Prime Day 2024 was the biggest one ever. It was worth $14B. For context, that’s the same as the cost of the previous US presidential election, or every iPhone made in India in a year. It’s also 11% higher than the total value of sales made on Prime Day 2023.
In this article we’ll look at Prime Day 2024 from the sellers’ perspective. We’ll explore how the event’s affected marketplace growth, what the hot-ticket items were this year, how consumer behavior was affected, and much more. Let’s dive in.
How has Amazon grown off the back of Prime Day?
According to Amazon’s official press release about Prime Day, a record-breaking number of customers signed up for Prime in the 3 weeks leading up to Prime Day, with millions of new members worldwide. While figures for 2024 won’t be released until the end of the year, there were 230M Prime members in 2023.
Amazon’s already the largest online marketplace, and it just keeps growing. Along with a surge in buyers, more and more sellers are present on Amazon. Independent sellers—most of which are small and medium-sized businesses—sold more than 200M items during the Prime Day event.
As of Q1 2024, 61% of products sold on the platform were sold by third-party sellers, an increase from 55% in Q1 2023.
With that rise, competition among sellers has grown fierce. To stay competitive, many sellers are leveraging advanced repricing technology to make sure they’re winning the Buy Box while protecting their profits.
What sold the most on Prime Day 2024?
While many bestsellers came from kitchen table brands, Amazon revealed that small business deals were also extremely popular, calling out brands like TruSkin, ALOHA, Blueland, and Native Pet.
Adobe, via Reuters, also reported a major uptick in back to school sales—thanks to, in large part, the seasonality of the Prime Day dates. Sales of items in this category grew 210% during the first half of Prime Day 2024.
Other product types that saw an uptick year over year included:
- Televisions (up 84%)
- Fitness trackers (up 81%)
- Tablets (up 71%)
- E-readers (up 65%) and
- Computers (up 64%)
Overall, in the Kitchen & Dining category, Stanley cups and InstantPots made the bestseller list during Prime Day for Amazon.com. In Electronics, Fire Sticks and AirPods topped the charts. In Grocery, energy and protein drinks held the #1 and #2 slots. In Toys & Games, folks were buying Lego Star Wars X-Wing Fighters.
Though the force may not be strong in AirPods, all these products, and their listings, do have a few things in common. We cover these in-depth in another article about what sells well on Amazon but, in summary:
- All of the bestsellers have optimized listings
- They all use a lot of images
- The sellers answer plenty of questions
- They have a high number of positive reviews
By emulating these 4 tactics in your own Amazon listings, you can take a cut of the success of Prime Day bestsellers for yourself.
What did we learn about buyer behavior on Prime Day 2024?
Beyond what individuals bought on Prime Day 2024, it’s important that sellers pay attention to consumer sentiment off the back of it. Several Reddit threads about Prime Day popped up throughout the event, and not all of them were celebratory.
Some users bemoaned Prime Days gone by. Others defended Prime Day, thanking Amazon for the opportunity the event offers.
What’s particularly interesting is the number of commenters who recommend software that helps them monitor price changes to make sure they’re truly getting the best deals. For the skeptical, per data crunched by Salesforce, there was a genuine average discount across all products, and it stood at an impressive 25%.
While the negativity on social media may initially leave sellers feeling a little rattled, data from Numerator shows that 93% of consumers were somewhat, very or extremely satisfied by the Prime Day deals on offer.
However, to keep consumer sentiment positive, it’s more important than ever that Amazon sellers pay close attention to their pricing. Making sure they stay competitive based on current market prices is the first step.
But, it’s equally important that sellers do so in a way that’s scalable across their whole product range, and that makes sure they’re staying profitable when selling at lower prices.
Automatic repricing is one popular solution you can add to your arsenal as you’re regrouping post-Prime Day and preparing for the next.
What makes sellers successful on Prime Day?
Third-party sellers outpaced Amazon’s retail business this Prime day, but what led to that success? Beyond optimizing listings in the traditional way, Amazon offers sellers a variety of features to help them sell more on Prime Day in particular.
Speaking to CSA, Natalie Angelillo, director of seller external relations at Amazon said, “Deal recommendations are presented to sellers in the Seller Central hub, where they have the ability to edit and tailor their deal, coupon, and discount attributes in preparation for the event.”
We’ve broken down a few specific ways sellers used these recommendations and more to hit record sales on Prime Day:
They leverage different offer types
Sellers can run Lightning Deals that last the duration of Prime Day week, however, for this lucrative window, you can expect to pay more for the prime (no pun intended) product real estate. Jungle Scout, for example, had to pay more than double.
Prime Exclusive Discounts are also a popular tool for the best performing sellers on Amazon. Typically these can be set up for the entire Prime Day week and sellers can sign up to be notified about submission deadlines.
By adding these two discount types to the existing arsenal of Amazon discount tools— including coupons, buy-one-get-one-free, or classic percentage discounts—Amazon sellers can stay competitive, even on the busiest business days of the year.
They optimize their advertising
Small businesses attributed 30% of their Amazon sales to ads they ran on the platform. In their official advertising guidelines, Amazon’s main tip for advertising is to adjust your campaigns regularly.
And, it’s never more important to optimize than just before Prime Day. Ad spend during Prime Day is often four to five times more than the daily average.
One option to help manage your ads is by using Amazon’s own sponsored ad solutions. These use Amazon’s first-party signals and machine learning to make faster and accurate optimizations and recommendations when you set up and launch your campaigns, taking some of the heavy lifting out.
However, there are a couple of things to pay particular attention to when reviewing your campaigns. Revise the keywords you include in your listings. You should include both your brand name and your product name.
Check in on your bidding strategies too. Look into your historic performance, and consider whether or not you need to switch methods. If you’ve been running with dynamic bids and you’re not happy with the ROI, consider assigning some of your budget to fixed bids, or rule-based bidding as well.
How can you sell more effectively after Prime Day?
Based on the last few years’ trends, we’re likely to see another Prime Day come October, so it’s time to get geared up for the second iteration. Reflecting on what makes these events so successful will always help you set yourself up for continued success.
For an added edge, focusing on what makes you stand out on the crowded marketplace is the biggest piece of advice we can offer.
As we’ve said, Amazon’s more lucrative than ever, but buyers are more particular than ever too. Join the global sellers using Repricer to manage 20 billion pricing changes every month and guarantee you’re making the most of the world’s #1 marketplace.
