Amazon shuts down Prime Now business! Sellers can share new traffic

Amazon recently announced to foreign media that it will shut down the current Prime Now platform in June and guide users who use the platform to purchase groceries and other products to go to the Amazon Mall website and APP to purchase.

Prime Now is a shopping platform launched by Amazon in 2015. It is independent of Amazon Mall. Prime members within the service range can purchase groceries, daily necessities, electronic products, etc. on this platform. After placing an order , they can receive the product within just one hour (paying an additional shipping fee of $7.99). If they are not in a hurry, they can also choose the free two-hour delivery service. This service can deliver from 6 am to 24 pm, covering more than 18,000 categories such as food, books, toys, daily necessities, etc.

This feature was very popular around 2016 and 2017. During the holidays, in order to get the required products as quickly as possible, the frequency of use of Prime Now increased dramatically. Amazon even set up dedicated warehouses for the Prime Now program in various places . The business scope has also expanded to more than 5,000 cities in the United States, and even to overseas markets such as the United Kingdom and Japan.

However, this service suffered a major blow during the COVID-19 pandemic last year. The platform positioning of daily necessities + 2-hour express delivery should have allowed Prime Now to take off quickly during the pandemic, but Amazon seriously underestimated the demand during the pandemic, causing Prime Now's cargo volume to plummet. In addition, the 2-hour express delivery requires too much delivery capacity. Amazon was even forced to suspend Prime Now orders in May last year , and did not resume delivery until the end of the year.

Moreover, Amazon's offline grocery sales and delivery networks are rather chaotic. Prime Now sometimes has to deliver products to Whole Foods Market, another Amazon business. Last year, it also set up its own Amazon Fresh chain of stores. The overall offline fast delivery logic is unclear.

Therefore, the closure of Prime Now also indicates that Amazon will make major changes to its fast delivery business of daily necessities, but the specific content of the changes has not yet been disclosed.

Prime Now has currently discontinued its dedicated apps and websites in India, Japan, and Singapore, leaving only the UK and the US to operate Prime Now. Every time a user opens the app or website, a pop-up window will be displayed to redirect the customer to the Amazon store .

Amazon said it will remove Prime Now-related services and websites worldwide by the end of this year. It is currently working to guide customers to shop on the main Amazon website, and provide 2-hour express delivery service for customers who purchase eligible groceries and daily necessities on the main website. The original Prime Now exclusive delivery network will be incorporated into the existing FBA delivery network.

At the same time, the merchants and stores that have joined Prime Now will be transferred to the Amazon Mall , and customers who are accustomed to 2-hour delivery can still purchase products from these stores on the main site.

This means that the US site will see an influx of additional traffic in the near future, especially in categories such as food, books, toys, daily necessities, etc. Many customers who rely on the Prime Now platform will be guided to shop on the main site, which will also bring an additional wave of long-term traffic to the sellers on our platform.

Moreover, in the post-epidemic era, online shopping for groceries and daily necessities has become a consumption habit of Americans. These categories will continue to be popular in the future, so sellers who have plans to develop new products may wish to take a look at more products in these categories.