Interpreting the Product Details Page

Now that we have covered What is Amazon Buy Box we can continue with the main subject of how to sell on Amazon successfully. This involves learning how to read the Product Details Page.

Let’s start with identifying the Amazon’s Product Details Page since we will spend  all our time in this article on this page. After you do your search and finally click on a listing, you land on the page, on which you would click the orange “Add to Cart” button and make your purchase. This is the page we refer to as the Product Details Page.

This page includes a lot of information, but we will study those that are of most interest to sellers. They actually breakdown into two (2) categories.

A- Sellers, who are reselling products manufactured by other companies

B- Sellers, who sell products of their own i.e. own brand or private labelled items.

If you are in Category A, the following information is valuable for you in the order of importance:

1-    ASIN 2-    Best Seller Category 3-    Best Seller Rank 4-    Item and Shipping Price 5-    Seller’s Name 6-    Seller’s Performance Data

7-    Seller’s Fulfillment Type 8-    # of sellers 9-    2nd Seller Price 10-   2nd Seller Name 11-   2nd Seller Performance Data 12-   2nd Seller Fulfillment Type

Let’s now talk about how to use every one of these pieces of information:

1- ASIN

ASIN is Amazon’s item number and if you pick the right ASIN, under which you would place your listing, you can be flooded with orders within a matter of minutes. If you pick the wrong ASIN, you can potentially get very few orders or nothing at all. The reason for that is basically the duplicates listings created for the same item. Amazon tries very hard to avoid duplicates but unfortunately it is not a sure thing. So, you must make sure you always pick the right ASIN, with which you should associate your listing. You may ask what makes an ASIN the right ASIN. This is where we move onto #2 and #3.

2- Best Seller Category and 3- Best Seller Rank (BSR)

As you can see from the illustration, Amazon lists multiple categories to rank an item. What matters is the TLC (and not it is not the TLC we all would like to have), it stands for Top Level Category. Usually every seller is approved for a TLC and the items Amazon carries in that category are ranked based on their performance. You will be looking for the TLC for your listing and also the number next to it, which is the Best Seller Rank (BSR) this listing achieved with its performance in that category.

You may ask what determines the rank. The answer is # of unit sales.

So,

you pick the ASIN with the highest BSR for the items you wish to sell and,

• you have a competitive cost price, and
• you are Buy Box eligible, and
• you discount the current Buy Box seller appropriately (or not) depending on their seller rating, and
• you have established your seller account with good ratings, and
• you monitor the Buy Box continuously and capture it back if you lose it, and
• the BSR for the listing is a pretty good one, and
• you have planned your replenishment well enough to fulfil all the orders you hope to receive,

you can expect to receive many, many, many, orders every single day.

As you can see, there are many factors for you to drive revenue and every one of these factors is a moving target that can change during the course of the day. That is the reason why generating a large number of orders on daily basis across a large number of SKUS is not as easy as one might think.

4- Item and Shipping Price

The total of the item and shipping cost is what matters for any calculation so always make sure that you are working with the total. However, if you are doing your own fulfillment, it would be a good idea to know what you are paying and what you are charging for S&H on each SKU. Needless to say, consumers don’t want to pay for shipping. So, if you offer free shipping or you are an FBA Seller, you will not be charging shipping, in which case you will need to factor your fulfillment cost into your calculations.

5- Seller’s Name, 6- Seller’s Performance Data and 7- Seller’s Fulfillment Type

These three (3) pieces of information go all together and you can see the 12-month stats of a seller when you click on the seller’s name. This is how Amazon ensures transparency by showing Amazon customers the following about the seller:

• Positive Feedback Rating: You want yours to be 100% or no less than 98%
• 12-month count: You want to show at least 15,000-20,000. If you are showing a few hundred, it simply means you are either a new unknown seller or your customers do not care to leave feedback. Either one of these is not a good thing to have.

Keep in mind, higher the negatives, the more you have to discount in order to capture or keep the Buy Box. So, if your ratings are not good AND you are driving sales, you are leaving money on the table on every single sale.

Fulfillment Type just shows if the seller is a Prime seller or not. You achieve the Prime status by either using FBA or qualifying for Seller Fulfilled Prime. If you are a Prime qualified seller, it will be hard for a non-Prime seller to capture the Buy Box from you. Equally, if you are not a Prime seller and you are competing against one, you will have to discount very heavily to capture the Buy Box. You get the idea…

The Fulfillment Type of the Buy Box seller has to be factored into your pricing strategy.

Finally, if you are competing against Amazon, you will need to work very hard in many ways. It is still possible to win the Buy Box while competing with Amazon, but you will need to plan your projected orders accordingly.

There is one scenario that can hurt you big time but if you plan for it, you can avoid taking a hit.

Here is the scenario:

You check the listing and find a few other sellers. You move onto capturing the Buy Box because you buy at a competitive price and a large number of pieces. The next thing is Amazon moves into the Buy Box at a much lower price than yours. If you discount it heavily, you would lose money. If not, you would be stuck with inventory. Now what?

The answer is not to get caught in that scenario and if so, use your automation to do help you with the Buy Box strategy. We have handled such situations repeatedly. So contact us and we will be happy to show you a few ways to handle this challenge.

8- # of Sellers

This simply shows you how many other sellers are competing for the listing. Naturally, the higher the number, the fiercer the competition is, which will drive the pricing down. It is best to avoid listings with high # of sellers unless you have a real competitive cost for the item.

9- 2^nd Seller Price

This is the same as the seller price, except that the price displayed here is the 2^nd best seller according to Amazon’s algorithm. Everything we described for the Seller Item Price and Shipping apply here too. There is something cool about this position though.

Imagine this scenario:

You wanted to capture the Buy Box but could not. Your ratings and price only allowed you to become the 2^nd Seller. And the current seller ran out of inventory after a few hours of occupying the Buy Box. They will automatically be removed from the listing since they no longer have the item in stock. Guess who moves to the Buy Box. Right! You… and at a higher price. So, you can design a whole Buy Box strategy around the 2^nd position. You can imagine the possibilities.

 

10- 2^nd Seller’s Name, 11- 2^nd Seller’s Performance Data and 12- 2^nd Seller’s Fulfillment Type

Everything we described for this section for the Seller apply here too. So, you can interpret the information as described.

If you are in Category B, the following is as valuable, if not more, depending on the best seller rank of your listing:

13- Product Rating

14- # of product reviews

15- # of questions

16- Brand

13- Product Rating

If you are a manufacturer, this is your listing and if you want your items to receive many orders, you’d better make sure that your product rating is high. High performing items achieve a rating of 4 or above.

So, if you are running a campaign to promote your listings, this number is one of the metrics you would be watching. You want to achieve high ratings for all your listings as soon as possible and the ratings go up with reviews and number of orders.

14- # of Product Reviews

This is similar to the ratings and naturally when someone reviews your item, they also rate it. So, they go hand in hand. Besides, we have all heard how much consumers pay attention to reviews before they make their buying decisions.

You must employ a strategy to drive your product ratings and reviews proactively if you want to drive your sales.

As you can imagine, this takes time and has to be done with discipline. For those, who think about opening a seller account and generating millions in sales quickly, I say think again. Amazon took years to get to profitability and what kept them in business was growth and loyalty of Amazon customers. They are not about to give it up just because some sellers want to make a few quick bucks. They shut down seller accounts due to substandard or lack of performance all the time and they will not think twice if they think you are not fit to provide the “Best Customer Experience” Amazon customer enjoy.

15- # of Questions

This is the different than reviews and it is actually very helpful for making decisions when a customer about to make a purchase. It would be helpful to include this in your proactive program to collect ratings and reviews.

16- Brand

This is the Brand that has been registered on Amazon’s Brand Registry. If the item is yours, you must make sure it is registered correctly and that there are no duplicates. Keep in mind, this has nothing to do with the seller. When you click on it, you can see how many listings exist on Amazon for the Brand you have just clicked.

It is extremely useful to get a sense of the product lines currently available for the Brand in question. Needless to say, all brand owners selling on Amazon must make sure their brand is registered on Amazon Brand Registry.

These are just some of the important points, but there is much more to the story than we can cover in a few lines. Here’s where our Amazon experts come in should you have any specific questions. Ask for a FREE evaluation of your opportunity to start an Amazon Business HERE.

Next, we will cover how to put the information on the Product Details to good use, which is key to become one of the Amazon FBA Success Stories, stay tuned for our next blog post.

Let’s include these paragraphs in the About Author section, what do you think? They are repetitive anyway.