What I look for in an Amazon account audit (and what it reveals)

Vicki Weinberg: 00:00:18

Welcome to the Bring your Product Idea to Life podcast. This is the podcast for you if you're getting started selling products or if you'd like to create your own product to sell.

I'm Vicki Weinberg, a product creation coach and Amazon expert. Every week I share friendly practical advice as well as inspirational stories from small businesses.

Vicki Weinberg: 00:00:37

Let's get started. Hello and welcome to this episode of Bring youg Product Idea to Life. Thank you so, so much for being here.

I have got an awful lot to cover in this episode, so I'm going to get straight into it because today we're going to talk about Amazon account audits. So businesses often come to me to audit their accounts, usually when something isn't working and they can't pinpoint what.

Or perhaps, as I alluded to last week, maybe their sales have plateaued or dropped, or maybe they're not coming up into the search as much as they'd like. There's usually some sort of issue that leads them coming to me and saying, what now? What do I do next?

Something isn't quite right, but I'm not sure what. So an Amazon account audit, or the type that I offer anyway, is a full account check. So I don't just look at your listings or just one listing.

I look at absolutely everything in your Amazon account in great detail and come up with a list of recommendations of things you can do to maybe improve how your account runs, maybe improve your your sales.

I mean, that's always the ultimate goal, but there also be little things in there about how you can make things run a bit smoother, perhaps save yourself money, that kind of thing.

So in this episode I'm going to go through what I look at, what it, why I look at it, what it means, and maybe some little fixes for things that come up often as well. And the aim of this is really so that if you'd like, you can do the same. So I'm going to talk you through all of the things that I look at.

So one of the first things I look at is your revenue and sales. So I look at how you're doing compared to previous years because this gives me a good idea of what direction your sales are going in.

You probably know this yourself already, but for me this is really useful.

I also look at which products are your best sellers, which are the ones that show up in search the most, which have the best, click through rates, which convert the best. Now, hopefully you know all of this information already. However, what I would say to you is, even if you know this Are you doing anything about it?

Because this is the key and this information can be really revealing. So for example, let's say your best selling products convert really, really well. However, we can see that they very rarely come up in search.

Maybe they come up in page two or three, or maybe they're only coming up on page one 10% of the time, but we can see that they convert really well when people do find them. This might mean that it would make sense to drive traffic to those listings because if they're converting well, they will.

Obviously, you know, there's nothing, there's no issue with the listing.

In fact, the listing is probably great and it would make sense if they had a little bit more traffic, then you could probably sell more of them, perhaps using ads, perhaps doing something else.

If you find that certain products have really high visibility, so they're showing up a lot in search, but the click through rate's low, then that's a sign that there is something that's missing.

So maybe it's the main image, maybe it's a title, but there's something that's preventing people from clicking through and finding out more about your product. Maybe it's the price, we don't know, but these are some of the things it could be.

If you can see that visibility is low for some of your listings, then that could be, that could be a sign that the listing might be as well optimized as it could be.

So these are just some of the things we can find out based on looking at your revenue and sales and all the information about your, about your products.

Now as I say, some of this you might know already, but the key really is of all of this is thinking about, okay, so we know, we know this product sells well, yet we also can see that it's not very visible and then thinking, okay, what can we do to improve sales of all of our products? I also have a look at your account health. So are there any warnings, any compliance issues or anything at all that needs addressing?

Sometimes people aren't aware that key listings aren't being shown because of, because of issues, particularly if they have a large number of SKUs. I've definitely worked with brands before.

I've said, did you realise that this listing's been suppressed or did you realise that you need to submit some information for this and they just haven't been aware? So I never assume that you're going to know everything. Of course you hopefully will be on top of some of this.

But when I do a listing for an audit for A client, I do make sure that I include absolutely everything because I don't know what you know and what you don't know. And sometimes, as I say, especially if your inventory is large, it can be really, really easy to miss some of these things.

I look at voice of the customer, so I don't know if this is something you've ever looked at yourself. It's really, really revealing. So this is basically where customers tell you what they think about your products and they rate.

All of your products are rated from poor up to outstanding. And this can be a gold mine, finding ways you can improve your listing.

So, for example, for one brand, I could see that a key reason for the products being returned and the products having a poor rating was that the products have been used in a way that it wasn't designed to be. So customers were misunderstanding what the product was and they were using it in a way that it was never intended for use.

But because of that, it was getting high return rate in poor. A high return rate and poor reviews, because you can get my words out there.

So we were then able to add some information to the listing that would prevent confusion, stop customers buying it or using stop customers buying it for the wrong reason, hopefully prevent them from using it the wrong way and hope, and also improve the return rate.

I also look at return rate, by the way, because it might be that if certain products are frequently returned, this is something to address even if you're not getting consistently poor feedback, because let's be honest, you know how hard it is to get good reviews on Amazon. Still hard to get bad reviews as well.

It's hard to get reviews in general, but so if you're getting products that are highly returned, this is definitely something to address. If you are getting poor reviews in a way, that's good because at least you know why your product's being returned.

And it's hopefully something you can work on. Now, this might be that it's something out of your control, but it might be there's something you can add to the listing that would help with this.

So, for example, I worked with one brand who was having a high number of returns, and we found by adding a video to the listing that showed the product in use, it did mean sales went down slightly, but also returns went down significantly as well.

And I think what was happening is people weren't quite sure what that product was, so they were buying it to test it out, realizing it wasn't what they wanted, and then returning it. So by adding the video, there were people who automatically disqualified themselves that went, oh, this isn't what I want.

So they didn't buy it, which is great because they didn't return it.

Because as you know, returns particularly for certain product types, I'm thinking electronics, clothing can be a real, real pain because often you can't then resell the products and they end up getting returned to you. And none of this is good. I also have a quick look at your account settings and check if all these are good.

I very rarely find any issues here, but sometimes you do. Like you might find for example, that your products have been listed across different Amazon marketplaces and you weren't even aware of that.

Honestly, things Amazon does that they don't tell you about is crazy. They did actually announce a few months ago this was something they were going to do.

But I also know that you get so many emails from Amazon and we'll talk about this a bit later that it can be really easy to miss things. So, you know, this is definitely one to have a look at.

Are your listings in other marketplaces without you, without your knowledge, because that is something that we're finding a lot. So that's again something you can take a look at.

And if they are, it might not, might be that it's not a problem, particularly if you're not getting any sales. If you suddenly get a sale in France, you know, you're then thinking, can I either fulfill the order, you know, is that possible?

Or you have to cancel the order. And that obviously goes against you as well. And it's just a bit of a headache that you possibly do not need.

So this is something that is definitely worth looking at. Your shipping settings is a frequent thing that I recommend people update. So sometimes they can be very confusing.

So for example, weight based, I don't know whether you've seen that when you set up your shipping prices, you can have them tiered by weight or by price. Amazon are actually stopping weight based pricing tiers, which I think is, is a really good idea.

And sometimes the shipping can be really expensive and kind of not make sense based on the product. So for example, I saw a product recently where the shipping cost more than the product itself. And that product was a small product, it was light.

I would have said it was much better for FBA anyway and the brand weren't selling many of them. And I'm pretty sure that big factor of that was people don't want to spend more on the shipping than they do from the actual product.

And on the other hand, I've seen lots of brands do this really, really well. So I saw a brand recently when I was really impressed. They had lots of different shipping templates set up for different product sizes.

And by the way, these were all like paid shipping options. I am a fan of free shipping. You've probably heard me say this before, but you don't have to add free shipping. Your shipping just needs to make sense.

So you can't. Well, you, you can, but I wouldn't recommend charging the same to part to post, you know, something that would fit in an envelope.

I wouldn't suggest your shipping price be the same as something that would fit in a shoebox, for example, but this is something I often see. So if you do sell products different sizes and weights, I would suggest having different shipping templates for each of them.

Speaking of shipping, it's also worth knowing how you're set up for automated, unfulfillable inventory.

So for example, did you know there was an option where if Amazon can't fulfill your inventory for some reason, so for example, if its returns are unsellable, they might be disposing of it. This is a setting you can choose. You can choose for Amazon to dispose of your product, or you can choose them, send them back to you.

I have found instances where Amazon had this setting to dispose and the brand wasn't aware of it. And every month Amazon were happily disposing of product. Again, some of these examples I'm giving you, I'm definitely don't want you to panic about.

These are not things I see all of the time. They're things I've maybe seen once. However, if it's happened once, it could happen again. Please don't panic about any of this.

I'm just giving you some examples of things that you might want to look at. Speaking of inventory, we're still speaking about inventory. I would definitely check that you don't have too much or too little of anything.

Overstocking is something I see a lot. So I remember I saw a brand that was continually sending in small numbers of stock to fba, which I definitely recommend every month.

But what they were doing is they were sending a blanket amount of every SKU every month. And some SKUs were selling much faster and some weren't, you know, were hardly selling at all.

So maybe they were selling one or two a month, but the brands were still sellers, sending in say 10 of every SKU every single month. Now, this of course was unnecessary and didn't really make sense. And this is just a really, really small thing that's really Easy to resolve.

I also check for stranded inventory. I look for any issues with your shipments because Amazon don't always.

You might not notice, but Amazon do not always email you if you have sent in stock for FBA and something's missing.

So let's say a box doesn't arrive, they might not tell you about that and if you leave it too long to check and realize they'll have closed the shipment and then it's too late to investigate.

So this is the kind I take a look at and this is also the source of thing I recommend you take a look at whether you are auditing your account or not. If you're sending stock into fba, please keep an eye on those shipments.

Make sure everything is arriving as you expect because if there are any discrepancies, you have a really limited time window to raise it with them. Otherwise it gets to the point where it's too late. And of course this is costing you stock and it's costing you money.

So do keep an eye on your shipments. I spend an awful lot of time looking at product listings. So I check both the back of the listing and the customer facing elements.

Often I see listings that need updating. I see listings that don't have images. I see listings or many images. Everyone has at least one. I see listings that don't have any A.

Or maybe the A is done using some quite old templates. It doesn't look very modern anymore, perhaps not really on brand. I definitely see listings that where the branding is inconsistent.

So maybe the brand has rebranded at some point recently and some of the listings have the new branding and some have the old branding. That looks really incohesive and I don't think is great really.

I also look into your inventory, as in how your inventory and your listings are set up. So recently I saw a brand who had almost every ASIN listed four or five times. I don't know why. I mean twice is okay.

Because something I do recommend if this works for you is to have an FBA listing and FBM listing. So that would be the same listing one one Ace in two SKUs. But anything more than that is unnecessary and really messy.

I've seen brands that do this duplicate the stock they send in for FBA. So they send in stock for two ASINs with most multiple SKUs.

So they're sending in, you know, Barfa, they're trying to send in 100 units for one product but they end up sending 200 because they don't realize it's duplicated. It can Cause all kind of issues. And besides all of this, I really like having a nice, tidy inventory. Inventory, obviously it's up to you.

You manage your inventory how you like. I like them to be nice and tidy. And the other thing of having all of these multiple options is coming back to the brands who had everything listed.

Lots of times this actually led to. This actually led to the FBM option which had, you know, shipping attached get in the buy box rather than the more convenient FBA option.

And this leads me to tell you, I do look at the buy box too, by the way. It's good to know if you have the buy box. If you don't have it, it's good to know why you don't have it and who has it.

This is sometimes the first time people find out that other sellers are selling their products is when I do an audit for them and say, you realize you haven't got the buy box for this product. And then they say, well, why? Why is that? And it's because someone else is selling it and they weren't even aware.

So definitely something to keep an eye on. I'm sure you know what the buy box is. I'm going to explain anyway, so just forgive me if I'm giving you things that you, you know, you know already.

So the buy box is basically the button that says Buy now on Amazon. And if you have the buy box and the customer clicks Buy now, then they're buying the product from you.

If another seller is selling your product and they have the buy box, even though it's your product, when the customer clicks Buy now or adds a car, they're buying your product from another seller. So that's what that means. I'll also take a look at your pricing and make sure that it makes sense.

As I said many times before, I'm not saying that you need to be the cheapest. It's just making sure that your pricing makes sense compared to other similar products on Amazon at the time. I'd also look at your brand store.

Something I see a lot is either too much content and not enough opportunities to buy, or on the other side, no content and just a long list of products and somewhere in the middle is ideal. I will review your ads and let you know what's working, what isn't, and how. I suggest you move forward. This can be a really, really big area.

I actually ordered an account recently who had over 200 active campaigns. Some had no sales, lots had a negative return. This is really, really unmanageable and something that I would never, ever rec.

Um, but it doesn't always have to be that many to be too many, sometimes even tens of campaigns is too much. Um, I looked at a brand recently where they've only been running ads for like two or three months, but there were almost 20 campaigns.

Most of them only ran for a week and then closed. So there wasn't really an opportunity for it to learn from them.

I can give lots of, lots of advice here and I will do an episode all about ads, but what I'm really looking for is do your ads make sense? Do you have too many campaigns targeting the same products? Are your ads competing with each other? What's the return on your ads like?

You know, are you allocating your budget across different campaigns in the best way? There's all kinds of things we can go on into when it comes to ads.

And then the final thing that I take a look at, unless I've forgotten something, which is, which is possible because I do look like a lot of things. Oh, notifications. That's one other thing I look at.

I look at all the emails you're getting from Amazon and help you decide we know which ones are necessary and which ones are not. Because let's be honest, they can, they can send you a lot of emails and you've got a lot of other things to do.

But coming back to brand analytics, this is brand new and I have done an episode all about brand analytics and I'll possibly do another one as well. So brand analytics, you can see all kinds of information about your brand.

So you can see the customer journey, you can see at what point customers drop off.

So you can see for every all the people who view your products, how many go on to click through, how many go on to add to cart, how many go on to actually buy. This is really, really useful. We can also see how loyal your customers are. So how many customers are returning to you versus how many new to brand.

We can also look at search query performance to give you a list of search queries that led customers to your product. This also gives the brand share for relevant keywords plus the search query volume.

So this is all really good when it comes to identifying what keywords should be in your listings, what should be in your campaigns.

And I can use this to see where you're missing out on potential traffic, either by not having relevant search terms in the product listing text, by not putting them in the advertising campaigns. And it's also good to see where you're doing really well. So if there's a word or phrase where you're getting really good brand share.

That's also really nice to know because doing an audit isn't just about finding out where you can improve, although that's a big part of it. But it's also really good to know what you're doing well.

So all of these checks reveal all kinds of things, you know, missed opportunities, maybe money you're spending unnecessarily, maybe missed sales. I absolutely love doing these audits.

Don't you can tell by me talking about this because there's just such a lot we can uncover and every single section I look at has recommendations and at the end of the audit I wrap up with my recommended next steps and I prioritize these and I break them into short term quick fixes and medium term product projects and longer term goals and it's just a great way to get on track.

I do suggest going through and doing some of these checks yourself, particularly if I've said something that's new to you, something that resonated, something where you think, oh, I haven't looked at that in a while, or if you'd like me to do a full review for you, then please get in touch. I'm going to link to my audit web page in the Show Notes and of course you can email me as well.

Vicki vickyweinbag.com thank you so much for listening right to the end of this episode. It's been speaking with you and I will speak to you again soon.

Vicki Weinberg: 00:18:29

Thank you so much for listening right to the end of this episode.

Do remember that you can get the Fullback catalogue and lots of free resources on my website vickyweinberg.com Please do remember to rate and review this episode if you've enjoyed it, and also share it with a friend who you think might find it useful. Thank you again and see you next week.

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