What Can We Learn from Amazon?
Indie retailers face many challenges from Amazon and other large online players. To compete, it's helpful to first acknowledge competitor's strengths and general market trends:
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Selection: Amazon enables customers to search millions of items online.
- Amazon has 2 million merchants selling via its platform.
- The 2 million merchants sell an estimated 550 million items. (On average, merchants are listing about 225 items.)
- Amazon's retail sales and third-party sales total about $200 billion.
- Amazon uses a variety of avenues to keep customers roped into its ecosystem, including television streaming, Whole Foods, and more.
- Mobile Convenience: it's increasingly easier to shop on your mobile phone vs drive to the store.
- Smarter: you can search millions of products—and the software will likely do the 'thinking' for you. Amazon's software shows you the most popular items, the ones with the best reviews, etc. In essence, the software tells you the best item for you.
Most indie stores are at a disadvantage when it comes to responding to these trends. In general:
- Indie stores often have little or no selection online.
- Indie stores often don't have a mobile-friendly website.
- Indie stores often don't have the software to show customers 'smart' search results.
Below we share how you can overcome these obstacles.
Bridge Can Help Your Store Compete Against Amazon
Bridge can help your store fight Amazon:
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Selection: Bridge enables indie stores to quickly offer massive selection online.
Bridge offers a directory of 2,760 brands from which stores can quickly build an online store. From this list, Bridge created partnerships with 113 of the leading brands to share their products with authorized retailers. These brands which we call Smart Brand partners share 65,844 products in real time with stores. This gives the stores as much or more selection compared to Amazon and other large players. The stores can show all the items the brand offers, including new introductions, and the products display professional photos, dimensions, and descriptions. -
Mobile: Bridge offers indie retailers a free, mobile-friendly, responsive website.
Retailers receive a website that their shoppers can shop at home or work via any device including mobile phones and tablets. The software is easy to use, up to date and secure. -
Smart: Bridge's software delivers smart search results.
Bridge gives retailers the search tools they need to service their customers. Bridge's software gets customers to what they'd like more quickly.