[FREE Guide] Amazon Clone: A Journey to Starting a Successful eCommerce Business

https://www.biztechcs.com/blog/amazon-clone-website/

What do you think of when I say ‘eCommerce’?

Shopping, Convenience, or maybe Profits?

However, from a business perspective, it is much more than a website selling things. Market giant Amazon — is an eCommerce marketplace that does not depend on a single vendor, or manufacturer. It is an entire eCommerce ecosystem as it not only connects buyers and sellers but also provides an open platform to let you sell your products.

So if you’re an entrepreneur, or a business owner looking to start their own eCommerce journey like Amazon,  you’re at the right spot.

This article entirely covers all the aspects of Amazon, from its history to business model, features, technical stack, and the secrets that made Amazon the world’s largest eCommerce hub and how you can achieve that with Amazon clone.

Amazon and it’s Business Model

Before reaching our hands on the Amazon clone, let’s get our concepts clear about what Amazon is?

A Trip to Amazon Lane

Amazon is a technology company that focuses on eCommerce, cloud computing, digital streaming, and AI. Started as a simple online bookstore, today it’s the world’s largest arena of online commercial dealings. More than 197 million users use Amazon every month. That’s more than the total population of Russia. When we look at the net worth, it was estimated at $468 million in 1997 and is currently worth $460 billion.

This million to billion reach is startling, isn’t it?

But as ‘Rome was not built in a day’, the journey from Seattle to the globe took Jeff Bezos 25 years.

Let’s take a peek at the trajectory of the largest eCommerce giant of the future.

Business Model

The success mantra of Amazon’s success story is the services it offers. It has a hybrid business model and generates revenue through a variety of methods, such as:

• Commission

For every item sold on Amazon, the seller pays a commission to Amazon. The commission varies based on the category of products, sellers, fulfillment channels (shipping and delivery options). This monetization model is famous and is also used by many booking platforms like Uber, Booking.com, Airbnb.

• Subscription

Amazon introduced a subscription model using Amazon Prime and Amazon Prime Now, which enables customers to get their deliveries fast and before the standard delivery date. By paying an annual subscription fee, customers can avail of all the benefits of digital video streaming, unlimited photo storage, 2 days to 2 hours delivery, and more.

You might think that $99/year with free delivery is a little amount for the business, however, the order purchase numbers could turn out to be hundreds and thousands in a year.

• Flat rate

Sellers can pay a fixed amount for each product purchased or a monthly fee. Amazon’s pay per sale rate is $0.99, while the monthly rate is $39.99.

• Affiliate

Amazon provides an Amazon Associate Affiliate program that allows website owners and bloggers to earn up to 10% of referral fees while referring Amazon and its product on their site.

These are the four foundations of Amazon’s sustainability.

Tip: If you’re just starting off, go for an individual model. You can start with a commission-based business model if you’re working with third-party vendors and sellers. It will be competitive and easy to report sales exclusively on a product-based basis.

After selecting a business model for your Amazon web clone, let’s understand the process of the Amazon clone script.

How Amazon Clone Works

Amazon is a multi-vendor marketplace, and its entire workflow is split into two parts.

Customer Workflow

• Customers login/registers on the website/app using their details.
• Browse through the products through different categories, applying advanced filters such as 4 star and above ratings, price, size, etc.
• On finding a suitable product, the customer selects the product and orders it by paying online or choosing to pay on delivery.
• The order is delivered to the customer within 2-5 days.

Vendor and Sellers Workflow

Registration Flow:

• Vendors/Sellers registers for the account. On registering, they upload the products and other details on the Amazon clone marketplace. 
• The admin authenticates the products and approves it.
• Only after approval, the products are listed on the site and customers can start placing orders.

Vendor/Seller Order Flow: 

• When a customer places an order, the order would be automatically received by the seller.
• Seller will then check the availability of the stock and if it’s out of stock they will update the status using the catalog feature. 
• If the product is available, the seller can then choose to ship the order on their own or ask for your shipping services. If self-delivery, then they pack the orders, ship it to the buyer’s address by paying the carrier charges. For fulfillment by you, the order would be picked from the seller location and then delivered to the customer.
• After shipping and delivering the order, the shipment is confirmed and the defined amount is transferred to the seller account.

That sounds simple? But to get this workflow implemented, you might need to consult experienced hands, an ecommerce development company that knows different languages, frameworks, and all the advanced technological tools.

Features of Amazon Clone Marketplace

Your Amazon clone should have all the basic features of an eCommerce store such as product listing, advanced search, order management, cart and wishlist, shipping and delivery, payment options, dispute and returns, ratings and review, contact us/customer support, CMS, CRM, inventory management, admin panel, etc.

Nevertheless, to make it profitable, make sure you have the factors and features listed below embedded into your Amazon Clone marketplace.

Must-have Features in Amazon Clone

• User-friendly website

Statistics claim that 75% of the website’s reputation comes from its user interface and usability. When you’re designing your Amazon web clone, make sure the website covers all the design elements, has advanced search and sorting, and creates a great user interface. Not to be skipped, the page load time and responsiveness. Both of these are directly proportional to user loyalty and satisfaction.

• Wide range of products

Providing a wide selection in the store is the greatest factor in business growth as customers won’t have to hunt for alternative sites when searching for a specific category. So, how can you do it? By partnering with multiple vendors and sellers, holding the stock inline, and listing it in your Amazon website clone.

• Supply chain management

Ensure fast and trouble-free delivery. When you have a budget to spend, make sure to spend in warehouses where you can store the product and ship it later based on the orders.

Or you can expand your network of suppliers so that customers can receive products quickly without any regional problems, and you can manage your business without a warehouse.

• Shipping and Delivery options

Provide multiple shipping options, such as basic, standard, premium, so that customers in urgent need can make use of the benefits and receive orders on time. It would reduce cart abandonment. Flexible delivery options with delivery times are what customers love the most. Allow them to select the delivery method by offering all these choices as delivery between 9:00 am- 2:00 pm, 2:00 pm – 7:00 pm.

• Convenient Payment

The easiest way to retain customers is by offering multiple payment options. Don’t just restrict yourself to incorporating cashless transaction methods, offer cash on delivery options, EMI to consumers on a tight budget, pay later, discounts and coupons, etc.

Make sure that payment methods are available to every customer, not just your premium members.

• Paid Subscriptions

Let your customers avail the benefits of a free and quick delivery, premium membership, and more with different subscription models.

• Personalized Recommendations

Provide customers with a customized shopping experience. With this feature, you can recommend to your customers the products and services that they would be interested in based on their past purchases, their specific interests, their purchasing behavior and you can even recommend them to other customers with the same details that they are likely to purchase.

You can also offer personalized recommendations by combining CRM, algorithms, syncing all search requests, customer history, previous purchases, needed items, and other related data.

• Customer Support

Customer support plays a key role in the eCommerce industry. If a customer has trouble purchasing or returning a product or other issues and concerns, customer service will help them figure out their problems, report issues, and act on them.

• Mobile App

Customers aged 18-25 spend more than 90 hours a month on mobile phones. In addition, mobile device downloads are forecast to hit 258 billion by 2022. Hence, there’s no better time to launch a mobile app than now, as it will also increase sales retention and drive.

Read more: Top Web App Ideas to Make Money

Advanced Features of Amazon Clone

As you will be selling products and services that are currently being offered by Amazon and several other businesses, your Amazon clone needs to have some X-factor that keeps your customers engaged to your site.

Below are some innovative features of Amazon clone that will help you stand firm against your competitors.

• AR and VR

When buying a product, the first thing each of us can do is think of it, how it would look on that particular person or place. Okay, this has been made possible with augmented reality and virtual reality technologies.

You can give your customers a real-life product test by implementing AR and VR into your Amazon clone. Say, if you want to know how a home decor item would look like in your home space, using AR, you can preview the exact look of that product in your home space.

Many big businesses, such as Coca Cola, Jaguar, are using it to improve consumer service and purchasing decisions. IKEA also released an AR app called Place, which allows users to install furniture in their homes and preview them before making a final purchase.

• Chatbots

Integrate chatbots in your Amazon website clone to manage all the mundane tasks and basic customer conversations. Get rid of those old school manual chats and long phone calls by integrating Amazon’s Alexa like chatbots that can communicate and assist the customers in the best possible way.

This would not only benefit the management but would also prove cost-effective as the expenses invested in expanding the customer support team could be minimized.

• Voice Search

Voice search is more than a search feature. In the age of frustrating typers, it will help customers search for a product, order, add shipping information, payment, etc. when working on something else.

• Video Product Displays

Add product videos to increase customer satisfaction. With product videos, you can show customers the benefits and features of the product. This will also give them a glimpse of the product.

And if the customer has some doubts when purchasing or is confused about features and functions, the video display will explain everything in a clear way.

How to Develop Amazon Website Clone

Every venture’s success demands a wider audience. To create your Amazon Clone marketplace, start by studying customer demand, then decide on the UVP, list the technical stack, and partner with the right software and mobile device development business.

Target Audience

Researching customer demand for a marketplace like Amazon based on various variables will take too much time individually. The best approach is to segment the target audience into smaller sections, such as geographic, demographic, behavioral, and psychographic.

Geographic segmentation:

• Regions covered such as countries, cities, etc.
• Density: rural and urban area covered

Demographic segmentation:

• Age group: 25 to 40 years mostly
• People that access the internet
• Gender: male, female, and others
• Status: single, married, unmarried, separated, etc.
• Occupation: student, working professional, retired

Behavioral segmentation:

• Loyalty: hardcore loyal, softcore loyal, switchers
• Benefit: quality products, competitive rates, convenient shipping and delivery
• Personality: easy-going, determined, ambitious, creative
• User status: guest user, new member, regular, prime user

Psychographic segmentation:

• Social class: working class, middle or upper class
• Lifestyle: explorer, struggler, reformer, aspirer, innovator, mainframe

On the basis of this segmentation, you can create your buyer’s persona as it would help you cover a wider audience.

Technical Stack of Amazon Clone

Once everything is ready, it is time to develop your Amazon clone.

You’re going to have to look after:
Frontend:

• Website design
• Ecommerce platforms (Magento, Odoo, Woocommerce, Shopify)
• Programming languages 
• 3rd party API integrations: Video, Map, Location detector, search engine, email, notifications, call system, AR and VR, chatbots, payment.

Backend:

• Separate login portals (customer, vendor, admin)
• Admin dashboard
• Database: MySql
• Data syncing. Example: Xero API
• CMS, CRM, Order, Inventory, Invoice, Sales management modules.

However, this is just a rough concept. There are various small essential components that only a developer can explain to you well as per your requirements.

How to attract customers to your Amazon website clone

If you had this question before Amazon came into being, it would have been a huge obstacle. Today, though, you can analyze the major companies like Amazon, eBay, Instacart, Etsy, and others and look for innovative things they’re using to draw customer interest. Based on these giants’ study, you can determine the marketing campaigns that work for you. But that would be the basic and for the short term. You will have to look for your creative ideas too.

Some of the best ways to attract customers to your Amazon clone are: 

• User experience

Customers notice the overall buying process and how it made them feel. If they find it difficult to search the products, and the ordering process lengthy with unnecessary clicks and redirects, they are most likely to abandon your website. So provide a good user interface, sophisticated web design, make sure that customers can buy the products with a few clicks, with smooth shipping and delivery.

Personalized recommendation, AR and VR, voice search would help you enhance the customer experience.

• Availability

Make sure your products are in stock. If they are out of stock, avoid the practice of reminding customers about their shortage after the order has been put. Having to leave the site several times with ‘out of stock’ options gives customers a negative impression and, next time, they are more likely to select your rival as their choice.

• Pricing

Low pricing gives your business a competitive edge. Customers tend to buy from the site that provides the product at affordable rates.

• Deals and Offers

Provide customers with different deals and offers, festival discounts, membership sales. Tell your customers about the rewards you provide through various channels such as emails, notifications, newsletters, social media, word of mouth, pamphlets, sponsored ads.

Wrapping Up… 

Building a website like Amazon will come with its own challenges and approaches after all it’s about the development of a multi-vendor marketplace.

However, with the information listed above and the right eCommerce development company, you can develop your customized Amazon website clone.

A little about us…

We’ve got our hands on eCommerce development, app development, and other software development technologies. Biztech team has developed a range of specialized eCommerce stores, enterprise-based solutions, and has all the expertise and skills needed to build your Amazon clone.

Need any help with the Amazon website clone?