With the endless sea of products available for sale on Amazon, it can be super challenging to cut through the noise to identify hidden product opportunities. One of the ways to expedite this process is to use specialized analytics software for Amazon, namely Jungle Scout.
In fact, researching products manually on Amazon is not feasible without software, as there would be so many factors that you’d have to go over for each listing.
Here are some examples of the info that you’ll need to look for:
- Estimated revenue
- Number of units sold per day
- The number of reviews
- The average ratings of the reviews
- Fluctuations in BSR (Best Seller Rank)
Imagine having to compare and analyze these factors across thousands of listings in the hope of across a winning product. It’ll probably take you at least several months before you get there, and by then, all of the numbers would have changed so much that you’d have to start all over again.
This is precisely why investing in analytics software such as Jungle Scout is a no-brainer, as it would literally save you thousands of hours in mindless work.
Jungle Scout offers a whole suite of services and products, but in this guide, we’ll go one of their core offerings: The Chrome Extension.
Instead of going through listings one-by-one, Jungle Scout will present data from dozens of listings in one glace, making it so much easier to spot favourable metrics to narrow down on potentially viable products.
The numbers generated from the Chrome Extension is powered by the AccuSales™ data analysis engine, which ensures accuracy in the monthly sales estimates, historical sales, and historical pricing data.
How does it work?
The Jungle Scout Chrome Extension is an extension you install on your web browser that gives you insights based on the listings that you have found.
Once installed, the Chrome Extension can work on any page on Amazon where there are listings. In one click, the extension tabulates revenue estimates, best selling ranks, sales velocity, and more in real-time.
You’ll need to sign up for a Jungle Scout subscription for this to work, which you can do so here. The Chrome Extension is bundled together along Jungle Scout software suite, and we’ll talk more about which plan you should go for later in this guide. For now, let’s explore what you’ll be getting with the Chrome Extension.
With the Chrome Extension installed, you’ll be able to access analytics on any Amazon page that contains listings. This would work best on search result pages, where you’ll have many listings loaded at once.
Here’s what that would look like for the search results page for ‘yoga mat’:
As soon as you click on the icon for the Jungle Scout Extension on top of the browser, the table of results like the image above will show up with the default columns that display all relevant information for the listings loaded on the page.
You’ll be able to see the price, sales rank, monthly sales, and reviews for every listing loaded on the page.
This saves you a lot of time from going through listings one-by-one, and you’ll now be able to analyze dozens of listings in just a glance.
Moreover, if you’re running the Chrome Extension on a search result with multiple pages, there’s a nifty “Load More Results” button you can use to fetch data from listings on the next page and beyond.
If that isn’t enough, the Chrome Extension also comes with additional features that you can access from the ‘Menu’ button on the top left corner. Here’s what you will see in the Menu section.
There are options to download the search results as a CSV file, analyze keywords with Keyword Cloud, perform a Google Trends search, share the results on Facebook, and even download the results as a screenshot if you want to quickly save it as an image.
We found the Keyword Cloud tool especially useful for mining commonly used keywords among the listings in the search results, as you might miss out on some potential long-tail keywords if you were to skim through the listings yourself.
Here’s what the Keyword Cloud looks like for our search term on ‘yoga mats’:
If you want even more nuanced data for any listing, clicking on its Price or Rank (whichever is colored orange) will give you a graph of how that metric has performed over time.
Here is an example of historical price data for one of the yoga mat listings in our search results page:
You can also do this with the Rank column, which gives you the historical chart for that listing’s Best Seller Rank.
If you’re familiar with Amazon’s Best Seller Rank, you’ll know that this number can fluctuate very drastically in just a short period of time when there’s a sudden spike of sales. This makes the historical graph so much more valuable when it comes to evaluating the listing’s Best Seller Rank compared to just taking the current Rank at face value.
Here’s an example of the historical chart for the Rank for one of the yoga mat listings:
As you can see, while the current rank looks pretty decent, this listing has not done so well in late 2018, where it presumably went out of stock, causing a huge jump in its Rank.
In case you didn’t know, the lower the rank, the better. A Best Seller’s Rank of #1 means that the listing is the #1 best seller in that subcategory.
Everything else you get with the Chrome Extension
On top of the features we just covered, you can also get the following data from the Jungle Scout Chrome Extension:
- Net (Profits after FBA fees are deducted)
- FBA fee
- Listing Quality Score
- Product Size Tier
- Product Dimensions
- Product Weight
Let’s see how these additional data can be valuable to your product research process.
Net and FBA Fees
The Net and FBA data points go hand-in-hand with each other, as you’d only be able to know the Net margins after calculating the FBA fee.
The FBA fee is an estimate of what you’ll be paying to Amazon to utilize their FBA services. Depending on the product you source, the FBA fee can make or break your profitability for that product.
Jungle Scout calculates the Net figure based on the retail selling price and deducting the associated FBA fees from that. This gives you a clearer picture of the profit margins you can expect from that product so that you don’t have to perform this calculation again later in the product research process.
Amazon provides the FBA calculator for free, which you can access here.
While it’s possible for you to get the calculations done yourself, the Jungle Scout Chrome Extension will save you a ton of time by doing this calculation with all of the listings for you, automating a time-consuming section of the process.
By having access to the Net data point, you’ll not only be able to make a more informed decision based on the sales velocity and revenue of a listing, but also take profitability into account.
Listing Quality Score
The full version of the Extension comes with the Listing Quality Score, which is a score that is generated by an algorithm that determines how optimized a listing is.
This covers multiple factors, but mainly focuses on keyword optimization and density. This includes keywords in the listing’s title, description, and bullet points.
Additionally, the Listing Quality Score also analyzes the resolution of the images in the listing. While the software can’t rate the quality of images other than just resolution alone, a listing with poor image resolution might present you with an opportunity to beat that listing easily by just uploading high resolution images.
In general, lower Listing Quality Score means that the listings are poor, which is a good indicator of the difficulty to compete with that listing.
If you see that most of the listing in your search results have Listing Quality Scores of more than 7, it doesn’t automatically rule out that niche. It just means that the listings have the basics covered when it comes to listing optimization, and it would be harder to compete with those compared to poorly made listings.
Product Dimensions
The Chrome Extension also provides data on a product’s size tier, dimensions, and weight. While these factors are also used to calculate FBA fees and the Net figures, knowing these figures beforehand can be beneficial in other ways.
This is because these figures can give you a good guess on how much it would cost to ship the product from China.
Shipping costs play a huge role in your final landed cost, which is the total cost incurred to get your product manufactured and shipped to the final Amazon warehouse.
The Chrome Extension also allows you to filter results, which means you can filter out products that are too heavy or large to discard products that are too costly to ship anyway.
Top Tier Customer Support
On top of all of the incredible features that we’ve outlined in this review, you can expect top-notch customer support from Jungle Scout no matter which plans you opt for. Their customer service team is super responsive and would be able to help you out with any concerns you might have.
Pricing
As we’ve alluded to earlier in this guide, the Chrome Extension is bundled together along Jungle Scout’s software suite. Jungle Scout made this change recently to offer a better value for Amazon sellers who want to use their software, and we think the new bundled deal presents an even better value for your money.
The rest of Jungle Scout’s software pair really well with the Chrome Extension to give you a streamlined research process on what to sell on Amazon.
Jungle Scout’s subscription comes in 3 plans, namely Basic, Suite, and Professional that costs $39/mo, $69/mo, and $129/mo, respectively.
The Chrome Extension comes bundled with all 3 of these plans, where the only differences between the more expensive plans are access to Jungle Scout’s web app features, which you can learn more about in our full review of Jungle Scout here.
Keep in mind that access to the Chrome Extension alone is identical across all 3 plans.
So which plan should you sign up for?
If you are new to selling on Amazon and just want to do some preliminary research, we think the Basic plan would suffice.
Once you’ve got the hang of product research, you’ll want to move up to the Suite plan where you get a lot more access to the web app, unlimited searches, tracking more products at once, and more.
As for the Professional plan, that’s only something you should consider if you already have several products selling on Amazon and want to start building a team to scale your product research to expand your Amazon business.
With that said, there’s an exclusive offer available that gives you a 30% discount off your subscription. This should make Jungle Scout that much more affordable and give you a kickstart towards your journey of selling on Amazon.
Be sure to take advantage of this offer if you plan on selling on Amazon! To claim this offer, simply sign up here. Each of the plans also comes with a 14-day guarantee, so you get to try it out risk-free.
Our Ratings
Effectiveness
There’s no doubt that Jungle Scout is highly effective in increasing your efficiency in product research. It’s without a doubt a requirement if you’re serious about product research as you simply can’t access certain data points on Amazon listings on your own.
Price
Considering the amount of time and effort that Jungle Scout will save you in the product research process, the price of the subscription is well worth the cost.
Ease of Use
Jungle Scout is incredibly easy to pick up with it’s straightforward UI and intuitive controls. Even without prior experience, we’re sure anyone can easily utilize Jungle Scout to come up with great product ideas.
Support
Jungle Scout’s support is easily reachable via email and they are very prompt with their responses. On top of that, each of their offerings comes with a 14-day money back guarantee where they will gladly refund your payment if you’re not happy with the software for whatever reason.
Final Thoughts
The Chrome Extension allows new sellers to validate product ideas before committing to their first product. This could potentially save new sellers from costly mistakes such as investing in the wrong product, or deciding to launch a new product that is too saturated or lacking in sales volume.
If you are interested in building a business on Amazon, it’s a no brainer to get all the help you can get in terms of analytics – which is exactly what you’re getting with Jungle Scout.
Considering the heaps of manual effort that’s needed to vet through thousands of products, we think doing so without the help of a software that automates the process is simply not feasible.
Ready to begin your journey to start selling on Amazon? Make sure to sign up for Jungle Scout here where we have an exclusive offer that gives you a 30% discount off your Jungle Scout subscription.
To learn more about product research on Amazon FBA, check out our complete product research guide here where we go through several product research techniques to source for product ideas where you can run the Chrome Extension on.
Bernard currently works full-time as a growth hacker and content researcher for HUSTLR. When he was studying in the US 2 years ago, he flipped Yeezys on eBay as a side hustle to fund his degree and living expenses. He’s currently working on his Amazon FBA business & dropshipping on the side.
