Vendor Central offers a huge amount of potential for any retail brand. However, as Amazon is the world’s biggest ecommerce market, it’s also highly competitive. With more than 6 million active sellers and counting, you need to make strategic, data-driven decisions in order to maximise your velocity and fulfil your brand’s potential.
Vendor Central is a very distinct and nuanced sales channel, and makes use of unique proprietary metrics in its Amazon analytics tools. While these can help you uncover useful insights and inform your long-term strategy, getting to grips with its various reports and use cases can be a little daunting for the uninitiated.
In this guide, we’ll take a closer look at VC’s Amazon analytics, how it measures sales performance, inventory health, and forecasting, and how you can get the maximum value possible from this tool.
Before we get into the real-world applications of Vendor Central’s Amazon analytics, it’s important to understand the distinction between the two main analytics platforms available through Amazon Vendor Central: Retail Analytics and Brand Analytics.
Amazon Retail Analytics, or ARA, is a set of analytics reports exclusively available to vendors, giving you visibility on specific dashboards for Inventory, Sales, Forecasting, Traffic, Net PPM (pure profit margin) and Catalogue.
Amazon Brand Analytics, on the other hand, is accessible to both sellers and vendors, and provides analytics views that are more focused on buyer behaviour trends, with dashboards for top search terms, repeat purchase behaviour, and market basket analysis. For vendors operating in the US market, Amazon Brand Analytics can also provide insights into customer demographics such as age, gender, and location.
It’s worth noting that Amazon briefly (and confusingly!) renamed Retail Analytics as Brand Analytics in 2020, before re-launching an updated version of ARA in 2022 with several new data dashboards.
To access Retail Analytics on Amazon Vendor Central, simply click on the “Reports” dropdown tab, then the “Retail Analytics” subcategory. This will open an overview dashboard, from which you can navigate to different Amazon analytics reports.
All the specific reports you can access through Amazon Retail Analytics have the simple sorting and filtering functions you’d expect from popular Amazon analytics tools. Clicking on the column headers will allow you to sort by product name alphabetically, or arrange the numerical values from highest to lowest or vice versa. Opening the “show additional filters” function will allow you to limit your view to specific ASINs.
In the “Inventory” and “Sales” reports, you have the added option of filtering the data into either “Sourcing View” or “Manufacturing View”. The “Sourcing View” filters the data down to orders that Amazon fulfils exclusively from your inventory, while the “Manufacturing View” collates data for any and all ASINs associated with your brand, including those from third-party Amazon sellers who sell your branded products.
Note that manufacturing view is only available to brand owners. If you don't see this option in your Retail Analytics dashboard, then simply open a case with Vendor support requesting they activate it to access these important, additional metrics.
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Now that you know where to find Vendor Central analytics, you’ll be able to explore a range of different data sets that will provide a more comprehensive view of how your brand is performing on Amazon.
Here’s an overview of the different types of report available through Amazon Retail Analytics, the data included within them, and some of the ways you can apply them for better success on Amazon.
The Amazon Sales analytics report view gives you an overview of your sales performance by ASIN, showing the number of units per ASIN that have been ordered, shipped, or returned in a given timeframe, as well as the revenue attributed to each product. This report also contains views that can be used to compare the performance of a product in one time period vs another.
Routine analysis of your sales report can be useful for highlighting performance trends between different product lines, and determining which ASINs contribute the most to your overall success.
The key metrics to understand in the Amazon sales analytics report include:
Ordered Revenue: The revenue that Amazon has generated from sales of your products. This figure collates revenue from all products that have been ordered through Amazon, even if they haven’t shipped to the end customer yet.
Ordered Units: This is a count of the units that have been ordered.
Shipped Revenue: The revenue from orders shipped to customers.
Shipped CoGS: The cost of goods sold from items purchased by Amazon. CoGS is calculated as the cost price multiplied by shipped units.
Shipped Units: The number of products shipped to customers.
Customer Returns: The number of units that have been returned after shipping.
The real-time sales report provides a more granular view of your sales data, giving you the option to track your ordered units and ordered revenue through data that’s refreshed every hour. This view is especially helpful for vendors who run regular promotions and want to keep an eye on how well these promotions are performing on launch day.
By monitoring real-time changes in ordered revenue and ordered units, you can better contextualise your promotions-in-progress against your forecasts, and make sure there are no unexpected issues cropping up.
The inventory view gives you access to several metrics pertinent to your Amazon inventory, and acts as a handy dashboard for keeping your finger on the pulse when it comes to operational efficiency.
From here, you can check on your order confirmation rate, and the product volume that Amazon has received in a given timeframe. Monitoring these metrics will make it easier to react promptly to concerning data trends, like a high out-of-stock rate or a significant gap between net received and open purchase orders.
Some of the key metrics to familiarise yourself with in the Inventory report include:
Sourceable product OOS (SoROOS): The out-of-stock rate for any ASINs in your catalogue that are procurable by Amazon.
Vendor confirmation rate: The rate at which you’ve confirmed units requested by Amazon.
Net received: The amount received by Amazon minus the products returned to you.
Net received uits: The units received by Amazon minus returns.
Open purchase order quantity: The quantity of Purchasing Orders items that have yet to be shipped and received by Amazon’s fulfilment centres.
Receive fill rte: The received units as a percentage of confirmed quantity.
Overall vendor lead time: The time in days measured from when you receive an order to when the order arrives at Amazon’s warehouses.
Sellable on hand delivery: The number of products that can be purchased by end users on Amazon.
Unsellable on hand delivery: The number of products that can’t be purchased by end users on Amazon.
Sell through rate: The proportion of units on hand and received units that have been shipped, expressed as a percentage.
Unhealthy inventory: The units that Amazon has designated as overstock.
The Traffic report is the simplest report that makes up analytics in Amazon, and as the name suggests, only displays the traffic to your ASINs’ detail pages as “glance views” (Amazon sessions that have clicked through from an ad or organic listing to view the product.)
Though the traffic report is fairly stripped-down at first glance, you can use it to calculate your Amazon conversion rate by dividing the ordered units from your sales report by the relevant glance views figure. This can be a useful practice for measuring the impact of Amazon SEO and content optimisation campaigns.
The forecasting report shows Amazon’s estimates for future weekly customer demand for each ASIN, making this report particularly useful for supply chain optimisation and minimising the risk of under or overstocking.
It's important to note that the forecast report in Vendor Central is measuring Amazon's SALES OUT, and not the units they plan to order from you week on week. To calculate this, you’ll need to download the forecast report and overlay this with additional data points.
Some key metrics to understand in this report include:
Mean forecast: Amazon’s estimate of weekly customer demand for your products over the next 1 - 48 weeks.
P70, P80, and P90 forecasts:
Amazon’s estimate of future weekly customer demand, calculated as a 70%, 80%, or 90% probability.Net PPM is effectively Amazon’s name for their North Star metric - a measure of how profitable your account is to Amazon.
Net PPM stands for Net Pure Profit Margin, calculating your real product profitability after deducting all product and operating costs, including supplier financing and sales discounts. Through your Net PPM report, you can determine whether a given ASIN is generating a healthy profit margin, and ensure that your expenses are kept within a reasonable bracket.
The catalogue report is used to analyse the state of your catalogue’s health, providing datasets that help you flag when a product requires additional prep in order to avoid vendor central chargebacks, or manage your catalogue to ensure that your products are replenishable.
The catalogue report’s key metrics are:
Product group: The category which a given product is listed under in Amazon, e.g Home & Kitchen or Electronics.
Replenishment category: The status showing whether or not Amazon will reorder an ASIN.
Prep instructions required: The current prep instructions required for Amazon to receive an item at its fulfilment centres, for example bagging, bubble wrap, or ASIN stickering.
Prep instructions vendor state: The party that certified a product’s prep instructions.
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Aside from the core vendor analytics reports looking at your sales and shipping performance on Amazon, there are several additional features you can leverage to uncover useful insights about how Amazon shoppers use the platform, and the steps you can take to better align your brand with current customer sentiment.
Here’s a closer look at the additional reports on Amazon Brand Analytics and the insights you can glean from them.
The Amazon Search Terms Report lists the organic search terms entered on Amazon, alongside their associated metrics like the #1 clicked ASIN, product title, and the proportion of clicks that each product earns from a given search term.
This report can be useful for SEO and Amazon listing content optimisation, allowing you to understand the most relevant search terms that Amazon shoppers use to find products like yours, while also flagging any negative search terms that may be a drain on your ad spend.
Repeat Purchase Behaviour
The repeat purchase behaviour compares the proportion of your customers who are first-time buyers, versus those who made a repeat purchase. This report is particularly useful if you sell consumable products, and want to assess whether the customer experience is prompting previous buyers to buy your product again.
The Market Basket Analysis report shows the rate at which customers buy one of your ASINs alongside another in the same Amazon order, highlighting the most complimentary products based on your customer behaviour.
This report is a great way to decide which of your products you should use to create bundles or cross-sell in order to maximise the value of each Amazon basket.
The Item Comparison and Alternate Purchase Behavior report displays ASINs from other vendors that your customers have viewed alongside your products, as well as the ASINs Amazon shoppers are most likely to purchase after viewing one of yours.
This view is useful for competitor research, showing which brands are your biggest competitors, the kinds of products that shoppers are most likely to purchase instead of your own, and the kinds of products that customers are most likely to compare with yours before making a purchasing decision.
A close companion to the Item Comparison and Alternate Purchase Behavior report, the Alternate Purchase report shows the most-purchased alternative ASINs bought by customers who viewed your products, but didn’t make a purchase.
By reviewing this data, you can give yourself a strong starting point for further analysing your close competitors, and determining what kind of content or product features are convincing your target audience to choose competitor products over yours.
As the name suggests, the Demographics report attributes performance data to various demographic categories of your US-based Amazon customer base.
From here, you can see the ordered revenue and ordered units attributed to different segments of Amazon users, classified by age, education, household income, marital status, and gender. By identifying trends through the demographics report, you can personalise your ad campaigns and detail page content to appeal to your customers based on their distinguishing features.
Now that you know what kinds of reports you can generate using Amazon analytics, you may be wondering, “how should I use all this data?”
Here’s four of the most effective ways to apply Amazon analytics to your vendor strategy, and optimise your performance with targeted, data-driven decisions.
Before you leverage data to optimise your Amazon performance, it’s important to decide what you want to learn from Amazon analytics.
Whether you’re concerned about not hitting your sales goals, want to make sure your brand is in-step with your close competitors, or anything else, going in with a clear objective will help you sort through various data sets and find the metrics that are most important for you.
If for example, you’re looking to apply specific and achievable sales targets to single ASINs or product groups, you might want to use the Sales report to routinely analyse your ordered revenue, shipped revenue, and returns. From there, you can compare performance trends between different ASINs to determine realistic growth targets.
When you approach amazon analytics with clear end goals in mind, you’ll be able to benefit from more efficient and methodical analysis, and avoid becoming confused or fatigued by a mesh of irrelevant data points.
By familiarising yourself with analytics on Amazon, you can make better-informed strategic decisions about which products to push through PPC advertising, the price points you should set for them, and the steps you’ll take to out-perform your competitors.
The Sales report, for example, can help you highlight your top-performing ASINs to inform more efficient use of your marketing budget, while the Item Comparison and Alternate Purchase Behavior report can help you develop a strategy for detailed competitor research, and future marketing initiatives or product development.
By tapping into these in-built Amazon analytics tools often, you’ll be able to prioritise tasks and develop a long-term strategy that better aligns your brand with the conditions of the market.
Amazon’s fulfilment process can be confusing for even the most experienced vendors. However, if you’re able to get to grips with analysing your inventory management, order fulfilment, and shipping, you can target operational shortcomings and streamline your Amazon supply chain for greater efficiency.
Metrics from the Inventory report like Sourceable product OOS (SoROOS), Vendor Confirmation Rate, and Open Purchase Order Quantity can help you keep a close eye on the stock levels for popular ASINs, and take proactive measures to ensure these products are consistently available to customers.
The Overall Vendor Lead Time metric, on the other hand, can be used to compare your lead times with industry averages, then search for possible bottlenecks in your supply chain and take steps to remedy them.
With a well-informed approach to operational efficiency, you can work to reduce your costs, while increasing customer satisfaction and profitability.
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Amazon analytics can also be a great tool for improving the shopper experience, retaining more customers, and developing brand loyalty over time.
One way of doing this is to investigate your Repeat Purchase Behaviour report, and compare its metrics to returning customer benchmarks in your product niche. If your ratios are lagging behind, you may want to create new pack sizes or enrol in Subscribe & Save to offer your customers more value and encourage repeat purchases.
The Market Basket Analysis report, on the other hand, can help you identify good opportunities for creating bundles that reflect your customers’ tastes, helping to improve customer satisfaction while increasing your average order value.
By methodically improving the customer experience based on these data sets, you’ll be able to foster a more consistent flow of sales on Amazon and stimulate your brand’s long-term growth.
We hope this guide has helped clear up some of the confusion that can come with navigating Amazon analytics, and helped you form a clearer strategy for growing your business with data-backed decision-making.
For future reference while you get to grips with the dashboards, here are some FAQs about using Amazon analytics tools.
What’s the difference between Amazon Retail Analytics and Brand Analytics?
Amazon Retail Analytics (ARA) is exclusively available to brands selling through Vendor Central, and offers dashboards for Inventory, Sales, Forecasting, and other analytics categories. Brand Analytics, on the other hand, is available through both Seller and Vendor Central, focuses on buyer behaviour trends, with dashboards such as Search Terms, Repeat Purchase Behaviour, and Market Basket Analysis.
What types of reports are available in Amazon Retail Analytics?
Amazon Retail Analytics’ data is divided into seven reports:
Sales
Real-Time Sales
Inventory
Traffic
Forecasting
Net PPM (Net Pure Profit Margin)
Catalogue
How do I access Amazon Retail Analytics?
You can access Amazon Retail Analytics from anywhere on Amazon Vendor Central by clicking on the “Reports” drop down tab, then the “Retail Analytics” subcategory. This will open an overview dashboard where you can navigate to different reports, such as Sales, Real-Time Sales, Forecasting, etc.
Amazon analytics tools offer vendors a wealth of data to streamline operations, optimise strategy, and boost customer satisfaction. From tracking sales trends to uncovering operational inefficiencies, these insights empower brands to make data-driven decisions and stay competitive in the fast-paced ecommerce market.
At WAKE, we understand the complexities of navigating Amazon analytics and turning data into action. Whether you’re looking to improve operational efficiency, enhance the customer experience, or fine-tune your long-term strategy, our expertise can help you unlock your full potential on Amazon.
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