One of the beautiful things about entrepreneurs is their ability to create. To form a vision in their mind of a new product, imagine a company that is thriving and growing and then working tirelessly to make that vision become a reality.
A challenge all entrepreneurs face is their desire for implementing that vision as quickly as possible. Competition is everywhere and being the first to market often brings the lion’s share of the rewards.
In that rush to implementation, corners must be cut and rigid rules and processes will only slow things down and negatively impact the chances for success. This is often the case with Amazon.com stores that are launched as a secondary priority to launching the product on a company’s branded websites. An Amazon.com store audit can point out opportunities to shore up any weaknesses the store may be suffering from. Here are the top five things to tackle during an Amazon.com store audit for a store that has been live for a period of time (12-24 months or longer). A newer store that was hastily launched could also benefit from this type of audit.
- Review all of your product listings checking for TOS (Terms of Service) violations in the copy (your title, bullets and description) as well as your images and videos if you have them.
- Review all Amazon performance reports such as Inventory Performance Index, Account Health and Feedback.
- Take an in-depth look at all of your active PPC campaigns and make sure your ACoS (Advertising Cost of Sales) is at a level you are comfortable with.
- Perform a comprehensive competitor analysis to determine how your product listings rank against your competitors products.
- Gather the data to build a baseline dashboard of KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) such as sales, conversion %, total page views, profit per product, keyword performance and more. Put processes in place to update and generate this dashboard monthly (or more frequently).
After performing an audit of the above areas you will need to address any major issues you have identified such as TOS violations. You will want to immediately get into compliance with Amazon to avoid having your listing(s) suspended. There are many other areas of your store that will need an audit especially if things have been running for a while without a lot of process control and/or multiple team members performing store front operational tasks.
Once this initial audit is complete you will want to dive into deep keyword analysis, advanced PPC techniques, improving your listings and other activities to drive growth in sales and profitability of your Amazon.com store.