Amazon WebStore 3.5.1 User Manual

WebStore by Amazon 3.5.1

Merchant Manual

Beta Version

INTRODUCTION TO WEBSTORE BY AMAZON 1

Overview 1

WebStore by Amazon and Your Products on Amazon.com 1

Getting Started 1

Registering for WebStore by Amazon 1

What is a Storefront? 2

Why would I want multiple storefronts? 2

SETTING UP YOUR WEBSTORE 3

Overview 3

About Setup Methods 3

Using 1-Click Store Setup 3

Using the Setup Wizard 4

Step 1: Enter Company Information 4

Step 2: Setting Up Your Catalog 5

Step 3: Review/E dit Navigation Structure 6

Step 4: Choosing a Layout U sing Theme Ma nager 7

Step 5: Review and Edit Theme 8

Step 6: Publish Your WebStore 9

Configuring your Domain 9

About Domain Names 9

Configuri ng your Do ma in 10

Next Steps: Customize and Market Your WebSt ore 11

MANAGING YOUR WEBSTORE 12

Managing your categories 12

WebStore by Amazon 3.5.1: Merchant Manual

About Category Manager 12

Uploading Your Product Information 12

Using Categor y Ma na ger 12

Managing products within categories 15

Locating products 15

Using Excel to manage products 21

Managing the Display of Your WebStore 23

About Themes 23

About Template Manager 23

Setting Site Properties 25

Setting Page Properties 25

Working with Widgets 25

Editing existing content 29

Adding new pages 29

Publishing Your WebStore 30

Marketing your WebStore 31

Advanced Customizations: Tips and Tricks 33

Using Tips and Tricks 33

Embed a New Cascading Style Sheet 33

Add a Background Image to Your Site 34

Add Flash to Your WebStore 34

Add an Advanced Search 35

Code Snippet Library 37

Monitoring Your WebStore Perfor mance 40

WebStore by Amazon 3.5.1: Merchant Manual

iii

Introduction to WebStore by Amazon

Overview

WebStore by Amazon lets you create an independent WebStore to sell products using pre-existing inventory information from Amazon.com. Your WebStore becomes your storefront on the Internet.

Your storefront, branded with your logo and colors, displays just the products you sell. Customers can add products to their shopping cart as easily as they do on Amazon.com. At checkout, payment transactions are handled by Amazon.com as well. You process orders and shipments, and receive your settlements, just like you do on Amazon.com.

WebStore by Amazon and Your Products on Amazon.com

Information about your inventory, including products and in-stock quantities, is always stored in the Amazon.com catalog. When customers browse Amazon.com, they see your products through the Amazon.com interface including the familiar tabs, the product detail pages, along with browse and search features.

When you create a WebStore by Amazon, it displays just the products you select from Amazon.com. This custom WebStore uses your branding, colors, and other information. With WebStore, you can:

• Manage inventory on Amazon.com through the Seller Central Inventory tab.

• Manage your WebStore through the Seller Central Store Design tab.

• Use your own domain—www.mystore.com, for example—to display your

WebStore.

Getting Started

Registering for WebStore by Amazon

Interested in your own e-commerce Web site? Get started at

http://www.amazon.com/webstore. After you have submitted your information, an

Amazon sales associate will contact you to explain how to register for WebStore by Amazon.

To register for WebStore by Amazon, you must:

• Read the WebStore by Amazon Terms and Conditions Agreement

• Enter your name and contact information and then verify it

• Accept the WebStore by Amazon Terms and Conditions Agreement

Once you accept the WebStore by Amazon Terms and Conditions and provide the required information, you can create your storefront and begin selling on the Internet and taking your first orders within minutes.

What is a Storefront?

Your Storefront is the public Web site that consumers visit through your domain name or URL. Your storefront holds your product catalog, provides shoppers the ability to search and browse merchandise, and allows shoppers to purchase your products online. Amazon provides all the technology for your storefront – you simply have to configure it.

WebStore by Amazon allows you to have as many storefronts as you like, as long as each has a unique domain name associated with it. Each individual storefront allows you to present a unique look and feel and a customized product catalog to your customers.

Why would I want multiple storefronts?

Storefronts allow you to customize sites to a specific market segment or customer. For example, if you sell jewelry and apparel, you can have one storefront that sells jewelry, one that sells apparel, and one that sells both. You can also tailor storefronts along themes like clearance, back to school, or free shipping.

WebStore by Amazon 3.5.1: Merchant Manual

Setting Up Your WebStore

Overview

WebStore by Amazon provides a suite of tools to setup and maintain your WebStore. Access these tools through Seller Central (https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/homepage.html by Amazon site are available only if you have selected one of your storefronts in the storefront drop-down box.

The following is a table of the tabs in Seller Central and the tasks you can complete on each:

Tab/Tool Tasks

Inventory Search, view, edit, or remove your products for sale.

Orders Search and view a list of current orders, and view details

on individual orders. Issue refunds from the order details page.

Store Design Manage categories, web design and layout, use Traffic

Manager.

). Tools that manage your WebStore

Reports Statistics on sales, refunds, customer feedback, and A-to-

Z Guarantee claims.

Settings Change the name, email address, or password associated

with your Amazon.com account.

About Setup Methods

You can choose between two methods of creating your store:

1-Click Store Setup: You specify a theme (or template) to use, a color, and your store’s logo, and WebStore automatically creates your store. After store setup is complete, you can customize it for more impact.

Setup Wizard: The Setup Wizard walks you through six steps to create your store. After store setup is complete, you can customize it for more impact.

Using 1-Click Store Setup

To setup your WebStore using 1-Click Store Setup:

1. Log on to Seller Central. You’ll see a different screen, depending on your

account:

WebStore by Amazon 3.5.1: Merchant Manual

a. If you’re new to WebStore, you see the WebStore Agreement when you

first sign-in. Read the agreement and accept its terms to proceed to the Store Creation page.

b. If you’re a returning user, click the Store Design tab and then click the

Create a New Store button.

2. In the 1-Click Store Setup section on the left, select a set of templates to use for

your store from the Theme menu. (For specific information on each Theme, see About Themes later in this document.

3. Select a color for your store from the Color menu.

4. Select the content to use for your logo: c. Image: To specify an image, click the Browse button to locate the image

you want to use.

d. Merchant name: Enter your merchant name as you want it to appear.

WebStore creates a logo using your merchant name.

5. Click the Build my store using 1-Click Store Setup button.

Using the Setup Wizard

To setup your WebStore using the Setup Wizard complete the following six steps:

Step 1: Enter Company Information

The first page of the wizard allows you to enter information about your company. This page automatically fills in the fields you completed on the WebStore by Amazon agreement page. Review your company information carefully. Information you enter will be visible to your customers and is used in the copyright information displayed in the footer on the bottom of each page in your store. Enter the exact name you want displayed in the footer.

Please Note: After you create your WebStore, you must edit the Contact Us page to specify other contact info for your store. For more information, see the Need Help? tab on the Company Information screen.

You may also upload an image of your company logo on the company information page. This image is visible to your customers on checkout. Click the Browse button to search for the image you wish to display in your WebStore. You can always upload a different logo file later if it doesn’t look the way you would like. You can also upload a company logo. Your company logo is displayed during the co-branded checkout process and is available to display anywhere on your site.

Please Note: For optimal display, the company logo should have a maximum size of 580x96 pixels.

WebStore by Amazon 3.5.1: Merchant Manual

Step 2: Setting Up Your Catalog

The Category Manager section of the wizard automatically detects how many products you currently have and then allows you to determine how to set up your WebStore category structure. Consider this step carefully, if you change your mind later, you will lose the category structure that was created. You have two options for building a category structure:

Build Your Own: Use our interface to design a category structure from scratch and then

manually add products to each category.

To build your own categories:

1. Click the Radio button for Build Your Own, and then click Next. You’re taken to

Step 3.

WebStore by Amazon 3.5.1: Merchant Manual

2. Follow the instructions in Step 3: Review/Edit Navigation Structure.

Auto Categorize:

WebStore by Amazon automatically creates a category structure that

mirrors the way your ASINs are currently categorized on Amazon.com.

To build your categories automatically:

1. Click the Radio button for Auto Categorize, and then click Next. You’re taken to

step 3.

Follow the instructions in Step 3: Review/Edit Navigation Structure

Please Note:

When considering how to create your categories, remember that categories created within one option are lost if you change to another option. Click the radio button next to the type of category structure you would like to use and then click the Next button.

Step 3: Review/Edit Navigation Structure

Creating Your Categories and Adding Products to them

The Category Manager interface is divided into two steps, each with a separate tab. Click the Need Help? tab to view step-by-step instructions to guide you through creating categories and adding products.

The Step 1 tab of the category manager allows you to create, rename, move, or delete categories. You must create at least one cate gory before you can add products in step two.

The Step 2 tab allows you to add products to the categories you created and organized in Step 1. You can also search for products, run a report that locates products not yet assigned to a category, and view the products in each category.

WebStore by Amazon 3.5.1: Merchant Manual

Step 4: Choosing a Layout Using Theme Manager

WebStore by Amazon allows you to choose of three website designs, Natural, Modern, and WebStore Classic. Each design offers slightly different layouts for products, images, and product information. Click on the image to see a larger view of each layout.

The themes you can choose from:

Natural: Based on a large center image layout with a horizontal menu bar, Natural

includes the following features:

• Large amounts of open whitespace for a clean look.

• You can place a homepage element spanning the center column for visual impact.

WebStore by Amazon 3.5.1: Merchant Manual

• For pages with sub-categories, a menu bar can also appear in the left column.

• A search field appears in the header.

Modern: Based on a three-column layout with vertical and horizontal menu bars,

Modern includes the following features:

• You can customize the background color and graphic.

• You can place a homepage element spanning the center column for visual impact.

• The menu bar appears in the left column.

• A search field appears in the header.

Classic: Based on a three-column layout, Classic includes the following features:

• The layout is well-suited for stores with large numbers of products

• The left column contains a search area, menu bar, and space for customized items.

• The center column can contain any type of content. Typically, the center column

emphasizes the store's main attractions.

• The right column can contain a search field and additional customized items.

In the next step, you can further customize the theme you have selected using the Template Manager.

Step 5: Review and Edit Theme

Template Manager allows you to customize the layout of each page in your WebStore. You can add or delete WebStore pages, as well as edit items on the pages. You can also add custom pages.

For more detailed information on how to customize WebStore pages, see Managing the Display of Your WebStore.

WebStore by Amazon 3.5.1: Merchant Manual

Customizable areas of the Home page in Template Manager

Step 6: Publish Your WebStore

WebStore by Amazon allows you to publish the site you have just created. Publishing copies your WebStore to your domain server. You must configure your Domain before the store becomes available to customers.

Configuring your Domain

About Domain Names

An internet domain name is a unique text name that points to a Web site. Domain names point to Web sites by referencing the IP address of the computer that contains the Web site. For example, the domain name "www.amazon.com" is the text that corresponds to the numeric IP address for the computer that hosts the Amazon Web site.

Rather than remember a numeric IP address, Web viewers need only remember a simple name. When a viewer enters a domain name, the corresponding IP address is retrieved from a central registry of domain names.

Note: You use Domain Registrars, such as GoDaddy.com, NetworkSolutions.com and Enom.com, to purchase a domain name, and then link it to the corresponding IP address.

After creating your WebStore, you must configure your domain name, and then publish your store to make it available to customers.

WebStore by Amazon 3.5.1: Merchant Manual

Configuring your Domain

To configure your domain name, you need to complete two tasks:

• Change your domain name in Amazon Services Seller Central

• Customize settings with your domain registrar

To Change Your Domain Name on Seller Central:

1. On the Seller Central WebStore Management page, click the Manage button next

to the storefront you want to change. The Store Management page opens.

2. Click the Change Domain Name link. The Change Domain Name page opens.

3. In the white text box type your domain name. For example, “myapparel.com”.

4. In the yellow text box, type a sub-domain, if you're only running your WebStore

as a subdomain. For example, “shop” is the sub-domain in “shop.myapparel.com.”

Please note: Leave the sub-domain field blank if you do not want to create a subdomain. Also, you should not enter the prefixes “www” or “http” in this text box.

5. Use the drop-down to select the correct suffix. For example, .com, .net.

6. Select the publish option.

7. Click Save.

Important: If you currently receive e-mail through your domain name, for example sales@mydomain.com, complete the steps in Forwarding E-mail from Your Domain before you change your domain name servers with your registrar.

To Customize Settings with your Domain Registrar:

Customize domain name settings using your registrar's account management tools. You will need your login name or ID and password to complete the required steps:

Step 1: Create an Address record

An Address Record, or A record for short, specifies the IP address you want your domain to point to. You create two A records to point your domain name to the WebStore by Amazon IP addresses.

Step 2: Create a CNAME record

A Canonical Name Record, or CNAME Record for short, lets you point your subdomain to your main domain name. For example, in www.mystore.com, www is a subdomain of mystore.com. You must create a CNAME record, to point the www subdomain to your main domain.

The Propagation Period

WebStore by Amazon 3.5.1: Merchant Manual

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