A couple of questions on sales rank?

#1

How much does a sales rank tell me about the likelyhood of a product selling? If one EAN has a sales rank of 40,000, but another EAN for the same item with a more detailed title / description has a sales rank of 145,000 do I have far less chance of selling it with the second EAN? I would have thought that a more detailed title would be the better EAN to sell under?

Also, is it possible that an EAN with no current items for sale under that listing might have had a much better sales rank a few months back when there were some active listings? That is to say does the fact a product / EAN has no current items listed under it automatically demote its sales rank.

#2

Sales rank and the description of an item, though linked are in actual fact, two separate things.
Sales rank, is purely giving an idea of the number of units sold, compared to others in the same category.
So you could have two different things, in two separate categories, wildly different in rank. But the lower one could actually outsell the higher.

However, you can only sell an item on a listing, that actually matches the listing.
ie. The ean should match the listing.
So it doesn’t matter whether it’s the same item or not on two different listings as it’s the EAN that’s important.

#3

Thanks. My question was in relation to the same identical item with two (or more) different EANs to select from in the catalogue. I presume this is possible if a manufacturer produces the same model of an item at different times. However, if a seller does not have the original packaging for an item I guess it is difficult to tell which EAN the product was originally sold with.

I am curious about what effect an EAN not being selected by sellers to list their item has on the sales rank but in reality I guess there is no way to tell. I would surmise that if an item has 500 reviews then it sold more in the past and has a better sales rank. However, that would not necessarily mean it has a better chance of selling now than an identical listing with only ten reviews, especially if the item with less reviews has a title that grabs the attention of a potential buyer.

#4

Well, if there are no sellers at all then the sales rank will start to decay since other ASINs in the same category will be selling.

Not really - although it depends how far back we’re talking. As mentioned above, sales rank is not a static thing and an “abandoned” ASIN that may have previously been a strong seller will lose sales rank.

Likely a poor analogy, but you can think of sales rank as water in a bucket that has a hole in it. Eventually you’ll have none unless you get sales to top up the water. Get enough sales and you might be able to fill the bucket to the top (of the sales rank).

#5

I agree with your point. I was just stating that a higher sales rank based on past sales (a few years back) would not necessarily mean the ASIN / item listing would do better than another ASIN for an identical item in the present day. However, I take your point that if the previously better selling item stopped selling then its rank could be demoted.

In my case I am just looking at an ASIN that looks better in its title and item description and trying to figure out if I am necessarily worse off listing with that ASIN which has a lower sales rank. I think there is no way to tell as there seem to be so many variables including the listing with the less descriptive title and item description having had more sales in the past few years and having more listings under the ASIN recently.

#6

Aside from the various other things here, you need to understand this part.
Yes, manufacturers make the same products with different EAN’s. It may be because they have changed something about the product, or it’s been sold on the EU, instead of the UK etc.
There are actually a multitude of reasons for this.

However, you must sell the product you have on the listing that has the SAME ean as the product itself. It really doesn’t matter that it’s the same product or not. One listing = one EAN. There should be no deviation from this.

This in effect makes your questions immaterial to be honest. As the only listing that you can sell that product on, is the one that matches the EAN. To do different, invites trouble.

#7

You need to be careful with sales ranking on an ASIN with variants.

The ranking is usually the combined sales rank for all the different products.

This makes it really hard to work out sales rates.

#8

Actually, you can work out the individual sales rank of each product, if you use something like Helium 10.
So it’s not quite as difficult as it appears.

#9

Really? Isn’t Helium expensive?

#10

There is a free version. :slight_smile:

#11

I will investigate. Thanks

#12

Excellent. It would be interesting to see what the manufacturer would supply if asked for an EAN.