Sales Down? Use Business Reports to Identify Issues and Take Action 📊
Hello sellers!
Experiencing a dip in sales can be concerning, but the good news is that your Business Reports contain valuable insights to help you identify what's driving the decline and take action to turn things around. Let's walk through how to use these powerful analytics tools to diagnose and address sales decreases.
Understanding Your Business Reports Dashboard 🤔
Your Business Reports are one of the most visited tools in Seller Central for good reason—they provide real-time data on your sales performance, traffic patterns, and customer behavior. The data updates approximately once per hour, giving you an up-to-the-minute pulse on your business.
Where to find it: Navigate to Reports > Business Reports in Seller Central
Key Metrics to Monitor When Sales Decline
When you notice a sales decrease, focus on these critical metrics to pinpoint the root cause:
Start here to get the big picture. This report shows:
- Ordered Product Sales: Your total revenue—is the decline across all products or specific items?
- Units Ordered: Are fewer customers buying, or are they buying less per order?
- Sessions: How many customers are viewing your listings?
- Conversion Rate: What percentage of viewers are actually purchasing?
What to look for: If sessions are down but conversion rate is stable, you have a traffic problem. If sessions are steady but conversion is dropping, you have a listing or pricing issue.
2. Detail Page Sales and Traffic by ASIN 📄
Drill down to individual product performance to identify which ASINs are driving the decline:
- Page Views: Are customers finding your products?
- Units Ordered per ASIN: Which products are underperforming?
- Featured Offer Percentage: Are you losing the Featured Offer?
Pro tip: Sort by sales volume to identify your top performers, then look for significant drops in their metrics.
3. Featured Offer Percentage ✨
This metric shows how often your offer appears as the Featured Offer. If this percentage drops, you're losing visibility and sales to competitors.
Action item: Check your pricing, shipping speed, and seller performance metrics if your Featured Offer percentage is declining.
Common Drivers of Sales Decreases and How to Spot Them
1. Traffic Issues
- Symptom: Sessions and page views are down
- Possible causes: Lost organic search ranking, reduced advertising spend, seasonal trends
- Where to check: Detail Page Sales and Traffic report, compare period-over-period
2. Conversion Issues
- Symptom: Traffic is steady but units ordered are down
- Possible causes: Pricing not competitive, poor product images, negative reviews, out-of-stock items
- Where to check: Conversion rate in Sales and Traffic report, customer reviews, pricing health
3. Inventory Problems
- Symptom: Sudden sales drop on specific ASINs
- Possible causes: Out of stock, suppressed listings, stranded inventory
- Where to check: Inventory reports, listing quality dashboard
4. Competition Changes
- Symptom: Gradual sales decline with stable traffic
- Possible causes: New competitors, competitors lowering prices, losing Featured Offer placement
- Where to check: Featured Offer percentage, pricing health dashboard
🔁 Step-by-Step Analysis Process 🔁
Step 1: Open your Sales Dashboard and compare your current period to the same period last month and last year. Identify when the decline started.
Step 2: Review your Sales and Traffic Report to determine if the issue is traffic-related or conversion-related.
Step 3: Use the Detail Page Sales and Traffic by ASIN report to identify which products are most affected.
Step 4: Check your Featured Offer percentage—if it's dropped significantly, investigate your pricing and performance metrics.
Step 5: Review your Seller Performance metrics to ensure you're not facing account health issues affecting visibility.
Step 6: Cross-reference with external factors like seasonality, holidays, or market trends.
Taking Action Based on Your Findings
Once you've identified the drivers, here are immediate actions you can take:
- Low traffic? Increase advertising spend, optimize product titles and keywords, check search term performance
- Low conversion? Review pricing strategy, improve product images and descriptions, address negative reviews
- Lost Featured Offer placement? Adjust pricing, improve shipping times, ensure inventory availability
- Inventory issues? Restock fast-moving items, fix stranded inventory, resolve listing errors
Additional Resources
For more detailed guidance on optimizing your performance:
- Seller Central Help: Search for "Business Reports" for comprehensive documentation
- Seller University: Free courses on analyzing sales data and improving performance
- Account Health Dashboard: Monitor metrics that affect your visibility and sales
Have you identified patterns in your sales data that helped you recover from a decline?
Share your experiences below—let's learn from each other!
What specific metrics are you seeing in your Business Reports? Drop your questions in the comments, and let's troubleshoot together.
Sales Down? Use Business Reports to Identify Issues and Take Action 📊
Hello sellers!
Experiencing a dip in sales can be concerning, but the good news is that your Business Reports contain valuable insights to help you identify what's driving the decline and take action to turn things around. Let's walk through how to use these powerful analytics tools to diagnose and address sales decreases.
Understanding Your Business Reports Dashboard 🤔
Your Business Reports are one of the most visited tools in Seller Central for good reason—they provide real-time data on your sales performance, traffic patterns, and customer behavior. The data updates approximately once per hour, giving you an up-to-the-minute pulse on your business.
Where to find it: Navigate to Reports > Business Reports in Seller Central
Key Metrics to Monitor When Sales Decline
When you notice a sales decrease, focus on these critical metrics to pinpoint the root cause:
Start here to get the big picture. This report shows:
- Ordered Product Sales: Your total revenue—is the decline across all products or specific items?
- Units Ordered: Are fewer customers buying, or are they buying less per order?
- Sessions: How many customers are viewing your listings?
- Conversion Rate: What percentage of viewers are actually purchasing?
What to look for: If sessions are down but conversion rate is stable, you have a traffic problem. If sessions are steady but conversion is dropping, you have a listing or pricing issue.
2. Detail Page Sales and Traffic by ASIN 📄
Drill down to individual product performance to identify which ASINs are driving the decline:
- Page Views: Are customers finding your products?
- Units Ordered per ASIN: Which products are underperforming?
- Featured Offer Percentage: Are you losing the Featured Offer?
Pro tip: Sort by sales volume to identify your top performers, then look for significant drops in their metrics.
3. Featured Offer Percentage ✨
This metric shows how often your offer appears as the Featured Offer. If this percentage drops, you're losing visibility and sales to competitors.
Action item: Check your pricing, shipping speed, and seller performance metrics if your Featured Offer percentage is declining.
Common Drivers of Sales Decreases and How to Spot Them
1. Traffic Issues
- Symptom: Sessions and page views are down
- Possible causes: Lost organic search ranking, reduced advertising spend, seasonal trends
- Where to check: Detail Page Sales and Traffic report, compare period-over-period
2. Conversion Issues
- Symptom: Traffic is steady but units ordered are down
- Possible causes: Pricing not competitive, poor product images, negative reviews, out-of-stock items
- Where to check: Conversion rate in Sales and Traffic report, customer reviews, pricing health
3. Inventory Problems
- Symptom: Sudden sales drop on specific ASINs
- Possible causes: Out of stock, suppressed listings, stranded inventory
- Where to check: Inventory reports, listing quality dashboard
4. Competition Changes
- Symptom: Gradual sales decline with stable traffic
- Possible causes: New competitors, competitors lowering prices, losing Featured Offer placement
- Where to check: Featured Offer percentage, pricing health dashboard
🔁 Step-by-Step Analysis Process 🔁
Step 1: Open your Sales Dashboard and compare your current period to the same period last month and last year. Identify when the decline started.
Step 2: Review your Sales and Traffic Report to determine if the issue is traffic-related or conversion-related.
Step 3: Use the Detail Page Sales and Traffic by ASIN report to identify which products are most affected.
Step 4: Check your Featured Offer percentage—if it's dropped significantly, investigate your pricing and performance metrics.
Step 5: Review your Seller Performance metrics to ensure you're not facing account health issues affecting visibility.
Step 6: Cross-reference with external factors like seasonality, holidays, or market trends.
Taking Action Based on Your Findings
Once you've identified the drivers, here are immediate actions you can take:
- Low traffic? Increase advertising spend, optimize product titles and keywords, check search term performance
- Low conversion? Review pricing strategy, improve product images and descriptions, address negative reviews
- Lost Featured Offer placement? Adjust pricing, improve shipping times, ensure inventory availability
- Inventory issues? Restock fast-moving items, fix stranded inventory, resolve listing errors
Additional Resources
For more detailed guidance on optimizing your performance:
- Seller Central Help: Search for "Business Reports" for comprehensive documentation
- Seller University: Free courses on analyzing sales data and improving performance
- Account Health Dashboard: Monitor metrics that affect your visibility and sales
Have you identified patterns in your sales data that helped you recover from a decline?
Share your experiences below—let's learn from each other!
What specific metrics are you seeing in your Business Reports? Drop your questions in the comments, and let's troubleshoot together.
Seller_CW0P5hgbsiqWX
@Indy_AmazonThat was a nice post, and as a 3rd Party seller I feel there are a couple of issues that need to be added to the post.
RETAIL TRENDS THROUGHOUT THE YEAR:
There are annual trends in retail sales and once recognized and applied to a seller's sales, volume slow-downs are expected and accepted.
Retail Stores and online sellers expect November and December sales to by higher than the entire rest of the year. Smart retailers and sellers do not spend that end of the year extra profit on themselves, they safe it to support the slow months of January and February.
AMAZON AI AUTO-BOT TELLING SELLER'S THEIR PRICING IS TOO HIGH:
Amazon did not purchase the products sellers on the site sell. Amazon does set the commission charged for the sale and for FBA sellers, the fees Amazon will collect monthly.
To make any profit on the Amazon site, each seller must set their own offering price. The seller knows what they paid, they know the fees Amazon will charge, they know the fees charged for add-ons like advertising, and they know how much profit they need to make for themself.
Now comes along the AI Auto-Bot telling the seller their offering price is too high. Well, the product paid price cannot be changed. The Amazon fees associated with selling on the site cannot be changed. The only thing that can be changed is the seller's profit per each sale.
Nothing in @Indy_Amazonpost has any meaning if a seller cannot make any profit for their efforts.
60 replies
Seller_XJk5RkDQR39p0
My sales are down because Amazon is requiring authorization for toys.
We don't sell toys at all!. We manufacture acrylic paint.
I have a USPTO-registered brand for almost 20 years, we sell 11,000 units a year minimum, and my leading ASINs are inactive (case ID 19357428121).
This is a constant issue with Amazon.
Identifying an issue is not the problem; to have Amazon fix it is like going to a Casino.
Seller_xo4Akj7FBBnfC
Could it be that sales are down because Amazon makes relevant information harder to find on our product pages, while flooding each page with at least forty-two (42) ads for lower-priced knockoffs?
Seller_2ocdeVST6pSqj
Indy_Amazon For you to post this article Amazon must know something is wrong that isn't being discussed. Amazon changed something and its not being transparent what. Yes a bad winter storm came into play but that doesn't account for everywhere. I find it odd you list possible causes when I think those causes are Amazon's doings.
Seller_6dteC8l4ykexe
The most key point is amazon's traffic become less than last year !
Seller_SqEs1KGGTpWyF
An amazing and well laid out dashboard.
Seller_SqEs1KGGTpWyF
That post was created 3 days ago. If they would be happy to do so, why haven't they?
Seller_Vjnwgi5MFIKNy
My sales are down because Amazon restricts products that I try to send that are out of stock because they think I have too much stock.
Seller_aNsixtdBpnLRG
Our sales are down b/c Amazon continues to support China sellers and could care less how it might support small business in the US that helped it to become the dinosaur it is today
Seller_4HsL3GZbyDLea
Why not open source your sales algorithm? That is the source of all the manipulation.
Seller_klhSOGtfaCFgw
its good information ,however you have to consider that the average amazon seller is not in a position to spend hours analyzing that kind of information and then making changes I wish it was tht simple. In short amazon is no longer a partner with 3rd party sellers ( the base that built this huge platform) instead have shifted its attention to **how can we squeez more money from our sellers WHO HAS NO RECOURSE against a giant. I ncreasing fees, coming up with creative fees, suddenly disrubting daily sales even shutting down accounts that have been selling for years without problems (just because some AI calculated or detected a red flag) . in short it is becoming real challenging selling and making a decent profit on this platform.
