Which Amazon seller metrics to review every week (Part 1)

Every seller can reach the Sales dashboard and Business Reports from the Reports menu in Seller Central; Amazon's US blog describes them as the place to monitor sales and download reports. Amazon's developer documentation describes a sales and traffic report with ordered product sales, units ordered, page views and Buy Box percentage by date and ASIN, and it lists the availability as sellers, with no Brand Registry requirement. Amazon.in's Seller Central page also shows Buy Box Wins and Account Health on the dashboard. Amazon's pages do not define sessions or unit session percentage, so read those definitions in the Seller Central glossary, and check whether a conversion column is the B2B version or the combined one.

Brand Analytics is different. Amazon's pages say you need to be a Brand Representative for a brand enrolled in Brand Registry, and the US page adds a Professional selling account. It includes Search Catalog Performance, Search Query Performance, Top Search Terms and Repeat Purchase Behavior. Amazon's developer documentation lists Search Query Performance, Search Catalog Performance, Market Basket Analysis and Repeat Purchase for the India store. Demographics is US only, so do not plan around it. Confirm what your own Brand Analytics menu shows.

First, units ordered and ordered product sales. Compare the week with your average of the last four weeks, not with yesterday. A fall sends you to the next three numbers. Second, traffic: page views, or sessions where your report shows them. If traffic is down while the rest is steady, the problem is visibility, so check stock-outs, ad budgets and keyword coverage. Third, conversion, shown in Business Reports as a unit session percentage. If traffic holds and conversion drops, look at the page and the price.

Fourth, Buy Box (Featured Offer) percentage. If it falls, look at price against competing offers, stock and delivery promise. Amazon.in's seller blog lists pricing at or below competitors, Prime or FBA fulfilment and keeping inventory in stock as ways to help win the Buy Box. Fifth, advertising cost against margin. Amazon Ads defines ACOS as ad spend divided by ad revenue, times 100, and says ACOS needs to be lower than your profit margin to stay profitable. It also says there is no universal good ACOS and that new campaigns often start high. Review the number per campaign, not only in total.

All figures here are illustrative. Week one: 3,000 sessions, 180 units, so conversion is 6%, with the Buy Box at 96%. Week two: 3,100 sessions, 124 units, so conversion is 4%, with the Buy Box at 70%. Traffic did not move, so visibility is not the issue. Conversion and Buy Box fell together, so the likely cause is price or another seller winning the offer, not the images or the bullets.

The decision rule follows. Check competing offers and your own price first, then stock and delivery promise. Rewriting the listing at this point would waste a week and muddy the next comparison. If the Buy Box recovers and conversion returns to about 6%, the listing was never the problem.

Search Query Performance shows impressions, clicks, cart adds and purchases for the queries that bring shoppers to you. Amazon's US blog frames these as a funnel: impressions at the top, clicks in the middle, cart adds and purchases at the bottom. Find the step with the largest drop for your main queries. Low clicks against impressions point to the title and main image. Many cart adds but few purchases point to price or delivery. Repeat Purchase Behavior shows repeat customers and repeat sales, which is the closest Amazon-provided input for a lifetime value estimate.

Without Brand Registry, Amazon's pages say Brand Analytics data is aggregated and does not identify individual customers, so repeat behaviour has to be estimated from your own order history. Keep it simple: expected orders per customer multiplied by margin per order gives a ceiling for what you can afford to pay to win that customer. With illustrative numbers, 1.3 orders at Rs 240 margin each gives Rs 312, and ad spend per new customer should sit well below that.

A listing in its first months needs only traffic and conversion, because the open question is whether visitors buy. Once those are steady, add Buy Box and advertising cost against margin. Add the Brand Registry funnel and repeat purchase data when basic metrics stop explaining changes. Four or five numbers reviewed weekly beat fifteen reviewed rarely.

Part 2 of this guide covers the next step: setting a break-even advertising number, writing goals as a metric, a lever and a date, and keeping a one-page review sheet.