Why is my sales pattern so odd?
So I sell a product that sells around 20-30 units a day. I've noticed that the sales patterns just don't really make sense. This is with no advertising being done. All organic.
I can go like an hour and a half with no sales. Then I will get 3 sales all within aroound 2 - 5 mins of each other. Then I will have another hour gap. Then 4 sales within 20 mins. All separate sales.
This is the type of sales pattern that happens every day and I am just wondering if any of you can help me understand it? Why do all my sales seem to happen in short bursts?
Does Amazon's algorithm put me at the top of the search for like 20 mins every 2 hours or something?
7 replies
Seller_ZQyopdiwkUHOZ
Basically, yeah. Having the buy box isn't an all the time kind of thing, and recent sales volume can have one product place higher in search results for a short time to see if elevated placement increases sales and so the sales rank can be re-evaluated.
Different products will also come up in Google search results at different times, so sometimes it may be that you're being seen by searches happening outside of Amazon.
The other thing is that people tend to search for things to buy at set times of day; e.g during commutes or a lunch break, which compresses sales into certain windows.
All of these are then exacerbated by ads because even if you're not running ads, your competitors will be; and they can run out of budget or have dynamic changes to their bids, meaning they populate search results more or less at different times of day, so are more or less likely to drown you out of high placement.
Seller_eAVV3xHVWD7ns
I have been in retail for over 40 years, I have managed shops and owned my own and this always happens, a really bad day followed by a great day, busy morning and dead all afternoon. It is just the nature of retailing I am afraid. it has now carried into online retail, I myself often feel that Amazon has turned me off ;) But as it has in the last 40 years, the sales always return :)
Carol
Seller_29AF2b8VJNr8z
I have the same thing with my sales, I sell in bursts, it makes no sense to me, I make sales within a few minutes of each other and then nothing for a few hours, I switch holiday mode on and off and suddenly start selling again, I personally think this is a glitch in the system, there are many glitches on Amazon like when a customer withdraws an A-Z claim and it comes back the next day. In retail there should be no patterns.
