The Amazon best sellers rank (BSR) can help you attract more attention to the products that you sell. However, the ranking follows a series of rules that cannot be influenced by simple tricks. In this article, you will find out which criteria are important for a good ranking and what advantages you can gain from it.
What is the Amazon sales rank?
As the name already suggests, your sales success can be recognised by the BSR. In addition, retailers can see how well other products in the same category are selling on Amazon. This enables them to make simple comparisons, and it can form the basis for future sales strategies.
What factors influence the best seller rank on Amazon?
Amazon has not published an official formula for calculating this category ranking. However, everything indicates that sales figures in particular exert a strong influence on the rankings. Other factors such as reviews, costs, prices and star ratings, on the other hand, do not seem to play a role.
The product that sells best within a certain category thus takes first place in that category. The second most successful product ends up in second place, and so on.
However, the same product can receive different rankings in different subcategories. This means that a smartphone, for example, may occupy a better or worse position in the electronics category than in the mobile phones & accessories category.
Although products that have been on sale for longer have more sales, newer goods also get a chance to rank higher. Older sales have a weaker weighting than newer ones.
For example, if you have sold as many products in the current week as your competitor has sold in the previous week, you will receive a higher ranking. If a retailer has not been able to make any sales for a long time, his product will fall further and further behind.
The first 10,000 positions receive an hourly update. The following positions up to 100,000 are only updated daily. Amazon adjusts all of the positions below this point once a month.
Each country shop carries out its own ranking independently of other countries. If you sell your goods internationally via Amazon, the same product can therefore have a different ranking in the German Amazon shop than in the US branch.
Why is the best seller rank on Amazon important?
Even if many people like to believe that they make their purchasing decisions completely autonomously, a number of factors play a role. Besides their own impulses, emotions, experiences, opinions and the influence of advertising and promotion, customers can also be swayed by sales figures or rankings.
A bestseller list is a very simple tool that gives customers a feeling of security. A successful product shows that there are many other buyers – and amongst these people are consumers who are apparently better informed about the product in question or have had positive experiences with the retailer.
In addition, there is often the feeling that lots of customers cannot be wrong. Disappointed customers often leave negative reviews that scare off other buyers, which means that high sales figures will not materialise in the first place.
On the other hand, sellers can do some rough market research before investing in a new product: with the help of Amazon bestseller sales figures, you can determine whether similar products have already been successful or failed.
How can Amazon best seller sales figures be positively influenced?
General and Amazon-specific marketing measures help to influence the sales figures:
- You can run promotion or advertising campaigns on various channels and considering using Amazon Ads
- Like a search engine, customers search for products on Amazon using keywords. Researching and using the most searched-for keywords can draw more attention to your products.
- Keep an eye on your competitors and study how prices are developing or what special discount promotions they are introducing. Try to adjust your own pricing strategy accordingly.
- Choose a smaller, “niche” sub-category with fewer competitors where you can achieve a higher ranking. You may also cover several subcategories to improve your chances. Of course, these should always match the goods on offer.
So there are several approaches to influence your sales figures. Ultimately, however, your product should convince buyers with its quality.
