Amazon releases AStore Beta for Affiliates

[mandy]

Dear Amazon Associate,

As a valued member of the Amazon Associates program, we would like to introduce to you our newest product – “aStore by Amazon.” aStore vastly expands on our current link type offerings by giving you the ability to build a dedicated shopping area that can be embedded within, or linked to from, your website. Visit our demo store to see an example of a stand-alone store.

Build your own professional online store featuring Amazon.com products in minutes with no programming skills required. Because aStore is a dedicated shopping area for your site, it is a great complimentary product for your existing Amazon product links. Visitors to your site get a professional shopping experience through your unique selection of products and categories and the features of Amazon.com you have chosen including Customer Reviews, Listmania, and more. The checkout process is completed through Amazon.com.

Our beta is now available. Please visit Associates Central today to build your aStore! As you experiment with the tool we would love to hear your feedback, good and bad. Just send an email to associates-beta@amazon.com with your comments.

While you're visiting Associates Central, check out the new Omakase Beta link type. Omakase combines flexible display options with links that automatically feature products that visitors to the page are most likely to buy based on what the Associate has been successful with in the past, what that user has been interested in, and the content of the site. Omakase - leave it up to us!

Thank you for your continued support of the Amazon Associates Program!

Sincerely,

The Amazon Associates Team

Review of Amazon's AStore:

First, this is the right kind of idea. Everyone has something they want to recommend to others, and a lot of folks want to find ways to display their Amazon Wish List without looking too much like they are addicted to the idea of maintaining a permanent wedding registry—it's so unseemly to always be telling people what you want from them. The system was easy to understand and the product, a multi-page store with a front door consisting of feature products to which I was able to add my own descriptions, much more inviting than the typical list of Amazon links a blogger or Web site might display.

Here's what I really want, however: Connect my Amazon customer information to my Associates tools. After all, I have purchased hundreds of items, rated several thousand and indicated that I own much else that I never purchased from Amazon but shared in order to get interesting suggestions.  LibraryThing, a kind of public bookshelf with social networking built in that was written up recently in The Wall Street Journal, should be the model for this effort. As Alex Barnett put it, what's cool about LibraryThing is that after you put your data in you can get it back out.

Amazon needs to connect me to all the work I have done as a customer so that I can apply it to the aStore I create...

full article: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ratcliffe/?p=172

[mandy]

Another review of Amazon's new aStores:

WEB RETAIL giant Amazon.com quietly introduced last week a new feature to its associates programme, dubbed "aStores". We tested it and found it promising, if still a bit limited.

Back in September, 1999, the Amazonian retailer based in Washington state launched "zShops" allowing for the first time third party sellers to list their goods on the site. This time, aStore adds a new twist, allowing you to set up your own "virtual front end" to Amazon.com with no need to have any merchandise of your own, and offer web visitors a subset of products from Amazon's vast catalogue, under your own "aStore" name and visual design...

full article: http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=34027

[regic]

Upcoming enhancements to aStores announced:

The Amazon Associates team has received a ton of great feedback from the Associates community on what you like about the aStore Beta and how it can be improved. As an aStore Beta participant we would like to provide you a sneak peek at some of what the future holds.

The next release of aStore (currently slated for a late November release) will allow Associates to:

    * Build and maintain multiple aStores using a single Associate ID
    * Specify products to feature on Category and Sub-Category pages
    * Create multiple instances of individual categories and sub-categories (e.g. Beatles Music and Rolling Stones Music)
    * Feature up to 54 products on the front page of your store rather than the current limit of nine
    * Write longer custom product descriptions
    * Better control the layout and design for use in frames by providing the capability to remove the store header and category navigation

The list above is not all-inclusive as many other minor changes will be made to improve both the Associate and customer experiences. Please continue to send your feedback to associates-beta@amazon.com as we continue to look for ideas to incorporate into future releases.

We sincerely thank you all for the input and feedback you have provided during the first month of the aStore Beta, and we look forward to working together to make the product a continued success!