For the Amazon platform, most categories such as books, 3C products and other standard product categories are relatively clear, and product selection and listing are often limited to a single category; while non-standard product categories such as clothing also have complete classifications standards, but there will always be some products whose classification is vague due to their style characteristics, or they may fit into multiple categories at the same time. If you do not do a proper category competition analysis before new products are put on the shelves, it is easy to fall into unpopular categories that are more difficult to place orders. At this time, we must analyze different categories, reverse their sales through ranking data, and finally find potential categories.
Take the “Coats, Jackets & Vests” category in the women’s clothing category as an example for analysis, and record the rankings of 5, 30 and 30 for each category in “Coats, Jackets & Vests”. 80 products (the small category rankings captured here are intended to understand the overall sales information of a category, so we chose the Shops ranking of 5th in the head, 30th in the middle, and 80th in the tail).
In the actual operation process, sellers can appropriately adjust the ranking number according to different categories. In any category on the Amazon platform, as long as you have the experience of growing a product from tens of thousands to the top 100 in the category, you can calculate the corresponding sales volume based on the shops ranking. For new sellers, you can also use third-party software to deduce the corresponding sales volume.
The three lines above are the “Shops ranking” of products ranked 530 and 80 in each category in December 2017, and the three lines below are the one-day order volume of this product derived from the ranking (peak season) , the following rules can be found:
(1) In the categories “Women’s Down Coats & Parkas”, “Women’s Leather & Faux LeatherJackets & Coats”, “Womens Active & “Performance Outerwear”, there is a huge gap between the sales volume of the 5th-ranked product and the 30th- and 80th-ranked products. Although the total daily order volume of these three categories from the “Shops” ranking is relatively optimistic, the basic Monopolized by the top 10 products, these categories are “monopoly categories”
(2) Ranking in the categories “Women’s Wool& Pea Coats” and “Women’s CasualJackets”. The gap between the sales volume and ranking of 5, 30, and 80 products is smaller than that of other categories. Although the traffic of this category is not large, the order volume is evenly distributed and the competition is small, so these categories are “blue ocean? categories” .
(3) In the categories “Women’s Quilted Lightweight Jackets” “Women’s Denim Jackets” “Women’s Fur & Faux Fur Jackets & Coats “, it can be found that the overall traffic of these three categories is small, even if they are ranked in the top 5, the order volume is not large, so these categories are “low traffic categories”.
(4) In the category “Women’s Coats, Jackets & Vests”, it can be found that the traffic and order volume of this category are huge. Although the products ranked 5, 30, and 80 have certain Sales volume gap, but these gaps do not increase or decrease exponentially, which means that the competition for products in this category is very fierce, and it is a typical “Red Sea@category”. Based on the competition and traffic analysis of the above categories, we can make the following decisions about new products that need to be put on the shelves:
(1) If you are very confident about the product style, you think that the style must be the next stage. If the category is “hot style”, it must be put on the “Red Ocean category”. Because this category has the largest traffic and exposure among all categories, the product’s growth cycle will be greatly shortened. If properly operated, the product can obtain the largest order volume.
(2) If the newly launched products are only of “average style” and “sellable style”, it is recommended to put them on the “Blue Ocean Category”. Because the competition here is not fierce, the traffic is medium, and you will not encounter those monopoly giants that will prevent you from placing orders at all. But once it is put on the shelves in the “Blue Ocean Category”, the upper limit of your styles will be determined, because even if your product is ranked top 1 in the category, it is very likely that the sales volume will not be as good as the 50th product in the “Red Ocean Category”. Therefore, we must control the market potential of the product before putting it on the shelves.
(3) If it is an “out of season product”, “a product with little confidence” or a “test product”, it is recommended to put it on the green “low traffic category”. These categories have low overall traffic. , the competition is very small. For example, in the “Women Quilted Lightweight Jackets” category, if you can steadily place 1 to 2 orders every day, then your product can already be ranked among the top 100 in this category. Product traffic = advertising traffic + search traffic + ranking traffic + associated traffic, and associated traffic and ranking traffic are the most important traffic for non-popular products. For those products that may not be competitive in “Red Ocean Categories” or “Blue Ocean Categories” You might as well put it on the shelves in “low-traffic categories”, use advertising to get orders for the product in advance, then enter the top 100 of the category, and then use the ranking traffic and related traffic obtained by improving the category ranking to slowly sell the product. This is a good idea. choose.
(4) When you are very confident in your product and have all the FBA, marketing, advertising funds, etc., try to put it on the shelves in a “monopoly category” (note, I just said try to put it on the shelf) ), once you find that the order volume is very low or the order cannot be issued, you should change the category immediately. Once the gray “monopoly category” is conquered, it can bring almost perfect market share and order volume, but in addition to superb operational skills, it also requires excellent marketing methods. It is difficult to rely solely on products and operations to win in these areas. Let the product be ranked in the top 5 or top 10 in the category.
In short, all category selections are not “taken for granted”, but based on factors such as “selling points”, “market competition”, “category traffic size”, etc. to determine which category to choose, and then accurately seize the market in that category.