A New Kind Of Shopping

A New Kind Of Shopping

By: Aaron Newport

Here is an interesting concept from a marketing perspective, as well as a consumer perspective. Millions of consumers are shopping on Amazon daily. In some zip codes you can purchase your produce on Amazon and have it delivered to your door. So it is clear that Amazon is looking to expand into all markets. So why not home services?

Ten years ago, would a consumer ever think to order an electrician, interior designer, or professional cleaning service online? Probably not. These days anyone providing a service should have realized they need to have a website and a strong online presence in order to stay relevant and keep up with their competition. This online surge has made ordering services previously mentioned a relatively painless and convenient thing to do.

Then comes along Angi, Yelp, and any other website or app that allows you to rate and review the service you received (anonymous and unfiltered I might add). These changes that have come along with the digital era we live in today have drastically changed the way all businesses, especially businesses that provide a professional service, acquire new customers and build on their relationships with current customers.

Now here to make the user experience even more painless and convenient is the e-commerce monster, Amazon. So those millions of customers already shopping on Amazon for EVERYTHING else can order home services through Amazon as well. Amazon is truly becoming the one stop shop for today’s consumer. Many believe Amazon Home Services will be replacing Yelp, Angi, etc. Of course these companies are not happy about it and will be doing everything they can to compete with Amazon and may have to revisit their business model to do so.

One very interesting aspect of Amazon Home Services is companies are available on Amazon by an invite-only basis. Any business can apply for an invitation, but Amazon will be filtering through businesses and not allowing any non-reputable business to offer services through their site. They will look at things such as web presence, content marketing, and credibility when deciding whether or not to approve applying businesses.

There are many home services offered through Amazon, and many more queued up on their “coming soon” list. This feature on Amazon is not offered everywhere yet, but it will be. And more and more home services will be added to the list as the request for those services increases.

Is Amazon Home Services the way of the future? We will all know soon enough.