Amazon partners with food-focused websites on shoppable recipes

Amazon has struck a partnership with Fexy Media – owner of such digital food properties as Simply Recipes, Roadfood, Serious Eats, The Food Lab and Daily Parent – on shoppable recipes that can be ordered via the Amazon Prime subscription service.

The new service allows members of the Seattle-based e-commerce company’s Prime service to select – through Prime Now, which offers tens of thousands of items for delivery within one or two hours – brand-sponsored recipes on Simply Recipes' and Serious Recipes’ sites, or via PrimeNow.com or the Prime Now app. They then can click a “Buy on Prime Now” button on the recipe pages, add ingredients to their virtual cart and receive them at their doorstep via two-hour delivery.

Brands can participate with sponsored recipes or ingredients, integrated with Simply Recipes' and Serious Eats’ sites. An additional feature called “You May Also Need” suggests complementary products. Brands can pair product and recipe integrations with site takeovers, custom video, curated content, rich media and native executions on the site.

“We are thrilled to be working with Prime Now – it means millions of home cooks who rely on our sites to get dinner on the table will be able to do that in a very efficient new way,” said Cliff Sharples, co-founder and CEO of Seattle-based Fexy Media. “This is an innovative advertising opportunity that combines impactful brand integration with useful functionality for our community, ultimately enhancing the customer experience. We could not be more pleased to offer this.”

Connecting product to consumer
As food retailers seek to make online ordering more attractive, some are trying to optimize the content on their e-commerce sites to make it more captivating – and connect the product to the consumer more directly. Ken Yontz, global VP of transformation management at Chicago-based product information network 1WorldSync, noted that two important types of content to include on an e-commerce site are consumer connection – including things from recipes and suggested plate presentations to ideas from food bloggers and other outside sources – and easy-purchase features to streamline digital shopping carts and provide clear delivery and pickup options.

“Connecting the product to the consumer is extremely important because it takes the product off the shelf and puts it onto their table,” Yontz said.

Therefore, even though combining such content as recipes and blog posts with transactional opportunities has always been a pain point for grocers, it’s more critical than ever to crack the code in this space. Chris Bryson, founder and CEO of Toronto-based e-commerce platform provider Unata, said grocers have two completely different websites for their content and their e-commerce, offering no way to connect the two and, therefore, no way to translate inspiration into sales.

“Finding ways to integrate content and commerce with ‘add-to-cart’ buttons on recipes, other editorial pages and blog posts, or mouth-watering meal imagery in the catalog, is key to closing the gap between inspiring food content and the point of purchase – and creating numerous additional transaction opportunities,” he said.

This article originally appeared at ProgressiveGrocer.com