To get an edge on rivals on Amazon, brands need new insights and competitor intelligence
Winning on the world’s most influential e-commerce platform, Amazon, has become something of an arms race in the past few years. To get an edge on rivals, brands are constantly searching for new insights and competitor intelligence to help them identify and prioritize their Amazon performance optimization actions.
One of the ways in which Amazon differs from other retailers or e-commerce platforms is the availability of tools and data for managing product listings, landing page content, and advertising, as well as responding to shopper comments (Ratings & Reviews). But, all your competitors can also access this data, so tools such as Vendor Central, Seller Central, Amazon Advertising, Chime and FTP, are just part of what brands need to succeed.
Smart brands will look to improve their odds with additional insights such as full category e‑commerce analytics, market share estimates, and traffic and conversion analysis, to identify category trends, and drive actions for growth.
Amazon Category Market Share
Market share has been as an important indicator of brand health since the 1930s. It is especially relevant when it comes to understanding how new product introductions, promotions, and media spend impact overall growth. Until recently however, it was difficult to obtain reliable market share data with respect to e-commerce platforms such as Amazon.
Amazon operates with a much lower barrier to entry than traditional brick and mortar retailers, which means Amazon-categories are massive, compared with all other retailers – online and offline. Bigger categories mean more competitors beyond known rivals, and including previously unknown challengers such as upstart and digital native brands. This complicates Amazon market share measurement, but at the same time increases the value of reliable market share data that accounts for this larger competitive set and is capable of understanding the unique Amazon dynamic, and of adapting to the frequent changes that are inherent in the e‑commerce platform.
Understand Traffic & Conversion
When it comes to the fundamentals of selling on Amazon the end game is not much different to any other e-commerce site – it boils down to delivering traffic and conversion. To drive sales a brand needs to get consumers to its product landing pages on the platform as efficiently as possible, and persuade them to click to buy.
On Amazon, brands have direct control over multiple levers, such as content, ratings & reviews, promotions, and bundling, to generate traffic and optimize conversion. The challenge is to know when to pull which lever, and how much time and resources to spend on each aspect to get the most favorable results.
By understanding what generates your landing page traffic, comparing conversion rates for individual products, and tracking sales disparities, you can quickly diagnose the gap-closing actions needed to deliver improvements.
Advanced Search Keyword Productivity
Search is another area that needs regular tweaking to deliver improvement. The world of search performance is a constant challenge involving identifying the frequent, relevant keywords used by shoppers, and ensuring they are present in your listings and product content. This means monitoring top trending keywords to make sure your products can achieve maximum visibility, but also to identify grey market brand hijacking by competitors. Ultimately, you should be looking to understand the true commercial value of specific keywords to justify investment in content improvement, and paid search results.
Order Frequency & Basket Analysis
As the saying goes, keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. In the context of online shopping competitor-products that end up in the same shopping basket alongside your products could be friends. Whether friends or enemies, tracking and analysing basket information is one input into competitive intelligence, and brings valuable insights to help plan promotions, product bundling or recommendations.
Likewise, careful analysis of Order Frequency, that goes beyond the raw data provided in ARA reports, to identify how often the same shopper purchases a specific product, feeds useful insight into product selection for special promotions, and eligibility for features such as Subscribe & Save.
Amazon represents a significant opportunity for brands delivering access to millions of consumers, including Prime members who are very loyal to the platform. However, as we know Amazon is a monster that continues to grow and brands are feeling the heat of increased competition from rivals, third party sellers and Amazon itself. To succeed brands need reliable insights to help them confront competitors and plan their Amazon presence and performance.
