If you want to succeed as an Amazon seller, tracking seller metrics is essential. Analyzing your performance is key to making improvements —and taking your business to the next level. Simply guessing about your progress will not do the trick.
Using seller metrics allows you to better discern what types of approaches work for each of the products you sell. Seller metrics can also help you assess your Amazon business in a broader sense.
If the concept of seller metrics is new to you, or you’re feeling intimidated by the idea, keep reading to learn how seller metrics can help your FBA business.
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TL;DR - Key Amazon Metrics
Tracking your Seller Central account metrics is essential to developing a clear roadmap for achieving your FBA goals.
Treat Amazon metrics as Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that help you identify challenges and opportunities. The metrics you should pay attention to include:
- Amazon performance metrics
- Amazon seller metrics
- Amazon advertising metrics
- Amazon brand metrics
These Amazon FBA metrics provide quantifiable ways to gauge your account’s performance and the data you need to make better executive decisions to drive more sales, get better ROI on your advertising spend, and grow your Amazon brand.
Also, with more data, you can identify discrepancies within Amazon FBA operations and unlock reimbursements for reinvestment into your business. Getida helps with this, providing risk-free reconciliations to uncover potential FBA refunds. Sign up with Getida today to see how it can help.
How Tracking Amazon Metrics Impact Sellers
Sellers can gain valuable insights about their accounts by tracking key Amazon Seller metrics. Below are the ways tracking these metrics can impact your FBA business:
- Helps achieve higher return on investment (ROI) on marketing efforts: You need a metrics-based advertising strategy to track the effectiveness of your Amazon campaigns. Besides knowing how much it costs, on average, to acquire a lead, you also need to know the conversion rate (the percentage of leads that end up buying from your store).
- Helps correctly attribute causes to effects: Without accurate data, it is hard to know which actions drive results and to what extent. A successful Amazon Seller account has several products and strategies running concurrently – being able to control for various variables when doing experiments is valuable.
- Builds your brand on Amazon: Actively improving Amazon’s brand-building metrics, such as Branded Search Ratio, Repeat Customer Ratio, Star Rating, and Brand Conversion Rate, can help your store build a loyal following and enhance long-term growth potential.
- Ensures you sustain a high Account Health Rating (AHR): Cancellation Rate, Order Defect Rate, and Late Shipment Rate impact Account Health Rating (AHR). Tracking these metrics and ensuring they stay above board will help you build a good reputation and avoid suspension on Amazon.
- Ensures faster growth potential: When you track Amazon metrics, you are more likely to accurately gauge ‘Sales Impact,’ which is the sales lift in dollars arising from taking a particular action. Also, being abreast of metrics such as Sales Rank, Daily Sessions, and Category Conversion Rate makes it possible to identify growth opportunities early.
Ultimately, tracking metrics is essential for all sellers looking to succeed on Amazon. The impact on your FBA business relative to the time invested makes the effort worthwhile.
Essential Types of Amazon Seller Metrics
Below are the essential Amazon Seller metrics you should track to increase your chances of success on the platform.
Amazon Performance Metrics
Amazon’s performance metrics indicate the baseline requirements you need to meet to continue selling on Amazon. They are indicative of your Account Health and include:
- Order Defect Rate
- Cancellation Rate
- Late Shipment Rate
Consider taking time to understand how these metrics are calculated so you can take deliberate steps to improve and avoid Amazon penalties.
Amazon Sales Metrics
Sales metrics help you keep abreast of key indicators relating to your orders, shipments, and returns. You should always be on top of your sales and revenue stats.
Amazon Advertising Metrics
Key Amazon advertising metrics include:
- Advertising Cost of Sales (ACOS)
- Click-Through Rate (CTR)
- Cost-per-Click (CPC)
- Impressions
- Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS)
These provide valuable insights into the performance of your campaigns. You can use the data to decide how to allocate your advertising dollars for the highest impact.
Amazon Brand Metrics
Amazon Brand Metrics include:
- Star Rating
- Branded Search Ratio
- Brand Conversion Rate
- Repeat Customer Ratio
These metrics help grow brand awareness, build brand loyalty, and ensure a higher return on your promotion and marketing effort, as having a notable Amazon Seller account increases conversion rates.
8 Key Amazon Metrics Explained
Below is an explainer of each of the eight key metrics you should track and optimize to increase your chances of success on Amazon.
1. Ranking and Keywords
The keyword ranking metric indicates how well your products rank in customers’ Amazon searches. This is important because a high keyword rank equals more eyes on your listings, and this in turn boosts your sales.
Ideally, your products would appear on the first page whenever a customer uses one of your keywords. The reality is that many customers will remain on the first page of search results when choosing a product, making that page coveted real estate.
It is incredibly important that your products rank as highly as possible in the search results for your selected keywords. This is what leads to your Best Sellers Rank, which orders your product in its product category.
Tracking your product’s keyword ranking, and striving to improve this rank, can help you work your way up and sell more.
2. Conversion Rate
You may already be aware that your listing’s conversion rate is critical. Since conversion rates indicate the percentage of customers that purchase your product after visiting the listing, a lower conversion rate can mean that some quality of the listing is not appealing to customers. The reasons customers might be leaving the listing page include bad reviews, missing information in the description, inflated prices, and poor product images.
In order to assess your conversion rate, you’ll need to head to your Seller Central account and find Business Reports within the Reports option. Next, you’ll find Detail Page Sales and Traffic by Child Item. Now, identify the column labeled Unit Session Percentage to learn your conversion rates. By evaluating these percentages, you can learn more about what strategies are working well for you, and where you should be making improvements.
Remember that what counts as a good conversion rate depends on the platform. For Amazon listings, you should aim to keep your conversion rate above the 10% mark, adjusting your listings whenever you dip below this threshold.
3. TACoS
If you are wondering how well your approach to advertising is working, you’ll need to take a look at your TACoS (Total Advertising Cost of Sale). This metric allows you to weigh the cost of your PPC advertising against your revenue from ad sales, and organic sales. If your TACoS metrics are low, this often means your advertising efforts are working effectively.
4. ACoS
ACoS scores differ from TACoS scores in that they only measure the profitability of your ads, rather than measuring your sales and organic sales. This makes ACoS a useful metric for assessing the performance of ad campaigns. Sellers should aim for lower ACoS scores as these suggest that advertising efforts are working effectively. Depending on your specific business budget and goals, your ideal ACoS will vary.
5. RoAS
In order to find out how much revenue you have generated for every dollar of your ad budget, you’ll need to look at your RoAS (Return on Advertising Spend). High RoAS scores suggest profitable ad campaigns, while lower scores suggest you may need to make some adjustments to your efforts. This is a valuable metric to measure since it allows you to assess the return on your ad spending.
6. Inventory Performance Index
All FBA sellers have an Inventory Performance Index, or IPI, score. In short, the metric measures how effectively you manage your FBA inventory, with high IPI scores indicating that you sell fast and efficiently, while low scores indicate that your products are not selling fast enough. This makes IPI scores a great tool for evaluating your account performance. When you understand your IPI, you can make more informed decisions when making orders from your suppliers.
7. Account Health
No Amazon seller wants to face an account suspension as this can mean serious losses for your business. This means the Amazon Seller account health metric is critical for every seller to monitor. Your account health is made up of three major factors:
- Shipping performance
- Product policy compliance
- Order defect rates and customer service performance
FBM sellers in particular need to be mindful of their shipping performance and customer service performance. Some tips to stay on top of these metrics include promptly replying to customer queries as well as giving customers tracking information for all orders.
To learn more about your own account health, go to your Seller Central account and select the Performance option. Then, click Account Health where you will see notices of any late shipments, policy violations, or other issues with your account.
8. Amazon Fees
You are probably already aware that FBA and FBM sellers alike must pay fees to Amazon. All sellers pay a referral fee, but FBA sellers are also obliged to pay FBA fees. Be sure to watch out for the changes to these fees that Amazon will implement on occasion.
Technically, Amazon fees are not a performance metric, however, tracking the impact of these fees is essential to understanding whether you are making a profit or not. It also pays to keep an eye out for any accidental overcharges which Amazon may have made in error.
As annoying as they may be, Amazon fees are a reality of selling on the platform, and as long as you remain vigilant you should have no difficulty remaining profitable.
Tools to Analyze Performance on Amazon
You can leverage the following tools to analyze and optimize the performance of your Amazon Seller account.
- Amazon Brand Analytics: This tool will aggregate search and purchase data to help you better understand your customers and brand performance.
- Customer Reviews Tool: Use the Customer Reviews tool to view and respond to customers’ reviews, helping you build loyalty and garner useful insights into customer wants and needs.
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank (BSR): BSR helps sellers understand their products’ sales rank on the Amazon store compared to competing products. You can find a product’s BSR score by navigating to ‘product information’ on the product detail page.
You can also leverage various third-party services, software, and tools to manage certain aspects of your Amazon Seller account. For instance, Getida runs continuous audits to secure all eligible FBA reimbursements. Sign up with Getida to get a review of your Amazon Seller account.
Strategies for Improving Amazon Metrics
Amazon’s foremost leadership principle is customer obsession. It is engineered to cater to customer needs above all else. Therefore, the surest way to improve your Amazon metrics is to serve your customers better, including by:
- Ensuring accurate product information: You want your product listings to be as accurate as possible. Also, take pictures and videos of products from all angles to give prospective customers a complete image of what the product is about.
- Delivering high-quality products: Maintaining quality standards will reduce returns and earn your store repeat purchases.
- Eliminating stockout events: Install reliable Amazon inventory management software and practices to ensure you never run out of inventory.
- Proactively monitoring Amazon metrics: You must track important metrics such as Late Shipment Rate, Order Defect Rate, and Cancellation Rate to catch and correct problems early.
Going Forward with Seller Metrics
If you aren’t already, it’s time to start tracking your seller metrics. Monitoring each of the metrics we have explored here can help you to succeed as an Amazon seller. From conversion rates and keyword rank to TACoS and ACos, each seller metric gives you valuable insights into your performance as an Amazon seller. If you keep evaluating these important numbers, and adjusting your course accordingly, your business will be poised for success. So, when will you start checking out your seller metrics?
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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Looking for more information about Amazon metrics? Below are the answers to some commonly asked questions.
How to See How Many Sales a Product Has on Amazon?
In your Seller Account, go to Analytics > Business Reports. Click on the ‘Sales Dashboard’ to see various sales data, including total sales, units sold, and sales by category.
What Are the Most Important Amazon Metrics for New Sellers?
As a new seller, you want to focus on metrics that help you increase revenue and those that ensure you maintain a good Account Health Rating (AHR).
Focus on Impressions, Click-Through Rate, and Conversion Rate to inform revenue-driving decisions. For AHR, you want to pay attention to Order Defect Rate, Cancellation Rate, and Late Shipment Rate.
Can I Monitor the Seller Metrics of My Competitor on Amazon?
No, Amazon does not provide tools to monitor the Seller metrics of a competitor. That said, based on your account’s sales data, you can estimate their performance based on comparative factors, such as their product’s Best Seller Rank (BSR).
What is Amazon Lookout for Metrics, and How Can It Help?
Amazon Lookout for Metrics is a service that uses machine learning to monitor a business’s metrics, detect unexpected changes, and make timely reports.
The value proposition is to help businesses take advantage of opportunities promptly and arrest negative anomalies before they cause harm.
Amazon Lookout for Metrics is a general Amazon Web Services offering. It is not made specifically for Amazon sellers.
Conclusion
Tracking and effectively using Amazon metrics is essential to staying competitive on the platform. You want timely and complete data on your sales numbers, inventory levels, and advertising performance to make sound, data-driven executive decisions.
Further, to ensure you keep selling on Amazon long-term, paying attention to Account Health metrics such as Cancellation Rate, Late Shipment Rate, and Order Defect Rate is incredibly valuable.
In addition to Amazon’s built-in metrics and tools, you can use third-party services to get deeper insights into your Seller account’s performance. For instance, Getida audits accounts consistently to find opportunities for FBA reimbursements. Join Getida to unlock your full reimbursement potential.
