Twice a year, Amazon holds Prime Day—a massive two-day sale event available exclusively to Amazon Prime members. Prime Day benefits Amazon in multiple ways; it rewards subscribers, boosts loyalty and enhances brand awareness. Additionally, Prime Day generates significant revenue for the company.
Amazon’s summer Prime Day event in 2023 was a huge success. During this event, customers purchased a staggering 375 million items. Not only did consumers save $2.5 billion, but Amazon also made an impressive $12.7 billion in sales.
Few businesses besides Amazon, a marketplace behemoth, could achieve such astounding numbers. However, there is a lesson for small merchants to take from Amazon Prime Day.
During the past few decades, the company has refined its UX and payment systems to create a frictionless ecommerce journey. With the right tools and partners, even small businesses can replicate the Amazon ecommerce experience.
A Sale Built on Frictionless Customer Experience
In part, Amazon is successful because it offers a variety of products at affordable prices. However, what really sets Amazon apart as a merchant is how easy it is to shop there.
Amazon’s original business model aimed to provide a more convenient way to buy books. Now, consumers flock to Amazon to buy just about everything – from electronics and toys to clothes, toilet paper and beyond. That wide-reaching ease of commerce makes Prime Day, and Amazon as a whole, a massive hit.
But how is Amazon’s Prime Day model relevant for smaller merchants?
Customers want fast, convenient payment experiences more than ever. According to NMI’s Payments Innovation Pulse Report, 84% of consumers choose payment methods for their convenience, while 49% prioritize payment speed.
Thankfully, modern ecommerce and digital payment systems are so accessible that even the smallest merchants can deliver an elevated customer experience to rival Amazon’s.
Specifically, there are four things merchants can do to capitalize on the same consumer shopping trends as Amazon:
1) Be online: The first and most important step is allowing customers to shop online. Modern customers expect an omnichannel commerce experience, meaning they want to buy through multiple connected channels. Merchants without an online presence must modernize to stay relevant and deliver an elevated buying experience.
2) Price competitively: When customers shop online, they have instant access to potentially dozens of purchasing options. If something seems too expensive, they can search for cheaper alternatives. While this doesn’t mean a merchant must have the lowest price, they must price competitively or offer a compelling reason for charging more. The good news is that ecommerce requires very low overhead, so merchants can often offer lower prices online than in-store.
3) Make checkout frictionless: A frictionless checkout is essential to an omnichannel experience. Amazon does this perfectly; customers can purchase nearly anything with a single click using stored payment information. Because Amazon offers flexible payment options, customers can choose from various on-file payment methods when they check out.
Small merchants can (and should) offer this same experience. Most of the top ecommerce solutions today provide secure customer payment data storage to facilitate one-click checkout and subscription payments.
4) Make checkout secure: Offering customers the ability to store their payment information is necessary for a seamless checkout experience. Unfortunately, it introduces risks if not done correctly. To ensure checkout is frictionless and secure, merchants must find ways to safeguard payment data. One of the best options is to let a high-security partner protect the data on the merchant’s behalf with advanced tokenization and off-site card storage.
Frictionless Omnichannel Is No Longer Optional—It’s Table Stakes
Customers expect to be able to shop like they do on Amazon. If a merchant doesn’t offer a similar experience, the customer will simply go to Amazon. At NMI, we offer a full suite of tools to help payments providers create a frictionless, secure online checkout experience for their merchants.
These tools include:
Omnichannel payments: Our industry-leading payments platform provides seamlessly integrated omnichannel payments, enabling merchants to sell to customers wherever they are, including in-store, online and on mobile.
Customer Vault: The NMI Customer Vault is a payments storage system that houses customer payment information on highly secure servers. Using advanced tokenization and industry-best security practices, Customer Vault enables merchants to enjoy the benefits of stored payments without the risk.
Automatic Card Updater: Expired cards are a nuisance. Customers must reenter their payment information when a card expires, slowing their checkout experience and creating friction. Automatic Card Updater eliminates this problem by constantly checking cards against updated lists from major card brands and making necessary changes automatically. This tool ensures speed and continuity of service for customers and maximizes revenue for merchants.
Fast, convenient digital payments aren’t just for big industry players. To learn more about how NMI can help you create a more Amazon-like shopping experience for your merchants, reach out to a member of our team.
Don’t just turn on payments, transform the way you do business
- Generate New Revenue By adding or expanding payment offerings to your solution, you can start earning higher monthly and transaction-based recurring revenue.
- Offer the Power of Choice Allow merchants to choose from 125+ shopping cart integrations and 200+ processor options to streamline their onboarding.
- Seamless White Labeling Make the platform an extension of your brand by adding your logo, colors and customizing your URL.