How to use Brand Analytics to grow your Amazon Business?

To make smart decisions when it comes to developing a brand on Amazon, we need data. We need to understand the sales opportunity and what the customer wants. While there are software solutions out there that help us gauge the potential size of the market and Seller Central reports to help us understand the sales demand and traffic at product level, the data lacks information about customer behavior. Brands need to know how the customer interacts with their products throughout their shopping journey from consideration all the way to purchase.

Amazon has a kingdom of data and is known for sharing very little. Although, they are starting to realize that by sharing more data they are helping businesses grow, which in turn benefits the customer and Amazon. As a result, Amazon has now extended the reports available to brands to help them understand customer behavior when interacting with their products.

Amazon Brand Analytics

These consumer behavior reports sit within a dashboard called Brand Analytics. They are only available to brand owners, which means the brand must have a registered trademark and be enrolled in the Brand Registry to unlock this feature. Brand Analytics can only be found within Seller Central under Business Reports. If you are vendor, you will find similar reports available in Amazon Retail Analytics Premium (ARAP).

Currently four reports are available, but my guess is that this will expand over time. These reports provide valuable insights into customer search, basket analysis, item comparisons, alternative purchases and demographics. Below, I have provided details on each of these reports:

Amazon Search Terms

While there are lots of third-party software solutions out there that provide insights into customer searches and search volume, the Amazon search term reports brings an additional piece of data. Based on certain keywords and ASINs, you get to see the top 3 most clicked items for that search term, their click share percentage and conversion share percentage during a certain period of time.

This data can help you build out and strengthen your advertising campaigns. It is a great way to understand the competition and see which products are dominating the search results for certain keywords. You can also review the results of any optimization work carried out to see if your products appear in the top 3 for specific search terms and if so understand their click share and conversion. Although, only having visibility of the top 3 is quite limited given the amount of selection on Amazon.

One thing the report doesn’t provide is search volume data for those search terms. Instead, it provides the ranking for that keyword based on search frequency. However, with a number of third-party software solutions available, sellers already have access to an estimated search volume for keywords.

Market Basket Analysis

Understand what products are most frequently purchased with your products. These reports highlight the top 3 most purchased items alongside your products. It is a great way to understand what items complement certain products in the range.

It may be that the most frequently purchased items are also from your brand, highlighting you are already cross-selling across a range of products and may have some degree of brand loyalty. If the products purchased with your product are from a competitor and are products that you do have in your range, it may highlight that you need to improve on cross-selling and bundling. It might also indicate an issue with the other items, for example the price is too high or the product pages have not been optimized. If you don’t sell the items being purchased with your products, you can then identify new products you could potentially develop and add to your portfolio.

Item Comparison and Alternate Purchase Behavior

When customers are viewing your products, it's helpful to understand what items they are comparing your products with or may end up purchasing instead of yours. These reports highlight the top 3 most compared items and the top 3 most purchased items as an alternative to your product.

These reports provide a great insight into your competition. You can then take this data and review the other products to understand why customers are comparing and buying alternate products. It may be that your listings are not as strong, you have a lower review rating or have a higher retail price point. You can then use your findings to strengthen your product listing and offering.

Demographics

Understand more about your customer; their age, household income, education, gender and marital status. While a lot of these demographics will fit into the Amazon customer, this can still provide you a good insight into the type of customer you are attracting on Amazon.

It will help you ensure your marketing strategy connects with the right customer. It may be that your imagery focuses more heavily on the younger male under 34 years for a sports supplement product but actually a slightly older female under 44 years is purchasing the product more. By adjusting your marketing strategy you might be able to improve conversions. It may also raise the question of why your product is not appealing to the target market you are focusing on.

Fine tune your Marketing Strategy

With this additional data available to brands, you can make more informed strategic decisions. By developing the right marketing strategy in the current competitive landscape, you are selling in, will help you grow your business further on Amazon and beyond.

Source - ecomengine

How to become Buy Box Eligible?

Your average Amazon marketplace customer will never think about the Buy Box one way or another and may never even hear the term in their life. But seasoned Amazon marketplace sellers know all about how powerful the Buy Box is. eCommerce experts believe the Buy Box accounts for a significant percentage of all Amazon sales. If you’re a relatively new Amazon vendor, one of the first things you need to figure out is how to become Buy Box eligible.

Why the Buy Box is important?

Every product listing on Amazon marketplace has a box on the right side of the screen that includes: Pricing information, Prime eligibility, Shipping information, Product availability, “Add to cart” and “Buy Now” buttons, and Seller name. If you sell any products that other vendors on the platform also sell, all of you will be competing to be the seller in that Buy Box each time a customer clicks on the product.

Most consumers won’t notice the seller information toward the bottom of the box. As far as they’re concerned, any time they click on the same product listing, it might as well be the same seller. They’re not making a decision based on your specific reputation. They simply decide if they want the product, and like the price and shipping options they see show up in the box. While there are other factors that influence whether you’ll win the box or not, the first step to even having a chance is making sure you’re eligible.

What makes a Seller eligible for the Buy Box?

Any Amazon seller that opts for Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) for their products will automatically be eligible for the Buy Box. In fact, FBA products are believed to win the Buy Box at much higher rates than any others. For vendors that prefer not to go the FBA route, eligibility is still possible. There are three main criteria you must meet.

The Right Selling Account – You need to have a professional seller account. Selling items as an individual on Amazon can make sense for small players that are just out to make a few extra bucks with items they have laying around. But for anyone who wants to treat it as a genuine business, upgrading to the professional level is well worth the monthly fee it costs. And it’s required if you ever want to claim the Buy Box for your products.

Maintain Order Volume - Amazon wants to know that whoever wins the Buy Box will deliver an experience to the customer on par with their reputation they seek to uphold. In order to evaluate whether you’re capable of providing the level of service they require; you need to have completed enough orders for them to see how well you do. The catch here is that they don’t outright say what a high order volume is, but do say that it varies across different categories of products. If you’re a fairly new seller, or even a long-term one that hasn’t sold many products, this requirement could keep you from becoming eligible.

The Right performance metrics – The reason a high order volume matters is directly related to this requirement. When deciding who’s worthy of the Buy Box, Amazon looks at data on how well you’ve performed on past purchases. For eligibility, they consider – Your order defect rate, Cancellation rate, Late shipment rate. These all need to be as close to zero as absolutely possible if you want any chance of success on the Amazon marketplace and they directly affect your eligibility for the Buy Box.

How to make sure your products are Buy Box eligible?

While that covers your seller account, you also want to make sure your products are eligible for the Buy Box. When logged into your Seller Central account, go to the Manage Inventory page and select preferences. Select Buy Box eligible and click save.

How to win Buy Box?

Eligibility is step one but winning the Buy Box is something you have to do over and over again, day after day. And it’s tricky, because everyone competing against you wants it too. While Amazon doesn’t provide specifics how they decide who to feature in the Buy Box, most Amazon specialists are in agreement about the main factors they weigh:

Price – They want to feature the lowest price for a product at any given time, so it pays to track your competitor’s prices constantly and adjust your as needed.

Feedback – The customer experience matters, so if you’re getting negative reviews and ratings, it will hurt you here.

Inventory levels – Will your product be available to ship out right away? You’re more likely to win the Buy Box if you have enough stock to fulfill the order immediately.

Whether you see it as fair or not, the Buy Box will determine how successful you are on the platform. Take steps right away to assure your eligibility, then get to work on the other factors that will make you more consistently competitive.