a customer interacts with a brand’s website once they leave Amazon.com.
Amazon’s Reasoning: Added Selection and Convenience for Customers
The move continues Amazon’s efforts to expand its reach beyond its own platform, which began with the debut of Buy with Prime in April 2022. That service allows brands that sell on Amazon to offer Prime benefits (such as free, fast delivery and order tracking) to customers on their own websites. The new Amazon search feature isn’t restricted to brands using Buy with Prime, but the company did highlight the fact that merchants that also have Buy with Prime enabled will then be able offer Prime benefits to customers who end up transacting off Amazon.
Commentary from Doug Herrington, CEO of Worldwide Amazon Stores, on the reasoning behind the development of Buy with Prime offers some insight into the similar strategy that is likely driving this new search feature: “There was some head scratching by people when we announced [Buy with Prime],” said Herrington at the 2022 Accelerate conference for Amazon sellers. “They said, ‘Isn’t this going to cause some people that would shop on Amazon to shop off of Amazon?,’ and the honest answer is, maybe. But what we know is that it’s going to be a better customer experience for Prime members. And if we have happy Prime members who are enjoying free, fast shipping, on Amazon and off Amazon, that’s going to be happy customers, that’s going to be happy sellers, and it’s going to be great for all of us.”
Indeed, in the announcement for the new search capability, the company said that the offering was “building on our mission to make customers’ lives better and easier every day with wide selection, low prices and convenience.” And honestly, it’s unlikely Amazon is overly worried about losing too many on-platform sales — as the company pointed out, Amazon.com currently carries hundreds of millions of products across more than 35 categories, including 300 million available with Prime delivery.
“This experience makes it easier for customers to quickly and easily find products from you [the brand] that are not sold in Amazon’s store when they search in the Amazon Shopping app,” explains an FAQ page for brands, adding that “while the best customer experience is products sold directly on Amazon, this program provides another way for customers to discover your products and brand.”
Amazon said it will roll out the experience to more U.S. customers and additional brands based on the feedback it receives during the beta testing. Brands interested in participating can email branddirect@amazon.com.
