How the Fast Rise in Contactless Shopping Benefits Amazon Affiliates

Thanks to circumstances we all know only too well, 2020 has proved to be a year of unprecedented change. While many aspects of life have been affected negatively, for Amazon affiliates the change in people’s contactless shopping habits is a fantastic silver lining to a colossal global cloud.

Contactless shopping has become the preferred option for many, with customers flocking online for almost every kind of purchase. Retailers are reporting both an increase in transactions from those who previously shopped online, as well as a fast rise in the numbers of digital newcomers. 

Mary Ellen Coe, President of Google Customer Solutions, describes the changing habits as ‘a once-in-a-lifetime digitization moment…, with both consumers and businesses moving online at an unprecedented rate’.

With all of these extra online purchases being made, it’s a great time to be an Amazon affiliate! So how can you maximize the benefit from this fast rise in contactless, online shopping…?

Content will Always be King…

Let’s start with a quick fundamental – more people buying online doesn’t make an affiliate’s job any easier. What it does mean though, is that an affiliate is in a great position to make more money from increased affiliate sales. 

We’ll get onto that part very soon, but in order to really benefit from this fast rise in online shopping, you’ll need to remember the golden rule that content will always be king. Don’t make the mistake of sacrificing the foundations of your blog by producing below par content. You still need to do the work. Without that, it doesn’t matter how many people are shopping online, you won’t maximize the benefit to you. Cutting corners now to try to make a quick buck will always catch up with you in the end.

Keep doing these things

Write each article to help and serve your readers, and strive to provide your audience with genuine and unique value. Keep engaging with those people and continue to build long-lasting relationships. One day the curve of this fast rise in contactless shopping will flatten off and you want those new readers to stick around, while still pulling in new audience members through great content. 

If you turn up every day and do the work then you really do put yourself in a fantastic position to convert those readers into customers. Your readers will be so grateful to you for the value you’ve given them that they will want to thank you for it. That’s the first half of the job done right there. 

The other half, of course, is getting those readers to click through from the links in your articles to purchase the products you’ve written so well about… The only things missing then, are the means to direct those readers from your article, and an online retailer to direct them to. And even before the pandemic, there were none bigger than Amazon…  

People are Buying Stuff on Amazon Anyway

It comes as no surprise that as the attraction of contactless shopping online has reached new heights, that the contactless eco-system of Amazon has seen some truly mind-blowing sales numbers follow. If you’re not part of the Amazon Associates program, then these figures might well persuade you to sign up today.

According to Statista, 142 million people have Amazon Prime memberships in the U.S. alone, (up from 112 million in December 2019) with the average spend by Amazon Prime members each year around $1400. And that’s just the Prime members! With a customer base so colossal, a product range of around 12 million items, and a tried and trusted e-store, Amazon has carved out an eye-watering 38.0% of all U.S. e-commerce sales.

And a quick glance at Amazon’s eye-popping numbers for the third quarter of 2020 shows just what a staggering impact the pandemic has had on sales. 

Net sales increased by 37% to $96.1 billion in the third quarter of 2020, compared with $70.0 billion in the third quarter of 2019. Just let those numbers settle in for a second…

As an Amazon affiliate, there’s absolutely no reason why you can’t increase the size of your slice of that phenomenally large pie.

If you want to learn more about how to start making money on your blog with Amazon Associates, CLICK HERE.

How AmaLinks Pro® Can Help You Benefit from the Rise in Contactless Shopping.

Those staggering numbers show that customers are buying stuff on Amazon anyway. In their millions! But you might be wondering how this increase in contactless shopping habits through Amazon is really going to benefit you – surely people just go straight to Amazon, browse, check out the star ratings and a couple of reviews, and then make their purchase?

Well, that’s true. Some will. But in the same report where she describes these changing contactless shopping habits as ‘a once-in-a-lifetime digitization moment’, Mary Ellen Coe also states that ‘This year, 77% of U.S. shoppers say they’ll browse for holiday gift ideas online, not in-store.’

So online shoppers are not just buying more online, they’re increasingly doing more of their pre-purchase research online – all music to an affiliate’s ears! Sure, they can check out the reviews on Amazon still, but if they’re looking for an in-depth and unbiased opinion of a product or range of products, and your site caters to that niche, then this is a golden scenario for you.

If your content has done its job and left a reader eager to make that purchase, then this is where AmaLinks Pro®’s sleek and powerful product boxes can really help your Amazon affiliate marketing business to grow…

What Types of Product Links are Available in AmaLinks Pro®?

Seamlessly working with any WordPress theme, as well as page builders like Elementor and Thrive, AmaLinks Pro® provides a stunning suite of product link choices and showcases that are a slick and visually enticing gateway from your blog straight to Amazon.

With AmaLinks Pro® you can choose from four different kinds of links and a comparison table builder. All of them can link directly to your Amazon API with your affiliate tag already embedded.

• Standard text links allow you to seed links directly into your copy
• Image links allow you to build a standard image link to an Amazon product without the need to leave WordPress. Simply pick an image from the selection available from Amazon and insert it into your post.
• Fully customizable CTA button links.
• 7 different types of Showcase Box links allow you to mix things up a little and really show each product off in the best possible way, again all without leaving WordPress. It’s fast, intuitive and the results look beautiful.
• Amazon Product Comparison Tables that are fully responsive

Product Showcase Boxes

Here is an example using our ‘original’ Showcase Box layout…

As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases

CLICK HERE to learn more about AmaLinks Pro® Showcase Boxes and other features

Table Builder

In addition to the beautiful product display boxes, AmaLinks Pro® also has a simple to use but exceptionally powerful table builder feature.

Google recently reported that global searches for “best affordable” grew more than 60% year over year in 2020. Using those two words in some of your post titles would certainly be a good idea. And displaying those products in a classy comparison table allows readers to instantly see the results of their search term. AmaLinks Pro®’s well-thought-out features make creating your stunning tables a fast and simple process – for beginners and experts alike.

Here is an example of a product comparison table created with AmaLinks Pro®…

Image	Brand	Title	Price	Prime	Buy
	Gold Armour	Gold Armour Camping Hammock - Extra Large Double Parachute Hammock (2 Tree Straps 16 Loops,10 ft Included) USA Brand Lightweight Nylon Mens Womens Kids, Camping Accessories Gear (Blue/Gray)		PrimeEligible	Buy on Amazon
Top Top	Wise Owl Outfitters	Wise Owl Outfitters Hammock Camping Double & Single with Tree Straps - USA Based Hammocks Brand Gear, Indoor Outdoor Backpacking Survival & Travel, Portable SO NvyBlu		PrimeEligible	Buy on Amazon
	Kootek	Kootek Camping Hammock Double & Single Portable Hammocks with 2 Tree Straps, Lightweight Nylon Parachute Hammocks for Backpacking, Travel, Beach, Backyard, Patio, Hiking		PrimeEligible	Buy on Amazon
Top	Hanmack	Double Hammocks,Camping Hammock with 2 Tree Straps and 2 Carabiners, Lightweight Nylon Parachute Portable Outdoor Hammock for Backpacking,Beach,Hiking,Garden,Easy Assembly Travel Hammock-Pink Gray		PrimeEligible	Buy on Amazon
Top	Sunyear	Single & Double Camping Hammock with Mosquito/Bug Net, 10ft Hammock Tree Straps and Carabiners, Easy Assembly, Portable Parachute Nylon Hammock for Camping, Backpacking, Survival, Travel & More		PrimeEligible	Buy on Amazon
Top	Castaway Hammocks	Castaway Hammocks 13 ft. Traditional Cotton Rope Hammock with Free Hanging Hardware		Prime	Buy on Amazon
Top	SueSport	SueSport Double Hammock, Desert Stripe		PrimeEligible	Buy on Amazon

Learn how to create beautiful product comparison tables with AmaLinks Pro®

Call-to-Action Buttons

And anywhere else on your pages (like below images), you can add bespoke, fully customizable call-to-action buttons. Compared to all of the features above, the humble CTA button is easily overlooked. However, it’s one of the most impactful conversion features of AmaLinks Pro®…

Why are Customizable CTA Buttons so Important?

The fact that AmaLinks Pro®’s buttons are fully customizable is more important than it perhaps first seems. The design of your website and the style and tone of your written content combine to give the reader a feel for who you, the content creators, are. The look and tone of your blog should help to form a bond with the reader and to generate some trust. 

The last thing you want after having worked so hard to create this bond is for the look of the link-through to Amazon to jar your audience out of this comfortable feeling. If the buttons used within your posts look like they don’t belong to your site, readers could think they’re from an external advertiser, which could easily put them off from clicking through.

If, however, your buttons feel native to the look of your blog, then you’ve made the path for a seamless transition to Amazon as smooth as you possibly can.

AmaLinks Pro®’s customizable features really help you to keep the trust your content has forged between you and your readers by letting you stylize the CTA buttons to match your brand. And by fully customizable, we mean in every way. You can change the color, border, typeface, shadow, and hover effect, and then save unlimited button styles in your database as templates for later use.

Amalinks Pro Tables and Product Showcase Boxes

Research shows that for many kinds of online purchases, customers are as likely to buy via mobile as they are on desktop. As such it’s important that the portal through from your blog to Amazon works well on all screen sizes. If 50% of your readers are going to have a frustrating time reading the product showcase boxes on mobile or tablet, then they’re more likely to get irritated and leave your blog without following your affiliate links through.

Amalinks Pro showcases and comparison tables are fully responsive. You can tailor which information is displayed on the mobile and tablet versions, giving your site a classy and professional interface no matter the screen size of the reader. 

How AmaLinks Pro® can increase YOUR click-through rates

A question often asked is this – ‘Isn’t a plain text link good enough?’ Well-placed text links should definitely be seeded throughout your posts, but text links alone will mean you’re not maximizing your opportunities and potential earnings. Text links should be coupled with other forms of visually compelling links to maximize your chances of conversion. And by ‘other forms’, we don’t just mean image links. Product Showcase Boxes really do make a massive difference to the click-through rate.

To illustrate the point here, the team at AmaLinks Pro® was recently granted access to a customer’s website in order to conduct an A/B test on a post that previously had only text and image links.  

The early results from just the first 14 days? From 629 total page views, the A/B split looked like this:

• 318 page views to the original (control) version of the post (text and image links only) with 6 clicks through to Amazon for a CTR of 1.89%
• 311 page views to the modified (variant) version of the post (using AmaLinks Pro® Showcase Boxes) resulted in 40 clicks to Amazon for a CTR of 12.86%

This means that the AmaLinks Pro® version is outperforming the original version by 581%! 

Here is a screenshot showing these test results…

Red is AmaLinks Pro® variant with Showcase Boxes and black is the original with plain text and image links.

Learn more about AmaLinks Pro®

That’s all well and good, I hear you cry, but what does that actually mean for sales…?

So just how many affiliate link click-throughs does it actually take to generate one sale?

Sadly, this is an impossible question to answer with a specific number as it depends on many different factors. One of the key factors is the reader’s intent.

Transactional Intent

For example, in a post that was titled ‘Best hairdryer for under $50’, the intent of the reader is most likely that they’re looking to buy a hairdryer there and then. This type of search intent is referred to as transactional intent. The searcher has a clearly defined budget and therefore if the great content of that post is relevant to that specific reader, and the transition through to Amazon enticing, then the potential to convert that reader to a buyer is high.

Commercial Investigation

Whereas if the post was a traditional review post, i.e. ‘BaBylissPRO Nano Titanium Hair Dryer – Review’, then the intent is perhaps slightly different. The reader may be looking to buy that specific model of a hairdryer, or they’re more likely to be in the research phase, comparing reviews of different hairdryers in order to make a purchasing choice further down the line. These latter types of searches are known as commercial investigation and the click-through rate is most likely going to be lower than in the transactional intent example above. 

We come back to the quality of the content again here though – if your review of the BaBylissPRO Nano Titanium Hair Dryer helps that person to make an informed decision – even if it’s sometime later – and they decide to buy that particular model, there’s more chance that they will come back to your site to click through on your link in order to say thank you with a commission. And when they do, you want to make it as simple as possible for those readers to click through to make that purchase.

Regardless of the intent of the reader, one thing is for certain – the more readers you can get to click through on your links, the more chance you have of making some money from those affiliate sales. The A/B test results above really do speak for themselves.

Product Showcase Boxes and Comparison Tables coupled with styled CTA buttons will help you to maximize your click-through rate, giving you the best chance to capitalize on the huge increase in customers moving to online shopping. I mean, when you see a product you like – it’s hard to resist clicking one of those CTA’s to learn more!

Contactless Shopping is Here to Stay

Contactless shopping is not just on the rise, it’s here to stay. According to a recent article by Forbes, ‘more consumers have shopped online since physical stores started re-opening than did when stores were still closed.’ The fear factor and long queues both inside and outside stores, offset by the sheer convenience of contactless shopping online, strongly suggest that the already colossal numbers reported by Amazon are only going to increase further.

If you’re putting a ton of effort into creating great content, let AmaLinks Pro® help you to turn that effort into greater commissions.

AmaLinks Pro® comes with a rock-solid 100% money-back guarantee. If you’re unhappy for any reason then simply cancel your subscription within 30 days and we’ll send you a full refund – NO questions asked. Literally, none. Why not A/B test some of your most-viewed posts and see the difference AmaLinks Pro® can make to your affiliate earnings. You really do have nothing to lose and lots to gain…