So you have a website, and since you are on this page, its probably safe to assume that it has a few Amazon links. So far so good.
Global Amazon Link – Why Its Not There
Unfortunately Amazon, the largest retailer in the world, does not have its act together when it comes to navigating the complex international trade laws. As a result, each of the geographies has a separate legal entity under which Amazon stores are operated. As such, there is no “Global” Amazon store. As a corollary of that, the separate local stores operate similarly, but do not coordinate amongst themselves explicitly. As a result, if a US visitor clicks on a Amazon.co.UK address, he/she will end up going to the UK store instead of more logical place (for the visitor, for you and for Amazon) – the US store!
What Does That Mean?
So, there is no Global Amazon Link. That is problematic for two key reasons:
- Its quite bad user experience – if the user is in US, being taken to UK store is an annoyance at the least and even downright nonsensical. Its like a customer walking into a WalMart in California (US) being told that the store only accept Yuan currency! Yeah, it does not make sense.
- Its bad business – And of course its bad business. When a user clicks on an Amazon link, he/she has some intention of checking out the product and maybe even purchasing it. By sending her to the wrong store, the value of that click is lost. This is a lose/lose for everyone involved – for Amazon (most likely the customer will not take the effort to go to local Amazon store and search for the same product), for the website owner (lost commissions.. duh!) and for the visitor (she did not get to get the retail therapy!)
Now that sounds bad, but how bad it really is?
Lets do some math on what absence of Global Amazon Link Mean
We at BestAzon monitor tens of thousands of Amazon traffic every day through various products providing a Global Amazon Link. Below is a quick recap of how the picture looks like from a country perspective:
Now it looks bad – ain’t it? Almost 40% of typical website visitors are from countries that have a Amazon store, but they are nevertheless forced to go to an Amazon store in another country. That’s a straight 20% of potential business left on the table (conservatively assuming that the international traffic has about half the purchasing potential of the home country).
Alright, So Where Do You Get a Global Amazon Link?
Glad you asked! There are several services that convert a local Amazon link into a global Amazon link. Some (including BestAzon) provide easy plugins that can simply be plugged in and presto – all your Amazon links are magically “globalized”.
With so many choices, there are a few considerations on how to go about choosing the solution that right for you. A global Amazon link needs several capabilities and unfortunately not all services score high on all of those.
- Location detection: Consider if the service has robust location detection capability. Does it have fallback mechanism in case the default geo-ip service fails for whatever reason? Does it go through VPN services? Surprisingly, many of the popular global Amazon link services use poor geolocation detection tools – meaning your US customer may be sent to Egypt! With BestAzon, we have triple redundancy built into the tool – if one service fails, we have 2 backups on standby at any point. The location accuracy is more than 5 9’s (i.e. more than 99.999%).
- Speed: On internet, speed is king. Any redirect service that takes more than half a second will frustrate your visitors in clicking the back button. Unfortunately, more than a few of Global Amazon Link services use sub-par infrastructure to cut corners. That does not work. With BestAzon, the typical incremental time induced in the click cycle is less than 300 ms (i.e. less than 3/10th of a second). Read more about how we did that here. Suffices to say BestAzon is the FASTER Global Amazon Link available on web right now.
- Algorithm: Your results from using a Global Amazon link will directly depend on how good the algorithm used to find the equivalent page on another Amazon store. Several services would ask for Amazon’s unique identification number (ASIN) across different stores in order to direct the traffic. That is cumbersome (who want to find out random 10 digit numbers on 10 Amazon stores!) and will quickly mean that you don’t use the service. Then there are services that will send the traffic to a n equivalent search page (i.e. if the visitor was going to the product page for “X-Box remote”, he will be sent to the search page for “X-Box remote). There is nothing wrong with that, except that in some cases that may throw the visitor off if he was expecting to see the specific product. At BestAzon, we are proud of the extremely sophisticated algorithm we have developed to identify the optimal page to send the visitors to at another store – no ASINs required, no API required. Nothing – it just works!
- How much does it want you to share: This is perhaps the most under appreciated and most critical part. Most of the Global Amazon Link providers want you to register on their website to add your Affiliate Tags. Some even ask for your Amazon details (API key etc) for that privilege! Consider the risks and what it means for you – never share more information than that is needed on internet. There is no need for your private information to go to other parties servers for the Global Amazon Link service to work! BestAzon does not need any information from you, except for your Amazon tags to include in your traffic – that’s it. Nothing else is needed – no logins, no passwords, no API Key, no secret key, no captchas!
Check out the BestAzon service for Global Amazon Link generation – we offer the service through multiple channels including a Javascript, a WordPress Plugin, a online Amazon Global Link generator and even a Webservice. Get the one that works for you!
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