Best sellers first: prioritising rank tracking on otto.de by revenue

Why not simply track everything?

Every check of a search term costs time and, with tools that have a quota, money. A catalogue of 3,000 products with five terms each makes 15,000 checks per run. That is possible, but the analysis drowns in numbers: nobody looks at 15,000 positions. What matters is that you see the movements of the products that carry your business.

Revenue distribution on marketplaces is almost always skewed. A handful of products make most of it, a long tail makes almost nothing. Your tracking should mirror that distribution.

The controlling report gives you the order

In OTTO Partner Connect, under Controlling, you find a product table with revenue per item for the chosen period. Export it as a file. It contains product title, product reference, SKU, EAN and revenue. Use the last 30 to 90 days as the period: long enough to even out chance, short enough to show the current season.

A rank tracker that reads this file attributes the revenue to the products and sorts the catalogue by it. Add up the variations of a product, since they share one product page and therefore one position.

Switch on the first 20 products

1. Sort the list by revenue, descending.
2. Switch on tracking for the first 20 products. Skip products whose marketplace status says they are not online: they cannot rank until they are back online.
3. Have the five most important search terms found for each product, for instance from otto.de's search suggestions, and check them once by hand.
4. Set the check for these products to daily.

After a week you have a baseline for 100 terms and see where the best sellers stand. That is the basis for every further decision.

Bring in the rest step by step

Then extend in stages: products 21 to 50, then 51 to 100. For these a weekly rhythm with three terms is usually enough. Leave out products with no revenue in 90 days until they give you a reason, such as an ad or a new listing.

Repeat the controlling export monthly. Switch on products that newly rise into the top 20, and move products that drop out back to weekly. That keeps the tracking small and following the business.

What you see with it

• Whether a best seller holds page 1 for its head term or slips, on the day it happens.
• Which best sellers are not found at all for important terms although they sell. Those are the most rewarding listing corrections.
• Which low-revenue products already rank well and could become best sellers with an ad or a better price.

Frequently asked questions