Amazon Now, Amazon’s delivery-in-minutes service, is growing fast, and it now sells fashion as well as groceries. For brands, that changes what it takes to be found on Amazon.
Here’s what’s happening, and what we’d fix first.
What’s happening
In mid-September, Amazon said Amazon Now had passed $1 billion in annualised gross sales in India, based on its sales over the previous three months. Amazon calls it the fastest-growing e-commerce business it has ever run in India.
It’s live in more than 65 cities and towns and runs from more than 750 micro and urban fulfilment centres. Amazon says it is on track to reach 100 cities by Diwali, and that orders have doubled every quarter since launch.
It isn’t only groceries any more. In June, Amazon said more than 100 new, bigger urban fulfilment centres, starting in Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi NCR, Hyderabad and Mumbai, would bring apparel, shoes, watches, jewellery and electronics into delivery in minutes.
Fashion is a big part of that. In August, Amazon Fashion India’s director, Nikhil Sinha, told the Economic Times that Amazon Fashion had added more than 50 brands this year, and described Amazon Now as a way to serve the urgent, occasion-led buy. Across Amazon Fashion during the T20 World Cup, he said, demand for jerseys rose about 2.5 times before match days and up to 8 times on the day of a match.
Amazon is still the challenger. On 24 September, Reuters, citing people familiar with the plan, reported that Amazon intends to put about $3 billion into quick commerce in India by 2030. Amazon declined to comment. The same report cited Datum Intelligence, which puts Amazon’s share of quick commerce at 6.2%, against 77% for Blinkit, Swiggy Instamart and Zepto together. Other estimates are higher, but all of them put Amazon well behind.
Why Amazon wants shoppers back more often
We don’t think speed is the whole point. We think it’s frequency.
Amazon India’s country manager, Samir Kumar, says Prime members shop on Amazon Now about three times as often as non-Prime customers. Every extra visit is another search, another scroll past recommendations, and another place to show an ad.
At its Connected Worlds event in Mumbai in March, Amazon Ads pitched Amazon Now to brands as a new place to advertise, where the ad and the purchase sit side by side. The industry calls this retail media.
What it means for brands
Ranking in search used to be most of the job. Now a product has to be found in more places at once: the search results, the recommendation rows, the sponsored slots, and the list of things that can reach a shopper within minutes.
They all draw on the same catalogue, the same stock and the same creative, so a weak spot shows up everywhere.
Here’s what we’d do.
Listings: one catalogue, many shelves
- Fill in every attribute your category asks for: size, colour, material, pack size, occasion. Filters and recommendations can only use what’s there.
- Answer the obvious questions in your bullets and A+ content: fit, size, what’s in the box, how long it lasts. Rufus, Amazon’s shopping assistant, answers from your listing, reviews, customer questions and the wider web, so a gap in your listing becomes a gap in its answer.
- Keep names and pack sizes consistent across search, recommendations and Amazon Now, so shoppers recognise the product at a glance.
That’s the daily work of our cataloguing team.
Pictures: pass the tile test
On Amazon Now, your product is a small tile on a phone. Shrink your main image to thumbnail size and check that the brand, variant and pack size printed on the pack still read. The main image has to stay the product alone on white, with no added text or badges, so fix it in the pack design and the photograph.
For fashion, show the fit on a model, and give every colour its own variation, with its own main image and swatch.
Our photography team shoots for the tile and the gallery at once.
Stock: close to the shopper
Delivery in minutes only works from stock close to the shopper.
- Pick what belongs in minutes: the everyday top-up, the urgent fix and the occasion buy, like a jersey before a match or a gift on the day. Those are the products worth keeping close to shoppers.
- Find out which of your products are on Amazon Now, and in which cities. Your Amazon account manager or Seller Support can tell you.
- Change the delivery pin code in the Amazon app to a city you sell well in, and see what a shopper there sees.
- Watch stock by size and variant. Sponsored Products ads only run on products that are in stock and hold the Featured Offer (the Buy Box), so a gap costs you the ad as well as the sale.
Our Amazon Now page explains how we help brands choose what belongs there.
Ads and creative: ready before the moment
- Put ad money behind products that are rated well and in stock where the shoppers are.
- Use Sponsored Brands to put your range, not just one product, at the top of search. Sellers need Brand Registry to use it.
- Keep a bank of creative sized for each placement, and get it approved in advance, so a new ad can go live quickly when the moment comes. Amazon suggests allowing a week for approval.
We run this as Amazon Ads, with creative from our ad creatives team.
Deals: plan for the festival
The Great Indian Festival starts on 8 October, and Early Deals are already live, on Amazon Now too. With Amazon Now in more cities than ever, a deal can win a shopper who wants the product today, as long as the stock is nearby.
Coupons show as a badge in search results and on the product page, where shoppers compare. Before any deal goes live, check there’s stock behind it in the cities that matter. Our festival checklist has the rest.
Be easy to find, everywhere
We think the brands that do best on Amazon from here will be the ones shoppers can find wherever they look, and get almost at once. If you’d rather hand it over, tell us what you sell, and we’ll tell you what to fix first.
