In operation, the most distressing thing is the sudden and sharp drop in sales. What will cause a drop in sales?
1. After the product is out of stock, it is put on the shelves again, and the sales volume drops sharply, and the advertising cost increases sharply
I believe that there are many sellers who encounter this situation. Almost all sellers who ship FBA have experienced the experience of selling out of hot-selling products. The hot sales of goods make people happy, but the impact of out-of-stock on the sales, ranking and advertising of goods is also impressive to sellers.
Sometimes there is a problem with the order delivery date, sometimes there is a delay in the delivery logistics, and sometimes it is caused by a sudden surge in sales. In short, out-of-stock will really happen to almost every seller.
After the out-of-stock, the seller waits anxiously for the new batch of goods to be put into the warehouse and put on the shelves, but the sales volume can never return to the level before the out-of-stock. In order to increase sales, some sellers turn on in-site advertising or increase the running advertising bidding and budget, but only see the ACOS value soaring, and the sales volume does not seem to change too obviously. This is a typical out-of-stock tragedy.
What is the reason for this? The reason is that the weight of the product changes during the period when the product is out of stock, especially when the out-of-stock time is more than one week. During the period when the product is out of stock and removed from the shelves, the product has no exposure, no clicks, and no conversions! The weights of the products have all dropped, but the market still exists at this time. The orders that were originally available have gone to competitors. The market share of competitors has increased, while the market share of out-of-stock sellers has decreased. The gap between the two sides has widened, making it difficult to catch up after replenishment, and the weight of the product can not be restored to the previous level at once, and sales are difficult to recover.
For sellers, the following methods should be taken before and after the out-of-stock period to reduce the adverse effects of out-of-stock. Before the product is out of stock, increase the selling price appropriately. On the one hand, this can slow down the sales speed, reduce the risk of out-of-stock and shorten the out-of-stock time, and on the other hand, it can obtain excess profits. Of course, we should also pay attention to the grasp of the price increase. The single increase should not be too large. If the increase is too large, either the shopping cart will be lost, or consumers will be dissatisfied with the price, apply for a return, leave a bad review, etc., which will have an adverse effect on the account.
When the product is close to being out of stock, combined with the arrival of a new batch of goods, if the estimated out-of-stock time is not long, you can adopt the self-delivery method to follow the sale of your own products. The price of the follow-sale is recommended to be higher than the FBA delivery price of about S5.00. The advantage of this kind of follow-selling is that even if the FBA inventory is out of stock, the product will still be displayed in your own store in the form of self-delivery, avoiding being picked up by some bad sellers as “zombie” products, followed and tampered with. At the same time, if the follow-selling products generate orders, these orders can also wait for the next batch of goods to enter the warehouse, and then ship them to the buyer by creating a multi-channel delivery method. The higher price can be used to offset the additional costs incurred by multi-channel delivery.
After the product is out of stock, the BSR ranking will drop, and the product weight will also drop. When the new batch of goods arrives and is put on the shelves, the seller should take action to increase the weight as soon as possible. How to do it? Lowering the price is the most efficient way. After the price reduction, more consumers will be attracted to buy through price sensitivity, orders will increase, order conversion rate will also increase, product weight will gradually recover, sales and ranking will gradually return to the level before out of stock. If the sales and ranking changes are not obvious after the price reduction, we might as well consider it from two aspects: whether the price reduction is not large enough to attract consumers; appropriately increase the bidding and delivery of advertisements. Using low prices and advertising to stimulate the sales and weight of goods quickly is a very effective method in practical applications. Some sellers may feel that the price reduction has caused them to lose their expected profits. You can think of it this way. After all, the price was raised before the out of stock, so just treat it as investing the excess profit earned from the price increase before the out of stock into the current operation!
2. After encountering bad reviews, sales have dropped sharply and advertising costs have risen sharply
Sellers probably know that the impact of bad reviews on product sales is very obvious, but bad reviews are unpredictable and uncontrollable. What should we do?
– Generally speaking, the following 5 methods can be used to resolve the adverse effects of bad reviews. · Contact the buyer: If you can contact the buyer, you should contact him/her as soon as possible, apologize sincerely, refund the full amount, strive to obtain the buyer’s understanding, and ask the buyer to help delete the bad review or change it to a good review.
Contact customer service: If there is obvious misleading language in the bad review or it is a malicious review, the seller can contact the 0 platform customer service and appeal to the customer service. The appeal should be reasonable and well-founded, and strive to get the understanding and support of the customer service to help remove the bad review.
Appropriately increase the review: If you have a safe and reliable channel, such as your own fan group and other resources, you can add some good reviews at a ratio of 1:3 to dilute the negative impact of the bad review.
Immediately reduce the price: Bad reviews will cause the weight of the product to decrease, while price reduction can increase sales and conversion rate, thereby achieving the purpose of increasing the weight. One decrease and one increase can resolve the negative impact of the bad review. · Find a service provider to help “step on” the bad review.
3. Sales volume drops sharply after the evaluation is deleted by the system
This is the situation encountered by some sellers who engage in fake orders. Because the system detects fake orders, the evaluation of the product is deleted in whole or in part. What’s worse is that even real buyers cannot leave comments after purchasing. For this situation, the author’s suggestion is to try to delete the product and then re-publish it with ASIN. In this way, the Amazon system may determine the re-published product as a new product, and you can receive comments from real buyers. If you find that it still doesn’t work after trying this, you can only withdraw the existing inventory, re-publish the product, and rebuild it as a new product.
4. After the price increase, sales volume drops sharply, and even the shopping cart is lost
In the “spiral explosion creation method”, an important variable is that the price should be gradually increased with the increase in sales and the rise in ranking. However, many sellers have reported that after the price increase, the shopping cart is lost, the advertisement cannot be placed, and the sales volume also drops. What should I do?
There are two suggestions. · We should know that even if there is no shopping cart for a product, it can still generate orders, but there will be fewer orders. Since the keyword ranking position is relatively stable and does not change much in a short period of time, you can choose to raise prices during the peak sales period. Even if the shopping cart is gone after the price increase, the keyword ranking position has not changed for the time being. Some consumers can see your products, so there will be a certain purchase rate and some orders will be generated, and the shopping cart may be there again. When raising prices, the price increase should be small each time, and the planned price increase amount should be split into multiple times to execute, and operate in a “small step and slow jogging” manner to reduce the probability of losing the shopping cart.
5. Frequent adjustment of products leads to loss of shopping carts and decreased sales
Product optimization should actually be called product adjustment. Only when the product performs better and has higher sales after adjustment can it be called product optimization. According to the crawling and ranking rules of the Amazon system, after each product adjustment, the system will re-identify, crawl and queue it. If the adjusted product is not recognized by the system, it will lead to a decrease in weight, ranking and sales.
In order to avoid a drop in sales due to product adjustments, sellers should pay attention to the following points: (1) Do not adjust products frequently; (2) Leave at least three days for observation after each adjustment; (3) Keep records before and after the adjustment. If the product’s performance after the adjustment is not as good as before, then you may wish to change it back to its original state; (4) After the adjustment, you can use advertising and low prices to quickly increase sales and rankings to achieve the purpose of improving product weight.
6. Sales drop significantly after advertising is suspended or terminated
For a product that has placed in-site advertising, its weight is the sum of advertising weight and natural weight. If advertising is suspended or terminated, the advertising weight is eliminated. Relying solely on the support of natural traffic, sales will often drop significantly.
In order to avoid the decrease of product weight and sales volume due to the suspension or termination of advertising, we should not easily close a product advertisement. If the advertising cost must be reduced due to the uneconomical advertising input-output ratio or the adjustment of operation strategy, we may adjust the strategy to reduce the bid to almost no clicks. At this time, the advertising cost is close to zero, but the advertisement is still running, which can avoid being forced downgraded by the system.
7. After the product is followed by others, the sales volume drops sharply
When a product is followed by others, the order is divided by the follower sellers. The follower selling of the product is the most disgusting thing in the operation.
It often leads to a sharp drop in the sales volume of the original seller of the product.
Under the current Amazon rules, it is impossible to completely avoid the follower selling of products. As sellers, we must have a countermeasure. Generally speaking, it is recommended that sellers register the local trademark of the site as soon as possible, and do brand registration on the Amazon platform after the trademark is approved. When encountering follow-selling, the follower sellers should be driven away as soon as possible by sending warning letters, placing test orders, and complaining to the platform. If these methods are ineffective, you may wish to try a service provider.
8. Sales of seasonal products drop sharply after the season ends
Some sellers choose seasonal products or products with fast replacement when selecting products, so sales fluctuate greatly with the season. From the perspective of long-term stable operation, try not to choose seasonal products. If the current situation of the products operated by the seller is like this, it is recommended to prepare a proper amount of stock before the peak season arrives to avoid putting all the money earned on inventory. After all, who knows what will happen next year!