May 14, 2019

Amazon Retail Analytics is a powerful tool provided by Amazon for its Vendor Central account sellers. Every vendor gets access to the ARA basic version once they set up an account and this package includes sales and inventory reports, catalog reports, and operational reports. The ARA Premium version comes at an additional cost and provides a lot more features to help sellers analyze their business more efficiently. Let’s see the difference between the ARA Basic and Premium versions in this blog. Amazon Retail Analytics Basic ARA Basic access is given to all vendors and it is, without a shadow of a doubt, the most powerful tool to understand metrics and reports. Currently, ARA Basic provides the following reports: Sales Diagnostics Traffic Diagnostics Operational Diagnostics Forecast and Inventory Planning Inventory Health All these reports can be filtered based on the brand, category, subcategory, product group, and replenishment code to include more details on the report. As the name suggests, the reports on sales & operations are basic, and the data history is limited, although it is free. ARA Premium ARA Premium is found under Reports -> Amazon Retail Analytics Premium. It comes at a cost of 30K per year subscription. It is more robust compared to the basic package and it provides a multitude of reports and data. ARA Premium provides access to the following and a few more: Reports on sales & operations Reports on traffic Reports on consumer behavior Data availability Customer reviews Scheduled email reports Real-time sale There are also different metrics available in ARA Premium. For example, In Sales Diagnostics, there is an additional metric called “Ship Revenue”. In ARA Basic, “Ship Cost”, is the only metric available. The other stand-out feature in the Premium package is the Search terms. Here, you get access to Amazon’s top 100 search terms. ARA Premium provides the vendor with a strong understanding of revenue and also provides insights, helping him understand where revenue is generated, what the competition is, what the customer behavior is, and most importantly, it provides ASIN level performance metrics. Simply put, it provides more actionable data and sorting options to help detailed analysis. Buying the Premium package is totally up to the seller and the stage at which he is in his Amazon journey. The Purpose of ARA Reports – How Do We Benefit From Them? By leveraging data from ARA reports, vendors can refine marketing efforts within Amazon and across other channels as well as drive traffic back to Amazon. As a seller, it helps you analyze the following in order to come up with actionable strategies. Traffic & conversion Content & visibility Availability Consumer behavior Returns Price, Lost Buy Box Competition The biggest challenge is analyzing a huge volume of data, interpreting it, and utilizing it, to make the necessary changes in the business model.