Ahead of Prime Day, Amazon introduces new features in its Local Shops program: Amazon India has launched two new features to streamline the onboarding process for sellers in the Local Shops program and enhance the shopping experience for customers with a storefront-led view on the Amazon Mobile app.
These two new features arrive just in time, to help local shops sellers gear up and prepare for Amazon’s 8th Prime Day sales event in India, which is scheduled for July 20 and July 21. Tens of thousands of local shops sellers are gearing up to offer incredible deals, curated selection and new launches for the upcoming Prime Day.
The 1-Click ‘Local Shops on Amazon’ seller onboarding experience on Amazon Seller Mobile app addresses a key gap that sellers faced previously i.e., until this launch, sellers had to visit Seller Central on their desktops to enroll into the program. With this launch, new sellers in Punjab & across India can now join the program through the mobile app via a single-click thereby enabling 2-day delivery within their city.
This functionality is also available to sellers who may have opted out of the program in the past and want to return to selling their products to customers in their city. The 1-Click button is now always available under Help > Local Shops on the app, making it easy to find.
The second upgrade enhances the Seller Storefront on the Amazon.in mobile app. The enhanced Seller Storefront is available to all sellers on Amazon.in and allows them to showcase their location (locality and city) and share their storefront, with the social shareability button, across platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram to drive more traffic.
Customers can also share their favorite shops with friends and family, helping them discover unique local selections on Amazon. The storefront dynamically curates selection for each customer, grouping products into categories like Recommended, Latest Arrivals, and Best Sellers based on each seller’s offerings.
Sellers can also customize their shop name, locality/city, and add a business logo to reflect their offline identity on Amazon.in. The storefront can be accessed offline by displaying a QR code in their physical stores, which links directly to their online page when scanned. Offering an online channel ensures customers can continue purchasing from the seller even when the physical store is temporarily unavailable.
Abhishek Jain, Head, Local Shops on Amazon at Amazon India said, “We are excited to see the rapid scale up of the Local Shops on Amazon program across the country. In nearly two years, the program has onboarded over 3500 local offline stores from Punjab. We are preparing our sellers for Prime Day and excited to introduce our 1-click launch feature for Local Shops sellers in Punjab and across India. This feature eliminates multiple steps in the way, making it incredibly convenient for them to join Local Shops program. We combined this with the enhanced Seller Storefront making it easier for customers to discover the right product from a particular shop and share the store with their friends & family to bring more traffic to the seller. Both of these innovative feature marks a significant step in our mission to digitize and empower small and medium-sized enterprises across India, providing them with the tools and opportunities to grow and scale their businesses through e-commerce and our online marketplace.”
Ashish Sahni, owner of LookRavish, says, “Joining the Local Shops program in 2019 was a game-changing decision for my brother Sumit and me. After 38 years of selling beauty, health, and personal care products offline, we took a bold step to move our family’s business online. Registration process was smooth, and the overall selling experience has been very fruitful. Amazon also provides training materials and tools to help sellers grow their businesses, especially during events like Prime Day. In fact, we sold over 500 products on Prime Day last year. Overall, our sales have grown by 300% annually, and this online business now constitutes a significant portion of our total revenue. Taking that leap to sell online was daunting, but it’s been transformational for our business.”
Today, Mr. Sahni is one of more than 3500 offline retailers and neighbourhood stores from Punjab registered as sellers on the ‘Local Shops on Amazon’ program. The program brings the benefits of ecommerce to offline retailers and neighbourhood stores.
It helps supplement the existing footfalls at their offline stores with a digital presence on Amazon.in and expands their reach. The program helps customers discover products from neighbourhood stores in their city (many they already trust and love!) from the convenience of their homes, while helping local shops transform into digital stores.
With this program, sellers can sell to customers beyond their immediate vicinity, using their existing delivery mechanisms or engaging with identified courier partners. They can also leverage other fulfilment programs from Amazon like Easy Ship and Seller Flex to further expand their business within their cities and other locations across India.
Cities in Punjab with highest number of Local Shops sellers | Chandigarh, Ludhiana, Mohali, Jalandhar, Amritsar |
Top selling product categories in Punjab from Local Shops sellers | Apparel, Sports products, Home & Kitchen products, Health & Personal care, Home furnishing |