Stefan spent 16 years at Amazon. His roles include: director of seller experience, director of seller strategy, and director of consumer shopping experience. Across this 2-part episode he discloses an array of fascinating insights on the inner workings of Amazon, how business decisions are made, and some great stories.
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In this episode we discuss:
You can find Stefan on LinkedIn here. You can also check out Vantage International here.
Discussion points:
Amazon Creatives Facebook group Amazon Leadership Principles LaunchPod Academy Jeff Bezos ? email
[0:00:00] George Reid: Welcome to It's always Day one. My name is George Reed, a former Amazonian turned Amazon consultant. Each week on the podcast, you're gonna hit industry experts, brand owners on Amazon employees share their answers to the basic yet fundamental questions. You should be asking yourself about your Amazon business. Now let's jump in. Hey, guys, just a quick reminder. This is following on from last week's session. If you haven't listened to it yet, I highly recommend going back listening to that 20 minute episode first, and then it's gonna flow nicely through. If you do what I ensure that you're always gonna eat the episodes as soon as they are made available. I recommend pressing that subscribe button usually get about 12 to 24 hours quicker that everybody else does. Hopefully you enjoy. Let me know if you got any feedback and I'll speak to you very soon. Cheers. I wanna pivots slightly to the days when you were the director off consumer shopping experience. I want to know more about what what Amazon looking for from sellers during those earlier days, because I can't quite remember the year you were doing that, but it was in the last kind of four. So what about what I am looking for?
[0:01:07] Stefan Haney: Yeah. So I had the privilege of of leading the detail page on the Amazon product page overall buying experience, Really? From 2017, 18 and 19. And, uh, what a what? A ball, Right? You know, a lot of customers, a lot of shoppers on those pages. That's great. Um, you know, I had started one I started like, Look, uh, I'm looking for the same thing from all sellers. How well are you creating content and putting content on the page that helps customers efficiently Answer. What is this thing? Eyes That the one for me And how do I get it? Right? So, um, uh, Amazon is just another seller on the platform. They just happen to be a really big one on. They own the platform. But, you know, at the end of the day, if I've got a brand and it's a one p brand or a three p brand as the product in general, I don't really care. Customer doesn't necessarily care. What I care about is do I have, you know, large, high quality product images with some additional videos, right? Can I really, easily, visually help the customer? Um, do I help? The custom does. Does three p content. It's typically three p content, although I've seen some other content, you know, from one p vendors or whatever. Does the content build trust in the platform? So you know, if customers are shopping and they see these crazy emojis and funky you know, all caps, stuff like, you know, and 300 word 300 character titles, it's like, This is not, you know, Come on. You know, Amazon's supposed to be a great shopping experience, and you're not reinforcing that very well. So and you're not reinforcement, cause you're not making it easy for the customer to see. What is this product? And is that the one for May? Right? You're making more work on the customer and you're not following some of the best practices of Amazon policies and content. The policies air there just to help customers have a great experience shopping on the site. So I would look for great images. I would look for well formed content. Um, that is not trying to game the system. Um, you know, there's a lot of myths out there. Well, if I do this, it's gonna get me better search results. So I better stuff some keywords? Uh, no. Um because I also don't forget Amazon doesn't stay static over time. So even if that did work once upon a time, a long, long time ago or seems toe work, um, you know, it's things keep changing. Um, on. And so, you know, having clear content that customers can trust.
[0:03:42] George Reid: Yeah, that's beautifully simplified, but that's exactly what it is. I mean, you know what I like about you meant around building that trust in the platform of Amazon. You know, no capital letters lacking emojis no huge titles on one interesting discussion I had with Kyle Kirkwood on the pod recently. Just love Amazon advertising bits. He was saying with a new video ads that come out the most basic ones that were actually created by Amazon. Four sellers and vendors tend to form the best because they look mawr native toe Amazon as a platform, rather anything that's mawr aggressive, brand driven and all brand colors. Customers are somewhat don't trust that they feel like it's an off Amazon ad, and they found that these simple ads. Which arm or Amazon style there, I say, are the ones that are working world, which actually feeds back into that statement around Trust in the platform,
[0:04:38] Stefan Haney: right? Yeah. Amazon isn't necessarily knowing, right? You, uh, if a customer looks at, say, on average, You know, uh, if you're trying to buy something, I don't know how many page, you know, products or pages you might look at. Yeah, but say a customer looks at 234 products or comparison, right. Comparing, uh And so you know, the sponsor product ads or the other ad slots on somebody else's product page may help them decide where to go or one of the other, you know, components of the page of similar products, right? There's there's actually, you know, count them up. There's actually, you know, quite a number of other products on any other product. You know, detail Page s O. If those product pages look very different, right? Even if the price is different, you know the quality and clarity of the content can help. Ah, cellar or brand stand out. And the closer it looks to Hey, I trust you. I trust what Amazon Looks like you know that is the standard lets you know the customers expect customers. Set the standard on DSO. If you see customers consistently trusting a a style of content, go with it.
[0:05:58] George Reid: I think the only caveat to that would be when we look at the search results. Andi can be disgracefully competitive on their particularly categories, like supplements. One of the things that I certainly recommend a lot of other experts in this space will do is thinking about how you can make that main image stand out more than others. Um, and that particular occasion you do want to stand out. You don't necessarily want to blend in and be like all the other products because you want that click on that obviously feeds the algorithm, right? So there's certain caveats, that statement. Sometimes you wanna sit in a line with Amazon or after, but in other cases you want to stand out because standing out is going to get you. The click from the search result is going to get you the click from someone else's ace in right.
[0:06:46] Stefan Haney: Well, I don't think we're as far off as it may sound. I still want content to be clear and follow some great great practices. So I've seen some supplements where, you know, the package has the words in a really small color and, you know, really small font. And then they drape some sort of herb or some sort of plant around the package. And you're like, Wait a minute. You know people, there's some science around how people interpret visual images, and you just created your brand name and your product name to be the least dominant thing for your eye. By creating this really vibrant color plant around your image, I've seen some other things. It's it's not rocket science. If you're shopping on mobile in a lot of people shop on mobile. Let's make sure one of your images your kind of one of your primary images, if not the primary image, is well suited to vertical. So take those headphones you're worrying, and don't show them straight on. Turn them sideways so they stand out tall because that's gonna work a little better on the mobile. Eso paying attention to some visual standards. Uh, just having good visual quality, not just the pixel depth, but actually aspect the position of the product paying attention to color. Uh, those things can help you stand out, and customers will notice because they can very easily see your product. What is this thing on that?
[0:08:08] George Reid: And then we if we look a little bit more into kind of a nine, what is a nine necessarily looking for? Obviously, it's one of these big mysteries of the world, even Amazon. Most people have no idea what I think was doing. I don't think I don't think a nine could after what it does, but from your mindset. What? What? How do you think the now algorithm works?
[0:08:29] Stefan Haney: Yeah, I don't know. I've given up. I've given up. But I'll tell you, it's a funny story Going back to the early days of three p one p. You know, we were having a meeting with the leader of a nine. It would be my boss later down the road. But we were like, Look, we want you know, you notice like the three p business is growing and they're providing a lot of your content. Yes, Well, can you give us any guidelines so we can help reward sellers who give you better content? Well, I don't know what you mean. You don't know way Don't want to reveal the algorithm. Like Okay, I realized were internal. I realized working for the marketplace team, but we're still internal. Uh, and you know, they were being super thoughtful. Uh, you know, and I might disagree with how hesitant they were, Um, you know, and we finally got to be like, You're right. Sellers don't need to know all these attributes, but give us a little bit of a clue. We kind of found one element of the algorithm that we spent a lot of time on, um, that we then built that directly into the listing tools for sellers to make sure sellers provided us with with text and images that we knew fed into the 89 algorithm. Um, Thio benefit them. But, you know, like all algorithms that Amazon, they change these things over time and they keep testing them. And so even if I could and would tell you albums, it's okay. It'll be different next week. But exactly I'm not quite that fast, but yeah, e
[0:10:00] George Reid: think that the best way to look at it, in my opinion, would be disagree if you will. It would be looking at what features Amazon are releasing things like how a plus has become more readily available. How storefronts there pushing very hard looking, the things that they're making more readily available and encouraging you to participate in, whether it's programs or whatever. I know that they're not telling you to create a plus or telling you to create storefronts just randomly. They're not telling you. Toe have 3000 by 3000 images. Randomly is kind of clues, if you will, would be my way of looking at it again. You're getting this information. You could ignore it completely, or you could just okay storefronts and are available for everyone. Like a few years ago, Let's ensure were jumping on it. What makes a good storefront? We seem to have all these different options in storefronts now to make it more customized. Dough. I go with the basic template, or do I take advantage of the new options for me? I think it's just Amazon again. We've got these things. We've got loads of options to be more of a brand on the platform. You can either ignore it and then question while you're not getting ranking or you can go. I'm gonna jump on that. I'm gonna jump on that. I'm gonna jump on that. That's my kind of simple way of looking at it as well.
[0:11:16] Stefan Haney: Okay, I think you know, I think there's a good point of that around. Amazon is putting a lot of things out there, and Amazon does try to run on data, you know? So something's not working that kind of move back, right? I don't know if anybody remembers pay phrases or reading circles or, you know, there's a lot of features Amazon's killed over time. Uh, and maybe we should deprecate mawr, uh, you know, to keep testing. So I do think, you know. Yeah, I've kind of got a new appointment. I'm gonna try everything Amazon releases. I'm gonna try everything Amazon pushes, but I'm going to test it to right now. So I think another another way to look at is I keep an eye on, particularly keep an eye on some of the Amazon private label detail pages or some of their product pages because, you know, Amazon has usually more resource. Is that a lot of sellers on DSO They're going to spend time on, uh, testing those pages or, you know, they're going to try to drive more sales, right? So if I can not only find the different options that Amazon's launching and test those but also look at you know what I think is best in class or for things from my category where I can start developing some vesting class rules of thumb, Ana. Then I can give that Teoh I could get that to my team and follow them.
[0:12:40] George Reid: Yeah, this is, you know, you bring this topic up at an interesting time. I recently created literally a Facebook group just for that which is just Amazon creatives. All in one place of that best in class. Eso plug for myself. Oh, go join that group. I want to finish with a very quick speed round. A new feature that I'm introducing today. You are the very first example of this eso for quick questions for quick answers. It may not be a quick answer. It may elaborate, but let's try making quick first question. What's the biggest threat to a brand selling on Amazon? Usually themselves. Interesting. I like that on. If you had 10-K Would you start in Amazon business? Yes. If you are running an amazin business on your own, who would you hire first?
[0:13:34] Stefan Haney: I would Chire a content creator. And then I'd hire a data analyst
[0:13:42] George Reid: on what is your most memorable story from Amazon? Probably expect a more longer response here, but we're finished on
[0:13:49] Stefan Haney: that. Oh, man, You know, I have just such a privilege, the folks that I've had the chance to work with. Um, you know, I think one of my recent post is about writing and writing an Amazon. So I'll, I'll finish that one. I appreciate the opportunity to learn at Amazon three Opportunity. Amazon gives its internal people to learn and to try new things. Uh, and I was working on my writing on, had been writing Cem Project proposals and reviewed, reviewed my six pager that I and my team had written with my vice president. I got a real quick feedback and how I was doing on my developers writer. Uh, my VP knew that I had written the dock, and he's like, who wrote the stocks? I think it might be time for a new a new author. Uh, I'm like? Oh, but over time, like, I just took that as an opportunity to really like, I want to be a good writer now. Like, what does it take to be a good writer at Amazon? And so, you know, over the course of time, I ended up being one of the instructors for how to write like an Amazonian Uh, yeah. So partly, you know, the mentoring. You know, the mentoring you get, I think another one. Just a quick stories. I really appreciate the opportunities that space leaders can give each other toe have disagreement before a decision is made. Right? And so we have been proposing a piece of software and one S V. P was looking at this going, Why is there just 18? I think this is a great marketing thing. I think you need hundreds, hundreds of of, uh, these kind of algorithms. Now, we kind of came around the room and yeah, another senior vice president. I think you need four just for right. But what she learned is what I learned is, you know, people on the same team, right? You know, they have Amazon on their badge. Eso you know, let's assume they have common intent. Eso what inputs were they? Were they processing to get such a different out? Right? I'm also assume they're mostly rational on S o U. They clearly were thinking about it very differently. And so I really just appreciated every meeting I was in because I judge the meeting by the quality of feedback, I got an understanding, uh, people's points of view. Uh, you know, could I learn something from, you know, seeing the different points of view? Yeah,
[0:16:12] George Reid: yeah. No, I completely agree. And that kind of disagree and commit statement really rings through their despite never being a massive fan boy. The principles when I was there for some bizarre reason they're now applying MAWR to my daily life in the world. When I was there, I was like, pushing back like a young boy just pushing back against decided. Now I'm like, they make so much sense
[0:16:34] Stefan Haney: principles. Yeah, it will stand. Yeah, and not the perfect. And I think also, some companies that work with that are not on Amazon. It's sometimes getting them to come up with what are your company's culture principles or your company's leadership principles? You could start with Amazon because they're great, But yeah, there's room for improvement in them and you know, they you know, they may not reflect what your company needs. S Oh, yeah, that's that's a fun journey for me is to help companies draw out what their leadership principles should be.
[0:17:07] George Reid: Well, this ties me nicely into kind of the summarizing point of where can people find you? Get in contact with yourself staff and and And what is that you're doing now? Just to clarify?
[0:17:20] Stefan Haney: Yeah. So first part is doing a lot of stuff in my family. I get to change. I get to do my time differently, Which is great. Andi, I have a set of clients that I'm trying to do. What I work with companies both who have Amazon businesses or who are other e commerce marketplaces, uh, and or just working data technology where they want to build or develop a new line of business growth. And so I my cup. His name is Vantage because we're really looking at trying to get some different mental models, help those companies or clients see things from different point of view to see how that might unlock growth for them and then actually help them work through it. Because some of my lessons, you know, that I feel I learned from Amazon. I learned the most by actually, by being able to be next to the decision maker or see, you know, see how those decisions were made, you have to live through them to understand what some of those leadership principles or things like tenets, how they're actually gonna work for your company. Eso have a set of products and clients, and we're helping them build their businesses.
[0:18:27] George Reid: Where can they Where can people find you?
[0:18:29] Stefan Haney: So, vantage vantage leader dot com or Vantage International on LinkedIn. Uh, my LinkedIn profile, the best ways to get a hold of me.
[0:18:38] George Reid: Okay. And I'll obviously put the link to that in the show. Notes for for everyone listening. But, Stefan, thanks so much for coming on. We could have dug in some interesting topics there and got some very interesting stories as well. And I'm looking forward, Thio. Everyone ever little gander of that episode
[0:18:54] Stefan Haney: Next, George, appreciate the opportunity.
[0:18:56] George Reid: No, I speak to my job. Hey, guys. Just a quick one. If you are enjoying the podcast on either have some actionable next steps or new ideas I'd really appreciate if you could one subscribe to the show and leave us. Review Thes are really, really important to us. As you probably know, being in the Amazon world, aunt to If you're looking for additional support with your brand, head over to the website, it's always day one dot co dot UK. We've got links to other resource is as often our guys speak soon.
Thanks,
George
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