7 eCommerce Ideas to Steal from Amazon for your Squarespace Store

Amazon has the best eCommerce experience on the internet.

No question.

They have a huge team of marketers, designers, and engineers working all the time to eek out any extra sale they can.

The good news? You can copy (ahem, steal) some their best ideas to increase sales on your Squarespace store.

Here are the 7 best ideas you can take from Amazon and set up on Squarespace.

If you need help – feel free to contact us at [email protected]. We're crazy about helping independent Squarespace stores succeed.

Jump to the end if you want to see an infographic summarizing all of these tips.

1. Search

Let's start with the obvious: search.

If you've used a big online store, you did a search for the product you ended up buying. Simple, right?

In fact, search is the #1 way people figure out what they’re going to buy online. Nearly 90% of Amazon's product views come from search!

Now. Look at your Squarespace store. Do you have search?

Half the Squarespace eCommerce stores we look at haven't set up search!

Luckily, it takes about five minutes and zero code to get set up. Here's how you can set up Squarespace search today.

2. Customer Reviews

Customer reviews are one of the most valuable things you can offer potential customers to your store.

By giving reviews, customers help to describe your product in their own words (hello, better SEO!) and provide amazing social proof that your products are good.

When was the last time you bought a product off Amazon that had no reviews?



In fact, if you’re a small, indie shop, you’re in a better spot than most products on Amazon. Your customers are going to feel awesome about having a positive impact for you because of that personal connection.

Helpful reviews are a huge bonus to everyone!

Squarespace makes it really easy to set up customer reviews for your site.

3. Social proof

Reviews, customer photos, and product Q&A all contribute to a psychological phenomena on an Amazon product page.

Social proof.

Once a certain amount of social proof – evidence that other people are doing something – is established, customers feel no hesitation about being the “first mover” to purchase a product.

It has a huge psychological effect on customers – they’re more relaxed, better able to evaluate the product, and can make more informed decisions by not having the extra cognitive burden of “figuring out if this site is legit or not.”

How can you build social proof on your store? Use customer reviews and great product photography...

And you can add recent order notifications to demonstrate live purchases – awesome, real-time, social proof.



4. Up-sells and recommended products

You've helped people find what they’re looking for. You’ve convinced them that their purchase is worthwhile.

Now what?

Help them make smarter purchases and find more of what they’re looking for.

Use Recommended Products to show customers products that are related to what they’re looking at.

People find this incredibly valuable when they’re comparison shopping and browsing for options.



Use a Frequently Bought Together section to show customers how they can bundle products together to save on shipping and other costs.



Say you’re selling a hand-shaped ceramic cup. You probably sell a saucer that matches.

Why not show the saucer as an item that is "Frequently Bought Together" – it’ll help boost sales of both the cup and the saucer, and help your customer save money on top of that.

Get in touch with our support team if you want to add this to your site, we’re launching a new product soon to help with this. (Right now that's a secret between you and me 🤫)

5. Fast checkout

Amazon's one-click checkout is famous. It's simple, fast, and hugely profitable.

It saves return customers tonnes of time and makes impulse purchases easier than ever.

You can easily add it to Squarespace with Customer Accounts and Express Checkout.





6. Affiliate and Referral Programs

Affiliate and referral programs help your store get more traffic from bloggers, influencers, and social networks.

How did Dropbox get so big? They had a referral program.

How does The Wirecutter make money? They’re an Amazon affiliate.



When someone makes a purchase on Amazon after reading a Wirecutter review, Amazon pays a small percentage of the purchase price back to the Wirecutter.

You should do the same thing. (And you should use us to do it.)

7. Urgency

Another subtle psychological tactic that Amazon makes the most of is urgency.

They convince you that they’re running out of what you’re looking for.

This is pretty crazy when you think about the size and scale of Amazon. How could they run out of anything?

But it works.

And if you’re an indie Squarespace store – you actually are limited in stock.

Use it to your advantage!

It's quick and easy to update your product pages when they’re running low on stock – make the most of it.



The Invisible Tip: Speed!

Amazon is fast. Ridiculously fast.

Why? Because speed matters.

A 1 second slow-down can reduce eCommerce conversions by 7%.

So save your customers some frustration, and use our speed test to make sure your Squarespace store loads super quick.

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