SHOPPERS BUYING FROM buying from Amazon, whether from its UK, French, German, Spanish or Italian websites, have a range of millions of items from which to choose. Helping consumers narrow down that range is a challenge for the retailer, which combines search and precise navigational filters to help shoppers find the items they are looking for.
From the homepage of its Italian site, Amazon.it, for example, a first-time visitor can navigate via categories that include “my Amazon”, offers and gifts, with quick links to popular categories and banner advertising to categories such as women’s jeans.
A visitor who clicks on the “buoni regali” gift category, which features Amazon gift cards, can then narrow down their options using more than 30 navigational filters that range from “amore” (love), and “compleanno” (birthday) to recipient (child, family, man, woman and more), to price, delivery method and average star rating.
But the site really encourages a more search-focused approach to browsing the range. Its merchandising strategy helps to point visitors towards finding the most relevant item with a search of the whole site, or some 35 individual categories.
One way Amazon’s Italian site is localised is through a “Made in Italy” category. Visitors who search that category can browse a shop window of the country’s regions, learning more about what’s made in different areas of Italy through a series of area guides. Within the gourmet food sub-section, shoppers can use filters that include price, availability to ship abroad, seller, brand and star rating. Detailed product information is then clear from the individual product page, alongside shipping, tax and price information. Social media sharing, via email, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, is available from the product page and once a product has been bought.
How-to guides feature in categories on the site where purchase is likely to be less straightforward. Visitors can read a guide to buying coffee machines in the tea-making and coffee-making equipment category. Cross-selling and upselling are popular merchandising techniques on the site, with alternative and complementary items appearing next to products on the details page and at the checkout.
These are techniques that are used across Amazon’s six EEA websites, which are also localised through the use of local languages, currency and payment options.
Allied with a use of highly informative merchandising and product information, these approaches help visitors from across the region to shop with Amazon.
