Everything You Have to Know about Amazon Best Seller Rank(BSR)
Presumably for every Amazon seller, the more you know about Amazon, the better you can plan a successful sales strategy for your business. In the journey of Amazon, I think you have been familiar with Amazon Best Sellers Rank(BSR), and some of your products may rank well in the BSR in one or several certain categories, which also brings you some sales. Today we are going to discuss what is Amazon BSR and everything else you need to know about it.
1. What is Amazon Best Sellers Rank(BSR)?
Amazon Best Sellers Rank(BSR), also known as “Amazon Sales Rank”, is a number that Amazon assigns to a specific product based on its current and historical sales data, in other words, you can see BSR as a measure of how popular a product is within a specific category, it’s not that accuracy, though. Also, it’s one of the most researched and disputed metrics in Amazon. The product’s BSR could be found on multiple pages, including the product’s detail page, the “Best Seller” products page, as well as a category-level “Best Selling Products” page. However, since many products sell in multiple categories on Amazon, it is possible for one product to have more than one BSR. Often you’ll find a product in multiple subcategories and, somewhat less frequently, in multiple top-level categories.
The Amazon BSR ranking of a product can range from 1 to over 1 million. Generally, the lower the number, the greater the sales, and the higher the number, the lower the sales.
What’s more, it’s always changing and fluctuates on an hourly basis.
2. How is Amazon Best Sellers Rank (BSR) Calculated?
Amazon calculates the BSR of the product by considering the number of sales for the product in a given period of time compared with other products in the same category. For example, the BSR of the "best-selling" product in the category ranks first in the category, and the BSR of the second "best-selling" product in the category ranks second in the same category, and the same product may have BSR in several categories at the same time. Of course, Amazon itself does not reveal exactly how the sales ranking is calculated. It is relatively obvious that this calculation method only around sales rather than taking into account product reviews, pricing, and so on. However, the time period in which the sales are calculated is still not precise enough. Some theories believe that only sales from the last 12 hours are counted, and others posit time periods of 24 hours or more.
We believe that when calculating Amazon Best Seller Rank(BSR), sales over a longer period of time should be taken into consideration. If only the sales in the past 12 hours are calculated, all products that have not been purchased in the past 12 hours must have the same sales level. Contrary to the facts, if a product has not been purchased, the BSR of the product will drop. It also shows that Amazon takes the sales of the product for a long time as an important indicator of BSR calculation. Which means, over time, how much influence does the purchase have on the sales level.
Typically, if you want to rank well in Amazon BSR compared to your competitors, you should pay more attention to your sales, which means if you sell 10 orders for one product in an hour, and your competitor sells 5 products, your BSR will be lower than your competitors. However, if you only sell 1 product in the next hour, and your competitor sells 4 products, your BSR is still low because historical sales are also taken into account, so you will not automatically lose ( Or get) such a fast ranking.
3. Difference between Amazon Best Sellers Rank and organic ranking
For novice Amazon sellers, they might be confused by Amazon BSR with Amazon organic ranking. In fact, Amazon BSR is the ranking of products based on sales, while the organic ranking is the ranking of products in a given keyword.
Amazon organic ranking is the position of a product on Amazon’s search engine results pages (SERP) for specific keywords. The position of the product in the Amazon SERP has nothing to do with the position of the product in the current Amazon BSR. The products on the SERP are organized according to the products that Amazon thinks are most relevant to the keyword search.
For example, if I search "yoga pants" in Amazon SERP, the result of this series of "yoga pants" I get is based on the ranking of the keyword "yoga pants".
These products are organized by Amazon sponsored ads (also known as Amazon PPC) and organic ranking.
The first 4 products that appeared were paid products. They bought the ad space. At the same time, the current second and third paid products and the seventh organic ranking product are currently high BSR products (in the top 100 under specific categories).
But organic ranking does not mean that it also has a good BSR. The reason why top organic products may not have the best BSR is that when someone enters the search term "yoga pants", Amazon treats the first product in its search results as the result that is more relevant to the keyword-although it is not the best-selling one. This may be because the product has had better sales in the past, a higher conversion rate, and even higher ratings.
Both Amazon BSR & organic rankings are important, but the functions are completely different. If you want to create your own products on Amazon as a private label seller, then organic ranking matters to you. The higher your product appears in the SERP, the more likely it is that customers will click on it and buy. While Amazon Best Sellers Rank(BSR) is very suitable for estimating the sales frequency of a single product or an entire product category.
4. What can Amazon sellers get from Amazon BSR
1). Easy product research
As one of the largest online retail markets, Amazon BSR that based on sales changes has a very important reference for product research. The smaller the BSR number of a product, it means that the product is currently popular in the market, and you can get some organic orders easier. However, Amazon BSR fluctuates by the hour, and we can’t trace the past BSR of a certain product, but don’t worry, you can find a certain product or a listing of past and current BSR and other products in the Amazon BSR chart tool, AmzChart. Therefore, you can create a list of possible products for yourself by looking at the BSR fluctuations of these products.
If you have no idea about how to do product research, AmzChart would offer you some great suggestions, such as "New Hot-selling", and you will get a long list of new hot-selling products that currently have high BSR, these are good product suggestions for you.
2).Competitors research
Every Amazon seller should pay close attention to your competitors! Amazon Best Sellers Rank(BSR) can help achieve this goal by promoting competitor monitoring. Find out products similar to yours and compare their BSR, if your competitor’s product ranks higher than yours, then you should consider adjusting your keywords and optimizing your listings to promote sales and ultimately improve BSR.
By checking Amazon Best Sellers Rank(BSR) you can find all the best-selling products and their rankings under primary categories or subcategories. When you look at AmzChart and find that the BSR of some products has changed greatly, they are likely to be some seasonal products, such as paddling pools, Christmas decorations and so on which can skew the results.
3).Estimate Sales
Unlike other online markets, Amazon does not disclose the sales of a product. But with the powerful Amazon BSR, you could predict how often a product sells on Amazon. How to estimate it?
Suppose your product ranks about 1800 in the BSR. By promoting your sales, you already know that a BSR of 1800 is equivalent to about 600 transactions per month. If your BSR a month ago was 2800 because your sales were not good, and we suppose you only made 300 sales. Historically though your BSR at the same time the previous year was 400 when you made 1800 sales. And you can draw a conclusion that #1800 with 500 sales, #2800 with 300 sales, #400 with 1800 sales. Then other products with an Amazon Best Sellers Rank(BSR) similar to these figures are most likely making sales of a similar proportion.
However, as mentioned earlier, sales rankings may fluctuate between categories, so these are only estimates. Even as an estimate, this is valuable data that you can use when researching new products or tracking competitors.
5. How to improve your Amazon BSR?
We mentioned above that increasing sales will directly affect the product’s BSR ranking, so how can we quickly improve the product’s BSR ranking?
1). Product research
If you have tried a variety of promotion methods, but your product is still not being purchased, then you must think about whether your product meets the market trend, or do you need to try another product? You can't sell products on confidence alone. As for the product research methods, we have mentioned the way of selecting products with Amazon BSR, which can greatly improve your product selection efficiency. It won't be wrong to sell products that are accepted by the market, but you have to take competition into consideration.
2). Invest in Amazon Sponsored Products
A reliable way to ensure product exposure is to invest in Amazon’s advertising program "Sponsored Products." More specifically, Amazon Sponsored Products are image advertisements placed throughout the market (including organic search results).
In fact, you can bid on certain keywords to ensure that your listing only appears in the most relevant search queries.
How to find keywords for a product? Very simple! You can enter the ASIN of this product in AmzChart to query the keywords ranking for the product, which will give you some keyword inspiration. This trick is very suitable for keyword queries of competitors.
3). Get more high-quality reviews
Positive product reviews can affect sales in two ways. First, they will increase your chances of ranking higher on relevant search queries. However, perhaps more importantly, they serve as social evidence and persuade other potential customers to make a purchase.
Providing excellent customer service can certainly encourage your customers to leave positive reviews, but to a large extent getting their help requires some work.
What can you actively do to improve your BSR? The answer seems complicated, but it is mediocre: more sales are generated on Amazon than competitors. Because the sales ranking is a relative number, you must pay attention to the sales of yourself and your competitors. If you sell 8 units a day, but your strongest competitor does the same, your ranking will not improve. Meanwhile, you can track the Amazon BSR of your products and your competitors' with AmzChart and make instant adjustments for your products to boost your sales.
