By Nathan Rigby, VP at One Click Retail and Danny Silverman, CMO at Clavis Insight
Every week, ASIN Insider showcases two of the winning ASINs on Amazon and two ASINs that need improvement, highlighting why the winners are performing so well and what brands can do to improve their performance in the European market, all in the context of the 6Ps eCommerce Intelligence™ Framework: Product, Placement, Price, Promotion, Perfect Page and Performance. This week, we look at ASINs from Kellogg's, Logitech, 3 Musketeers, and Uniq One.
Kellogg's
Frosties is one of Kellogg's most successful breakfast cereals across all markets (marketed as Frosted Flakes in North America). In Europe, Kellogg's leveraged the high traffic of Amazon's Prime Day to generate a long-term, sustained sales lift for their 750g package size of Frosties. Following a long period of stability, this ASIN saw a huge spike in sales during the week of Prime Day driven by a 25% off coupon Promotion which resulted in a 150% sustained lift (comparing pre- and post-Prime Day 13-week sales averages).
This ASIN is the #1 item under Kids' Cereals and benefits from a strong customer rating of 4.8 with 38 reviews. However, the ratings and reviews do most of the heavy lifting since the details Page is lacking in video and A+ content – a clear opportunity to increase conversion.
An even bigger opportunity to boost sales would be to improve the ASIN's in stock rate. The Product has been in stock only about 90% of the time in the last three months – in fact, at the time of writing it is out of stock (OOS) on Amazon.co.uk (other pack sizes are in stock, but don't rank as high). We recommend an OOS rate of no more than 3% in order to maintain a strong Performance, but reducing the frequency of OOS by any amount will always have a positive effect on sales. Going out of stock, even briefly, causes sales to grind to a halt, which can take weeks or months to recover from.
Within the last month, the ASIN's Price increased by nearly 50%. Because it stocked out soon after, it's hard to predict whether the price increase would have had a negative impact on its weekly sales average, but that seems unlikely. Kellogg's Frosties (750g) already ranks as one of the top items even with a low in stock rate and an imperfect page, so it's not likely to drop significantly in popularity. Instead, Kellogg's has an opportunity to tap into its full conversion potential by optimizing an already strong ASIN.
Logitech
The Logitech K120 Business Keyboard had an impressive 2017 in the UK. Over the course of the year, sales grew by 80% compared to 2016, achieving 2.5% of the total UK sales of Keyboards and Keying Devices on Amazon. Key to this ASINs success (pun intended) is an ideal Price point and high customer rating and review count.
Maintaining a consistent price is a plus, conveying brand integrity and decreasing the likelihood that shoppers will hold off on purchasing the item now in the hopes of catching a discount later. This can sometimes be a challenge for brands as Amazon's price-matching algorithm can be triggered by price drops at competitive retailers or by third party sellers. Logitech controls this by tightly managing their supply chain (this ASIN had no stock issues) and ensuring prices remain consistent across all retailers.
Like the Kellogg's item, this ASIN's Page relies heavily on ratings and reviews: 393 customer reviews at the time of writing and an average rating of 4.3. Customer engagement is also strong, with 32 answered questions. However, the page only includes one picture of the product, so there is room for improvement that could boost sales even further.
3 Musketeers
This 3 Musketeers Fun Size 311 g (Pack of 2) is an example of a neglected ASIN. It has been available on Amazon.co.uk for several years, with no regular stock issues, but has extremely low sales and no year-over-year growth. It ranks extremely low: #2086 in Chocolate, #4377 in Sweets, Mints & Gum, and #17,806 in Grocery. The ASIN almost appears entirely forgotten by the brand.
The Page is very poor, lacking in A+ content and in video, and the only pictures show the candy's packaging, none show the candy itself. Customer engagement is also very low with only three reviews (though they all gave the item a 5-star rating), well below our recommended minimum of 20.
There is a lot that can be done to boost sales. Any one of the following actions would help reinvigorate the ASIN, but using several of them in conjunction would be ideal:
- Customer reviews increase visibility and conversion, so using Amazon's Vine program to boost the number of reviews could be worthwhile.
- The ASIN's Price has been steady, so a Promotion might give it the sales lift needed to drive more traffic and kick-start growth.
- Develop a Perfect Page by introducing A+ content, high-quality photography, and keyword optimization to drive traffic to the item and increase engagement.
- Utilize sponsored searches to target the right audience and improve Placement.
Uniq One
As a fairly strong performer in its category, the Super10r Mask from Uniq One is a good example of how small optimizations might be used to turn a strong ASIN into a category leader. Currently, the item is #4 in its niche (Foundations), but ranks at only #139 in Beauty, just shy of the coveted top 100.
Though the ASIN has had no stock issues, it's falling behind due to a negligible growth rate compared to the category average of 22%. Since December, the Price has been below historical levels, which suggests that the slow growth is not caused by a prohibitive price and also that Uniq One probably doesn't have the headroom to boost the item with a deeper discount. However, offering a Subscribe and Save Promotion may be a smart move, increase sales by encouraging customer to commit to repeat purchases.
Most importantly, Uniq One should invest in their Perfect Page. The page already has strong A+ content and includes several color variants (a big plus), but it could benefit from more and higher quality images and video demonstrating the use of the product. This can increase conversion and customer engagement, boosting the number of ratings and reviews, which in turn boosts your rank and visibility, driving more traffic to your page and creating the positive feedback loop necessary to drive growth.
About the 6Ps eCommerce Intelligence™ Framework
The 6Ps – Product, Placement, Price, Promotion, Perfect Page and Performance – are a checklist for brands. Lacking in any one of these areas signals untapped sales potential and can cause every other area to suffer.
- Product: Product availability is fundamental to success. Going out of stock causes the gears to grind to a halt; even a brief sold-out period can cause an ASIN's rank to drop dramatically and can take months to recover from.
- Placement: Better placement means more shoppers see the product, increasing brand awareness and the opportunity for conversion.
- Price: If two items are otherwise identical, the customer will always choose the one with the lower price, so it's crucial to remain competitive.
- Promotion: Promotions are a sure-fire way to increase your placement and attract more shoppers to your product page, generating a lift in sales which can boost every other metric.
- Perfect Page: A perfect page with high-quality images, A+ content, strong keywords and a lot of positive ratings and reviews drives up conversion and customer engagement.
- Performance: The combination of all the other metrics, a strong performance created a positive feedback loop which allows you to reach a wider audience, increase your sales, and keep the gears spinning faster and faster.
About One Click Retail
One Click Retail is the industry’s most accurate source of sales data for the world’s top eCommerce marketplaces. Using a combination of website indexing, machine learning and proprietary software, OCR estimates weekly online sales figures with market leading accuracy in order to deliver the best insights, analytics and strategies to their brand manufacturer clients. To catch a glimpse of how OCR gives brands critical edge on online platforms with our unique data and expertise, subscribe to our weekly eCommerce insights blog, and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.
If you are a brand manufacturer who would like to learn more about how you stack up to the competition—or would like to see your market share and category growth insights—email us at info@oneclickretail.com for a free capabilities demo.
About Clavis Insight
Clavis Insight is a global leader in online channel insights for product manufacturers, and a principal innovator at the forefront of the eCommerce analytics revolution. The company has developed a powerful framework - 6Ps eCommerce Intelligence™ - for organizing and prioritizing eCommerce analytics and actions to drive online channel success for brands. Global manufacturers use their daily eCommerce analytics and insights to drive sales in their categories online, to optimize content for brand equity enhancement, protection and product information compliance, and to deliver consistent, unified reporting on online retailer brand presence and performance.
For more information on Clavis Insight 6Ps eCommerce Intelligence™ visit www.clavisinsight.com. www.clavisinsight.com
