Amazon Accelerate 2023 - New Product Release News

Amazon Accelerate 2023 has come and gone. The event was an extremely well produced affair that brought sellers, agencies, Amazonians, and other industry professionals together for 3+ days of networking, new product launches, and celebration.

A key part of Accelerate - of course - is the multitude of announcements that come out each year.

Here is Voyageur Group 's quick recap of some of the biggest announcements that went down last week in Seattle.

Supply Chain by Amazon

This was the first big announcement at the day 1 keynote. While the announcement is big, there isn't much that is truly new here.

Rather, Amazon has brought together multiple existing supply chain programs that have existed into a new cohesive experience that allow sellers to use Amazon in moving goods across the globe.

What is new and big here, however, is the fact that AWD (Amazon Warehousing & Distribution) is now available to ALL sellers. This allows sellers to use Amazon as a bulk & affordable storage partner. You can now use Amazon logistics to move product from a manufacturer in China directly to FBA FCs OR AWD.

The advantages of AWD is to be able to store bulk inventory - efficiently - ahead of need and then readily flow through to Amazon FCs as needed.

With Supply Chain by Amazon you can easily book your ocean freight, customs brokerage, ground freight in the US to a FC of AWD warehouse all with one all-in quote. You can also choose between a speed boat and standard water shipping speeds.

For Sellers who have traditionally struggled to gain efficiency bringing inventory from overseas to Amazon's FCs this is a big win.

Veeqo - An Amazon Company

Veeqo took the stage to announce it's free tool to compete with other FBM shipping software like Shipstation.

Veeqo is free to use and - with its 5% back Veeqo credits - claims to offer the lowest price commercial shipping available in the US.

They are also offering sellers a Veeqo scanner which they say is the same phone based scanner used in Amazon's FCs.

If you have a high concentration of FBM orders OR are looking for a new option for all of your merchant-fulfilled shipments then this may be an exciting company to look into.

Generative AI comes to listing page management

Amazon announced that it is launching generative AI to help sellers build their listings.

This AI will support copywriting for Product Titles; Bullet Points; and Product Descriptions.

This will save sellers with large catalogs substantial time. Amazon is stating that it should also provide a best in class PDP. We recommend checking the work of any AI tool. While it will write relevant content to the category they miss the mark on your brand's positioning or items USPs.

So, we recommend checking this new functionality out BUT be cautions as you go to hit the 'Publish' button.

Customer Sentiment Insights

Rather than scanning all of your reviews to try to 'mine' insights, Amazon has a tool that will pull key themes out of your products reviews and make suggestions for Merchandising or Product feature improvements.

This is great for us as we are consistently looking at our clients' reviews to garner insights on the "voice of the customer" and this will help us by providing a powerful tool to more easily and effectively mine these insights.

View in your Room goes Tabletop

Amazon announced that it's View in Room shopping functionality is now available for over 200 product types for tabletops.

Relevant categories include coffee makers, kitchen mixers, glassware, dinnerware, etc. to be able to use AR to see these products - virtually - on your tabletop in home.

Easier Ratings and Reviews for Customers

Customers can now leave "two tap" reviews that will not require a text review. Amazon expects this to drive a higher review rate for purchases.

Customer Loyalty Analytics

Amazon continues to roll out fantastic customer segment analytics and the new Customer Loyalty Analytics are the next step forward.

You can now report on multiple different customer types and understand customer loyalty on platform.

From here there are now more than 5 audience segments for the recently launched Brand Tailored Promotion campaigns.

We are excited about this as it allows you to engage with your most important or lapsed customers with custom promotions that won't show up in mass. As a omnichannel agency this is HUGE for us. Since promotions in one channel can cause issues in other this is a great step to be able to use relevant and effective promotions while removing the risk for competitive pricing issues at other retailers.

Seller App Updates

Sellers can now manage coupons AND advertising right in the Seller App

Voice of the Customer Dashboard

There are new features in the Voice of the Customer dashboard. Primarily the opportunity to identify recurring themes / pain points for customers.

Amazon also launched Fit Insights for apparel brands. This is a great new tool to evaluate if your sizing and size charts are matching customer expectations or if recalibration is needed.

Buy With Prime --> Amazon Reviews on Shopify!

There was a lot of celebration of the new Buy with Prime + Shopify partnership. The big announcement, however, was that you can now import your Amazon product reviews on to your Shopify store when you use Buy with Prime.

For brands that prioritize Amazon - and have more / better reviews there - this is a big announcement.

Conclusion

There are a few other smaller announcements we didn't cover here.

Accelerate did not disappoint this year as there are tons of relevant new product releases for sellers to continue to drive their sales growth in 2023 and beyond.