Amazon Brand Pages – a hybrid of Facebook and Google?

I hope everyone enjoyed Thanksgiving and Black Friday shopping.

Just before the Thanksgiving holiday, On Tuesday, November 20, Amazon launched a “Brand Pages” section to their website as a personalized Amazon Page for brands to promote and sell their goods. https://ams.amazon.com/products/pages.

The Pages are free to create and lets brands customize their content by creating a microsite on Amazon, just like how it is done on Facebook. Companies can now create their own pages as “custom destinations” under their own domain name under amazon (“www.amazon.com/brandname“), and add features like product pictures, links to social media (e.g. Facebook and Twitter pages) and “merchandizing widgets” (which are links to specific products on Amazon) on their main brand page.

Amazon also lets brands become “more social” in a section called “Amazon Posts” by enabling them to publish posts that could also be synced to the brand’s Facebook page simultaneously. The company also offers a dashboard for brands to monitor the status and circulation of their website through Amazon Analytics, which is also free. Doesn’t the name sound familiar? Google Analytics, Amazon Analytics?

According to Amazon, the main purpose of the brand page is to create a friendly environment so that consumers would feel comfortable to spend more. Brands can also be more involved in communicating with potential customers as they sell their goods through Amazon, and consumers would have easier access to go to a certain brand or reseller directly as long as they know the brand’s name.

Being in the shoes of a particular brand, is it worth it? Companies these days are continuously trying to gain presence in social media by creating facebook fan pages, separate facebook event pages, manage twitter accounts, etc. When I used to work for a tech company, I couldn’t believe the number of brand pages the team had to manage. I felt that the team was basically saying the same thing over and over again through different outlets, but they had no way to respond back to consumers’ comments in time because there were just too many websites to manage. However, Amazon Pages does not seem like another one of those “social media sites.”

Amazon’s brand page is directly linked to the site where its products are sold, which would be more convenient for consumers to check what the brand has to say as well as look at other products that the seller offers – all on the same page. In contrast to other social networking sites or brand pages, consumers would not have to sign up or “like” the page to take part in socializing with the company. Furthermore, Amazon is known for its credibility, and using the same platform would create synergy for brands to promote their products.

Well, it has only been a few days since the platform has been launched. We have yet to see whether this page would be a success or another one of those like friendster and myspace that failed to maintain their pages.