How to use Amazon Seller Central reports effectively

When it comes to running a business, be it online or offline, you need to make decisions based on the data available to you. This is to ensure that your business is moving in the right direction. Many people simply rely on their gut instincts, and while this can sometimes work out, it usually doesn’t. However, if you have reliable information, the next steps to strengthen your business are clear. This is where Amazon Seller Central Reports come in.

The good news is that, with a professional Amazon seller account, you have access to various business reports, helping you grow and better run your Amazon business.

The valuable data provided in each business report can help you make decisions on your advertising campaigns, listing content, pricing — and so much more.

What exactly are Amazon Business Reports?

Before we continue, it is important to first understand what these business reports actually are. Amazon seller reports provide sellers like you with valuable insights and data to track the performance of your business. In these reports, you can see data such as the number of units you’ve ordered, how many people visit your listings, conversion rates, sales totals, and your Buy Box percentage.

There are many other reports available in Seller Central, such as return reports, advertising reports, FBA fulfillment reports, and stranded inventory reports.

The reports let you to view the performance of every aspect of your business so you can make informed decisions about how to keep growing. Instead of making decisions based on your instincts, use the valuable data that Amazon offers you so your business can grow.

How these reports can help

There are many opportunities to be found within your business reports in Amazon Seller Central. Read them regularly, so you know what kind of progress you’re making, and don’t miss out on potential sales and profit. With the useful information provided in Amazon’s available reports, you’ll be able to increase your conversion rates and sales volume, decrease ad spend, and more.

If you don’t have any data to reference, how would you know what is working for your products? What’s great about each report is that you can download it as a CSV file and open it with a spreadsheet program like Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets.

If your listing had a high conversion rate but very few visitors, you’d want to know that information, right? Small details like these will help you think of ways to improve the traffic going to your listing.

The Business reports

While there are quite a few reports to check out, the one report that benefits every seller the most here would be the one called “Detail Page Sales and Traffic By Child Item.”

This report breaks down various metrics for each one of your products, including variations (child items). It’s great to see how your business is doing as a whole, but knowing how each one of your products is performing will help paint a detailed picture.

To me, this report is the most valuable because it tells you exactly how many views each one of your products receives, as well as each one’s conversion rate. This information is incredibly useful in helping you decide how you price, market, and sell your products.

Here are the types of information you can see in this report: 

• Sessions: The total number of unique visitors to your product page within a 24-hour period. This is useful because you’re able to see exactly how many customers viewed your listings within your desired time range. If the number of views is low, you can proceed to think of ways to increase traffic to your product page.
• Page Views: The total number of views on your listings within your selected time period. This number will include customers who viewed your listing more than once, so it may be higher than your sessions.
• Page Views Percentage: The percentage of page views a specific ASIN you own receives compared to your other products.
• Buy Box Percentage: The percentage of page views where you owned the Buy Box. This metric is particularly useful if you’re an arbitrage and wholesale reseller, because you can see how often you get the Buy Box compared to competitors also selling on the same listing. This is also useful if you’re a private label seller and if you have less than 100% of the Buy Box.
• Units Ordered: This is the total number of units ordered during the specified date range. This is useful to track each month so you can see if there are any dips or growth in product sales.
• Unit Session Percentage: Also known as your conversion rate. This is the most useful metric in the report. Your conversion rate is the percentage of how many units were purchased compared to the number of people who viewed your listing.
• Ordered Product Sales: The total revenue for each one of your products during a specified date range. Another very useful metric to track so you can ensure your product sales are growing each month.
• Total Order Items: This tells you the total orders placed for a specific item. This number will be equal to or less than the total number of units ordered because a customer may place an order for multiple items.

Conversion rate

A great conversion rate on Amazon is somewhere around 5-10%. Of course, this will depend on the product and niche you are selling in but this is what you should aim for. Please keep in mind however that a “good” conversion rate on a regular ecommerce website is around 1-2%. That is because most of the traffic that is funneled to the website is not always ready to buy.

Amazon customers, on the other hand, are typically on Amazon in order to make a purchase. This is why a 10% conversion rate is more typical for an Amazon seller.

If your conversion rate is around 10% or above, you are doing something right. This means your listing is well-optimized, your price point is fair, and your product has good reviews, making customers want to buy it.

Sessions

Now that you know how to interpret and optimize your conversion rate, take a look at your sessions, or how many people are viewing your listing. You may have a good conversion rate but if your traffic is low, then your sales will be, too.

There’s no one number of sessions that you should aim for but the goal is to reach as much qualified traffic as possible. Oh, and keep in mind – not all traffic is good traffic. If you target irrelevant keywords, your sessions may go up but it could cause your conversions to go down.

Buy Box Percentage

The Buy Box percentage is a very useful metric if you’re an arbitrage or wholesale seller since you share the Buy Box with multiple sellers on one listing. If your percentage is low, this means your offer is not always available for sale when customers visit the listing.

Let’s take an example, if your Buy Box percentage is at 40%, that means only 40% of customers can click “Add to Cart” on your offer. This is relevant if you are an arbitrage or wholesale seller; this indicates that there are too many sellers on the listing or your product is priced too high.

Your Buy Box percentage should be at 100% or as close to it as possible, especially if you are a private label seller and the only seller on the listing.

However, if you don’t own 100% of the Buy Box, you will need to take a look into this and figure out exactly why. This could be yet another reason your conversions and sessions are low. When you don’t own 100% of the Buy Box, it is more difficult for customers to make a purchase.

To sum up

As you can already probably tell, Amazon Reports are an extremely powerful tool. It’s a great life-hack for any seller on Amazon and it can provide a lot of information and insights regarding your business and how well it works or it doesn’t. So keep an eye out on these reports and grow your business even further!