Amazon Product Opportunity Explorer: Everything You Need to Know
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When launching an Amazon business, sellers often wonder what types of products to offer. To streamline this search, Amazon provides an analytical tool called the Product Opportunity Explorer. However, this tool might not be the best fit for everyone.
In this article, we'll explore the tool’s main features to help sellers determine if the Product Opportunity Explorer is worth using, or if you should consider alternatives.
Table of contents
What is the Amazon Product Opportunity Explorer?
The Amazon Opportunity Explorer is a free tool available on the platform that helps sellers track market trends. By using it, merchants can find out what types of products customers are looking for, and identify high-demand niches for their online business. Additionally, this tool provides insights into competitors' performance, helping you adjust your strategy effectively.
Now, let's take a closer look at its key functions.
Key Features and Capabilities
The Product Opportunity Explorer lives up to its name by helping you find lucrative products to sell. It achieves this through its five main features:
Niche assessment: The Product Opportunity Explorer provides sellers with a comprehensive analysis of market trends to help you choose the best niche for your store. You can view the dynamics of the top-performing search terms for the niche over time and the best-selling items in each category. This tool also assesses the ease of entry by examining how many products from the niche have been launched in the last 30 days.
Competition assessment: This feature helps you gauge your chances of standing out in a niche by identifying the most dominant brands and assessing niche saturation. It also evaluates competition for a specific ASIN, helping you determine if you can carve out space for your product.
Customer insights: The Product Opportunity Explorer also provides customer review snippets, giving sellers valuable insights into how customers rate products and which features they prioritize. This way, you can make informed decisions about your own optimization strategies.
Behavior analysis: This tool provides data on user behavior on search results pages, such as the click share for products and conversion rates for keywords. This helps sellers understand which queries are in high demand, helping you adjust your market and selling strategy.
To fully grasp its potential and limitations, it’s a good idea to give it a try on your own. In the next section, we'll provide an overview of how the finder works.
How to Use the Amazon Product Opportunity Explorer
To use Amazon’s Product Opportunity Explorer, first you need to have a professional account registered in one of the eligible countries (you can verify this on the tool's website). From there, you can explore various niches and categories to assess their potential. The tool also allows you to review the best-performing products and see average fees, such as FBA and referral fees. Additionally, you’ll find an analysis of both positive and negative reviews.
Amazon’s Product Opportunity Explorer offers valuable market insights that enable sellers to discover trending niches and products. However, when compared to other analytical tools, it may have certain limitations to its functionality. Let's examine this further in the next section.
Limitations and Drawbacks of the Product Opportunity Explorer
While Amazon's Product Opportunity Explorer was developed by the platform itself for market research, several factors can affect its effectiveness and usability. Here are some of the most commonly reported issues that sellers often complain about:
Limited filtering options: Amazon's Product Opportunity Explorer doesn’t provide enough depth of analysis due to the limited filtering options. It also makes the research process challenging, especially for new sellers who might find the data confusing without clear guidance.
Restricted availability: Amazon's Product Opportunity Explorer is not available to individual sellers. To utilize it, you need to set up a professional account, which costs $39.99:month. Additionally, it’s only available to users located in around 10 or so countries, leaving others unable to benefit from this tool.
Complex interface: Users often find the interface overwhelming, requiring extensive study to navigate it effectively and understand where to find desired information. Despite having user manuals available, the platform may not be perceived as user-friendly, leading users to spend significant time trying to grasp the various functionalities and features.
Data limitation: The Product Opportunity Explorer provides historical data within limited timeframes. For instance, for search terms, it covers periods of either three months or one year, while data on units sold and average prices is available only for as far back as the last 90 days. The tool has flexibility in terms of adjusting to view statistics over different time periods to make informed decisions.
Data clarity: While the Product Opportunity Explorer provides a wealth of data, interpreting it accurately can be difficult, especially for new sellers. Misinterpreting this information can lead to poor business decisions. This tool is best suited for more experienced sellers who understand Amazon’s nuances and can use the data effectively for business optimization.
Despite numerous advantages of Amazon's Product Opportunity Explorer, some sellers may find the functionality lacking, prompting them to consider alternative analytical tools. Let's explore one such option in the next section.
Alternative to Amazon’s Product Opportunity Explorer
One popular option is the AMZScout Seller’s Bundle, which offers a range of features designed to help sellers succeed on Amazon. These tools provide accurate market analysis data and facilitate product promotion.
Here's what sellers have at their disposal:
Market research: With AMZScout’s Product Database and PRO Extension, you can find the best product ideas that fit your business model and analyze niche profitability to assess market trends. There is also a built-in feature to find suppliers on Alibaba.
Keyword research: Three keyword research tools assist sellers with analyzing customer preferences by revealing the most frequently-searched terms. This insight not only helps with the product selection process by understanding customer demand and expectations, but also assists in enhancing SEO strategies to boost organic traffic.
Listing creation: The AI listing builder generates SEO-optimized text which boosts product visibility instantly. To make your content more personalized, a set of best practices and Amazon guidelines is available to steer you as you develop effective strategies.
Listing and PPC optimization: The Keyword Search and Reverse ASIN Lookup tools help sellers discover effective keywords to optimize listings, while the Keyword Tracker allows you to monitor keyword performance over time to refine your PPC strategies.
Competitor Analysis: With Stock Stats, you can view your competitors’ inventory levels and what type of business model they utilize (FBA, FBM, or Amazon). The Dropshipping, OA, and Wholesale Extension displays the Buy Box price, also helping sellers perform competitive analysis, while other tools in the bundle track their selling performance and pricing fluctuations, allowing you to adjust your own strategy and analyze competitors' keyword strategies.
Having all of these tools in one place streamlines your workflow, making it easy to manage and access everything you need without switching between different platforms. The bundle also eliminates the need for separate subscriptions, making it a cost-effective solution for sellers looking to maximize their investment. This consolidation significantly enhances business performance.
By offering the following benefits, AMZScout’s tools can outperform the Amazon Product Opportunity Explorer:
Multiple filters: Each product and keyword analysis feature includes numerous filters, allowing for highly targeted searches. For example, the Product Database offers 16 filters to help you find product ideas that best meet your requirements (including estimated revenue per month, number of reviews, and more).
Restrictions checker: With the Dropshipping, OA, and Wholesale Extension, you can check for any selling limitations efficiently, such as gated categories, private label, or items that contain hazardous materials.
Reports: These offer actionable insights with weekly reports on 19 booming products, and monthly analyses of niche and product performance to help you stay aware of successful trends and adjust your strategy for underperforming areas.
Real-time data updates: The Keyword and Product Trackers provide hourly updates on keyword and product performance. This real-time data provides a detailed history of performance to track trends over time, so you can make decisions based on the latest market insights.
Easy-to-use interface: AMZScout provides a user-friendly interface complemented by comprehensive video and text guides. Its intuitive design minimizes time needed to learn how to use the platform, allowing you to focus more on analysis than on navigating the tool.
Credibility: As an independent platform, AMZScout prioritizes accuracy and transparency. It utilizes advanced research algorithms to deliver precise data without exaggeration, ensuring trustworthy insights.
Training resources: You'll find regular webinars hosted by top Amazon sellers who share practical strategies and industry secrets. These insights empower beginners to optimize their Amazon business by implementing practical life hacks.
To help you gauge the effectiveness of AMZScout, let's explore how it identifies top-performing products below.
How to Find Profitable Products with the AMZScout Toolkit
AMZScout allows you to find top product ideas and assess their profitability for your business model effortlessly. Its user-friendly interface makes the process fast and efficient, requiring just seven simple steps.
Here's a quick guide on how to use the app:
1. Go to the Product Database. Enter your email address to start a free trial.
2. Apply filters to narrow down your search. For example, to find ideas for profitable pet products, consider specifying in terms of:
Category: You may choose a category like “Pet supplies”. You can be even more specific by including keywords like “dental treats”.
Monthly Revenue or Estimated Sales: Enter your desired numbers here, for example, a minimum of "$5,000/month" or a minimum of “200 sales/month”.
Weight: Maximum of 3 lbs to save on shipping/storage costs.
To see emerging trends, you can check the Trending Products box to view items with a 20% increase in sales over the past three months.
You can further refine filters by specifying parameters more relevant to your business model, such as competition, product rating, price range, and more.
3. Get your results. Click “Find Products” to generate a list of items that match your criteria. Select products you’re interested in to evaluate them individually in the AMZScout PRO Extension.
4. Search for a product on Amazon. Enter a niche name from the Product Database results into Amazon's search bar (for example, "dog brushing chews"). Then, click the icon in the top-right corner of the page to access the PRO Extension.
5. Evaluate the niche’s potential. Click on the Niche Score, located in the upper right-hand corner of the page. If the score is above 7, this shows that there's strong demand, low competition, and promising profit potential. If the niche seems promising, examine individual items.
6. Check the product’s performance. Click on the criteria most important to your business, such as Estimated Sales. This will sort the results, showing you the top performers in that category first. Once they’re sorted, you can review the top products for additional metrics, such as:
Look at the Product Score next to the item to assess whether it’s more suitable for reselling or launching your own brand, based on the competition, demand, and profitability assessment.
Click Product History under the product to review its sales trends, observing any fluctuations, and checking pricing changes to verify stability or growth without significant drops in the past two years.
7. Calculate profit. Click the Profit Calculator under the product and enter all anticipated expenses like purchase price and shipping costs; FBA fees are automatically included. Ensure that your profit margin after deductions exceeds 20%. If not, your business growth may not be sustainable.
The AMZScout toolkit offers additional features and functions to streamline your market analysis. With AMZScout, you can select the right products confidently and promote them effectively, ultimately driving more sales.
Amazon Product Opportunity Explorer vs. AMZScout Seller’s Bundle
The main functions of the Amazon Product Opportunity Explorer and AMZScout’s toolkit are very similar. Both tools provide insights on market trends, niche performance, and search terms. However, there are a few significant differences, including:
Additional features: AMZScout includes detailed competitor analysis, such as stock levels, two years’ worth of historical data on sales trends and pricing fluctuations, hourly keyword performance tracking across marketplaces, and more.
Customization: AMZScout allows for extensive filter customization, enhancing the accuracy of product research. The Product Opportunity Explorer offers fewer options, limiting market analysis depth.
User-friendliness: AMZScout features an intuitive interface with clear guides, contrasting Amazon's complex reports and the usability challenges of Product Opportunity Explorer.
Functionality focus: The Product Opportunity Explorer and AMZScout offer distinct tool sets that complement each other rather than competing directly. The Product Opportunity Explorer provides customer review snippets and tools to help sellers understand customer preferences, while AMZScout offers detailed analysis designed to identify the best products suitable for your business model.
Conclusion
It's a matter of personal preference which tool to use, as each has its own strengths and unique features for market analysis. However, the AMZScout toolkit and Product Opportunity Explorer are not mutually exclusive. Combining them can broaden your analysis perspective to help you find the best products to sell and launch them successfully.