Why is Proper Account Management So Important to a Successful Amazon Seller?

Success means different things to different people, but when it comes to a successful online store, there are only a handful of key metrics that will help any seller determine how well their store is doing.

MerchantSpring’s Marketplace Manager (MM) takes the tedious task of monitoring various measures and turns it into an easily digestible and efficient way to keep an eye on what’s important.

There are at least a dozen widgets you can utilize on your MM dashboard to find out your stores’ real-time performance. A widget, according to Dictionary.com, is “a module on a website, in an application, or in the interface of a device that allows users to access information or perform a function” while everything else on the page remains the same. This article will focus on the three most important widgets in the MerchantSpring Marketplace Manager – Sales, Profitability, and Ads  – as a way of measuring success for online sellers and why it’s imperative for sellers to monitor these three areas to properly manage their accounts and, ultimately, their online stores.

Sales Mix

One of the first widgets you’ll see when you log in to your MM is the Sales Mix window. It’s especially helpful for those who have more than one store to manage and even neophyte online sellers who are still trying to figure out the industry and its intricacies. It displays each of your store’s contributions to your total sales. It can efficiently show you the sales amount, percentage, and name of the online store. The best part is that it caters to a lot of major online platforms, whether it’s Amazon, eBay, or Shopify. This is the fastest way to determine your best-performing store so you can figure out which store needs some adjustment or help.

Aside from Sales Mix, you can also take a quick look at your Sales By Channel (which shows the relative performance of each store in terms of revenue plus taxes within a specific period) and Sales vs. Recent Performance (which shows the cumulative 28-day average of week-to-date sales). At the bottom of the dashboard, you’ll also find the Trends widget, which shows the average sales for each store for the whole week. It can help online sellers figure out which stores perform the best on certain days so you can plan a more comprehensive and effective sales, advertising, or even social media strategy.  

With your MerchantSpring MM, you can spend less time sifting through data and spend more time growing your business. Through the secured MM, you only need one dashboard to monitor all selling accounts — whether you are handling multiple stores within one platform or several providers like eBay, Amazon, and Shopify. This single dashboard view also eliminates the need for VPNs or remote desktops. Sales reports can also be easily saved for printing or sharing online, which lessens the possibilities of human error when it comes to data collection and calculations. Some of the most popular reports used in the MM are Top Sellers & Worst Sellers, Account & Seller Health, Amazon Buy Box Performance, and eBay Item Specifics Diagnostics.

Profitability

The Profitability By Channel metric/widget refers to a sales figure that’s based on confirmed shipments. This data differs slightly from sales figures based on orders alone. While it is only available for Amazon stores, for now, it has become one of the most important parts of monitoring an Amazon store’s performance.

The MerchantSpring MM provides access to the Live Profitability Dashboard, which identifies your Amazon sales, costs, and profitability all in one window. The dashboard allows sellers to accurately see the sales and costs for each store or brand, which translates to an easier way to provide industry-standard Profit & Loss accounting statements for anyone who needs it — from your accountant to your investors and even for government paperwork. It also enables account managers to view the profitability trends at a product-level or store-level to determine which items are moving well and contributing to your sales, which means it will be easier to find which products need a little bit of a push for sales and which items need to be adjusted to manage its inventory.

Advertising

At a glance, the Advertising By Channel widget shows you the performance of individual ad campaigns for each store. Upon clicking the ad campaign, it will launch another page containing a more detailed overview of your chosen campaign, including the TACoS or Total Advertising Cost of Sale. In Amazon advertising, the TACoS measures how much you’re spending on advertising in relation to how much you’re earning.

According to AMZ Advisers, monitoring the value (%) of your TACoS “can help you understand how ad spending on a new product you’ve just started selling on Amazon is affecting the bigger picture… [because it] can tell you if your ads are actually helping you get more sales, including organic sales.” As a rule of thumb, the higher the percentage of the TACoS, the more revenue money you’re spending on advertisements. Ideally, online sellers want to keep TACoS flat or decreasing, which translates to an increasing or steady flow of sales in relation to ad spending. 

The MerchantSpring MM dashboard enables sellers, vendors, and account managers to see the real-time status of your Amazon account in terms of performance trends by day, campaign performance, product performance, and even keyword performance, which plays a huge role in search engine optimization and social media reach or visibility.

The MM will save online sellers and anybody working on online stores a lot of time because it does the hard work for you: It collects and links Amazon advertising performance data which allows you to focus on insights and decision making; it shows all Ad Groups in one page, so you can track and compare all your ad group metrics across every campaign, and you can customize the reporting period and select the relevant advertising metrics to fit the purpose of the reports. By using the MM’s intelligent filters, you can even determine which keywords and campaigns work best for your products and sales.

These are just some of the key performance indicators (KPI) that help account managers, store owners, and vendors determine the success of their online endeavour. If you’re a humble start-up trying to maximize your resources, hiring a dedicated account manager for your online store might not be in your budget just yet. A more accessible and affordable approach is utilizing online resources like the Marketplace Manager while you’re learning the ropes and trying to grow your business while minimizing hassle and mistakes, especially when it comes to putting together and analyzing reports. Whether it’s a small start-up or a huge company with thousands of SKUs, it’s important to take a long hard look at these metrics to know if you need to make adjustments to improve or maintain your store’s performance.

Want to experience firsthand how the MerchantSpring Marketplace Manager can revolutionize your online store experience? Take a look at our demo dashboard here. Start your 14-day free trial today (no Credit Card required).