As you begin selling on Amazon you’ll face plenty of technical jargon and if you find this daunting, you are not alone. 

Perhaps you’ve been asking yourself: what’s ASIN? Or, what’s SKU? These are excellent questions and understanding the answers is key to claiming the ample opportunities of Amazon selling.

Though both ASINs and SKUs are used when identifying Amazon products, each one works in a unique way. While ASINs identify each unique product on Amazon, SKUs help in the management of inventory.

If you’re a savvy seller, then you’ll implement both ASIN and SKU to manage and track your products, but to do this well you’ll need to understand the way these codes work on Amazon.

What’s ASIN?

To be precise, ASIN is an acronym for Amazon Standard Identification Number each one is unique to its product. This number helps Amazon to identify every product in its marketplace and so it is crucial to Amazon’s search function. If customers search for a product by name, the ASIN helps to deliver the product that they are after.

When looking for a particular product’s ASIN, you can find it in the webpage address bar after the product name, or in the Product Details section. Ensuring that you have the right ASIN for your product is essential to making sure your product appears in searches for that product. Getting your product in front of customers who are looking for that specific product is a critical part of making sales. So, this step is not one to miss. 

Keep in mind that different Amazon Marketplaces can have different ASINs for otherwise identical products. This means that your product may have more than one ASIN associated with it, each of which depends on where it is sold. 

If you are selling multiple products, the project of correctly identifying ASINs may be daunting. This is where ASIN finder software can help save you time, for example, the Synccentric tool allows you to import product identifiers and then retrieves the relevant ASINs.

Wondering how much demand there is for a particular product? Take the time to search for its ASIN and check out the number of results. You may find that the product you want to sell does not have an ASIN yet and this could be a good thing if it means you’ll have the demand for that product entirely to yourself. However, it may also mean that other sellers have opted not to sell that product because the demand for it is limited.

You will need to create a new ASIN if your product is unique and not offered on Amazon yet. You can begin by locating the item’s Global Trade Item Number or GTIN, usually printed at the bottom of the product’s barcode. Should you be manufacturing the product yourself, you can begin by registering it. With the GTIN in hand, you can submit it to Amazon and they’ll create and match unique ASINs for your products.

But what is an SKU?

If you didn’t know already, SKU stands for Stock Keeping Units and Amazon uses this global term to track and manage inventory. SKUs give Amazon a way to track the locations of products and track inventory levels and Amazon will create an SKU for your products should you need one. Be aware, however, that when Amazon creates an SKU this means it will benefit their internal needs more than yours, creating issues when you search for your product. This can mean problems when you settle in to track and manage your product stocks.

Just as with ASINs, SKUs can be different for identical items in different Amazon marketplaces and this means you’ll need to stay on your toes to avoid chaos when it comes to stock management.

One option is to take matters into your own hands by creating your own SKU. You can do this by seeking out one of the SKU generators online. These permit you to personalize the SKU with information specific to your product such as:

• Color 
• Condition
• Price
• Country of origin 
• Manufacturer

An SKU created this way can make it more simple to track your inventory with the secondary benefit of providing you or staff members with plenty of information about the product in one place.

This sort of SKU can also automate many processes for those using an Order Management system by filtering products by ASIN and SKU. At a glance, you’ll see all your products across all the markets where you are active. Orders that have been filled, those that are pending, and any low stock levels will also be quickly apparent.

Profits and Accounting Tools can help

Though ASINs and SKUs are great for tracking and organizing your products, they cannot give you much information on how each unique product is performing for your business. Sellers interested in a deeper analysis may benefit from a Profit and Loss Tracking Tool. This kind of software allows sellers to monitor sales data rather than depend on the more sparse information available from Amazon.

Take your business further by looking beyond the ASIN and SKU information and assessing how much your products are selling for during given time frames with the Average Unit Retail (AUR) metric. 

Rather than simply sorting your products, you could be analyzing which ones are most, and least, profitable with a simple click or two. FeedbackWhiz’s Profit and Loss Tracking tool can elevate your business data analysis, giving you the chance to increase your sales and profits. 

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