I recently found out about Amazon Collections and thought it was another great concept for Amazon to create. I personally spend a lot of my free time on the Amazon site looking for products, comparing prices with other major retailers or simply looking through the book section for new releases and New York Times Best Sellers.
Users will find Amazon Collections handy for their shopping needs because it offers them one more place to go on the site to search what is out there.
So what does it mean for merchants? While it may be too early to tell, from what I have seen on the Amazon Collections site and researched, it simply offers merchants one more place of exposure for their products.
Like Pinterest, it allows users to share what they have collected with clear product visuals with their followers and create boards of their own.
Various items on the collections site are separated by tabs – books, movies, music, men’s fashion, women’s fashion and featured. Amazon also allows you to create your own categories and if not, you can use Amazon’s default categories under My Style, Possibilities and Want List.
Two important things to make note of – products for the items are only items found on Amazon and collections are only accessible once a user signs in.
This makes Amazon more than just a place to purchase items, but a place to share a bit of who users are, what they are interested in and are purchasing with others.
While many have reported that the look and feel of Amazon Collections is similar to Pinterest, there are clearly some differences.
For one, the collections site is dominated by products solely sold on Amazon, where Pinterest has pins from various web sites.
The look and feel of Pinterest I will admit is more inviting to the eye than Amazon. I think Amazon could jazz it up a bit and make it just as pleasing.
I will admit that not all products found on Amazon at the moment, are part of Amazon Collections yet and it is not user friendly where users can clearly and easily add items to their collections right when they go on Amazon.com.
Amazon Collections allows merchants to engage and be social with consumers, it allows them another avenue to sell their products in a more visual way. So, let’s see what happens!