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Amazon WebStore Tips

By Robert John Stevens, CEO of WriteExpress Corporation

Orabrush asked me to upgrade their Magento store, but that would require a techie like myself to maintain. From previous startups I learned it is best to empower the staff so they can make changes to the website, rather than being held hostage by a techie.

Then I discovered Amazon WebStore 2.0 and created these notes from corresponding with Amazon WebStore experts Joe Buchta and Rick Audette, and from my own efforts.


How to create your own Amazon WebStore Theme (Template)

  1. Choose a theme. Click the button Customize This Theme to make as many changes as possible. Cick the Save Changes button when done. You may not be able to make all the changes here so read on.
  2. If you find yourself in the wrong place, select your store in the top, left drop-down box (i.e., YourStore.hostedbywebstore.com)
  3. Click the down arrow button at the top center menu SHOW Amazon Seller Central Navigation
  4. Click Store Design, Publish and follow the remaining steps to publish your store
  5. From the Amazon Web Store home page, click to launch your store
  6. Set up a local development environment for MUCH faster CSS editing
    • Install and run a local Apache and PHP environment. I recommend using WAMP, XAMP, MAMP or LAMP depending on your operating system and preference.
    • Browse to your published store (do not use the preview option because it will contain relative CSS path). Save the main HTML page locally. Becaue I am using WAMP, I saved my page to my c:\wamp\www folder.
    • Do all your overrides in the product_override.css file or upload your own files. All the other files are symbolic links and you could have problems downstream.
    • Save the product_override.css file locally
    • Edit your local main page and change the path to the product_override.css file to point to your local copy
    • Launch your page locally in Apache. Edit in FireFox and use FireBug to discover the CSS to override in the product_override.css file
    • Upload your modified product_override.css file—Click STORE DESIGN File Library >Site Files > Theme Files > YOUR THEME > CSS and follow the remaining upload steps

Amazon WebStore Forums

Amazon WebStore Tips and Gotchas

Note: Background-colored clarifications are from Joe Buchta at Amazon.com

  • After choosing a theme, always modify your own version of page_overrides.css because Webstore mangles relative path and file names, so you'll always modify and upload your local version. However, if you modify the theme itself through menus, you may have to merge in their changes.
  • I don't see a solution for preloading images for hover buttons. The problem is that the system shows me relative paths and file names but the processed CSS mangles their names, but the Javascript does not. So, if I preload images in JS and access them with CSS, I have different path and file names..
  • Webstore lets you stage your website via a sandbox
  • Name your logo, logo,png and make it 375x50 pixels. You can go larger but you may need to do custom CSS work. Paint.net or Gimp are free tools to create your logo.
  • To see the stacked editing widgets, click the Show Slots button
  • To move a widget, select the widget, click the move button and click to paste it into a different slot
  • To add our own CSS or Javascript, click the Page Properties link on the top of the website > CSS and Script Links > Add button
  • To custom a webpage, first click Merchandising & Layout
  • WebStore does NOT support mobile; however, Magento Go does
    We can support Spanish characters but you are correct about the checkout process. The UK is here: http://webstore.amazon.co.uk/
  • Regarding extensions, third parites may support Seller Central but not WebStore
    This is true but support is not for Seller Central since it is a front-end portal. Support is for Marketplace Web Services (http://developer.amazonservices.com). All the API calls would be the same regardless of products but Webstore offers expanded fields over the Selling on Amazon reports. With this in mind someone could implement a solution using only a fraction of the available fields. Depending on the type of solution this may or may not matter.
  • WebStore only supports US currency and US characters--the checkout process will be english. International will be late 2012.
  • WebStore does have support for the UK but you'd have to sign up for the UK version
  • Upsell/cross sells can be done with the product accessories widget
    -- This is just one option. Here are others: Customers or bought also bought, Customers who viewed also viewed, customers who bought also viewed, New Releases, Recent Product Views, Product Widget (All of these types of widgets can be used in this regard and function using all the Amazon algorithms) -- We also offered product collections (bundles) -- We also expose an front API where Sellers can build their own unique solutions. For example this seller build a kitting feature: http://www.officialsports.com/Starter-Kits/b/3258497011?ie=UTF8&title=Starter%20Kits
  • WebStore does not support subscriptions but I can use Amazon Simple Pay
    This depends on the viewpoint. A better statement would be that Webstore does not support mobile optimized websites (m.foobar.com) out of the box, Magento Go does.—You can load a webstore in any mobile browser, or use one of the options described in later in your post.

Does Amazon WebStore Support Mobile?

At this time (December 2011) it does not. Here the some options and notes:

  • You could design a WebStore and then design a mobile website using CSS. Without a template, since there are no mobile WebStore templates at this time, you'd spend a lot of time programming in CSS to make it mobile friendly.
  • Internally, at Amazon, custom templating comes with its own language. There is a JSP program used by Amazon.
  • Timex.com's mobile website uses a technology by Mobilecardcast.com but you can't do secure checkout
    -- "can't do a secure checkout" is not a limitation of Webstore, its a limitation of the MobileCardCast.com technology. One cannot convert a secure page on the fly because of the security. Today, you can view all our pages on mobile (not optimized) and checkout. Timex could also include the mobile version of CBA for checkout but they did not.
  • WebStore doesn't allow for PayPal or Google Checkout because they make their money on a revenue share
  • Amazon payments supports fraud collection
    We actually protect customers from fraud utilizing our fraud prevention tools. If we determine someone is fraudulent and we notified the seller to ship the item then we will reimburse the seller for the item if it is determined that fraud was involved. Fraud collection implies that we will collect in the event of fraud. We go above and beyond Paypal, Google, or anyone else in that we put our money where our mouth is for the same rate that others charge to collect payment.
  • You could do a version of the website using Mobile Checkout

Amazon WebStore Tutorials

Amazon WebStore Solution Providers (For custom templates and more)


Copyright © 2011 Robert Stevens. All rights reserved.

This article was commenced on December 16, 2011. Last update: December 20, 2011.


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