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Product Variation
Product Variation

Use product variation to find items that are going to move.

Julie Steiner avatar
Written by Julie Steiner
Updated over a week ago

Introduction

In this article, you learn how to use the Product Variation tool. 

This tool uses a unique workaround to help you find top selling items in a group of similar products. For a given item of clothing or shoe, Product Variations helps you identify the top selling size and colour.

 

Example

Let's say you want to sell a brand of running shoe. 

Are you going to buy every colour and size and then hope they all sell over the next 12 months? It doesn't take a Vulcan to know that's an illogical move. The smart play is to focus your investment capital on products with a reasonably high turn-over rate.
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So, which sizes and colours do you buy?

The Product Variation tool gives you the data you need to answer that question.

 

Some background

We can't access to Amazon sales data, so we had to find another way to identify top selling variations. 

After a bit of head scratching, we had a Eureka moment. If we can't get actual sales data, we'll create an indicator of sales.

That's when we decided to count the number customer reviews for each product variation. Amazon gives this information way for free. For each verified customer review, you can see the product name and specific variation (e.g. size and colour).

What's the connection between number of reviews and sales? Here's our thinking. 

  • The greater number of customer reviews, the more the product sells. 

  • The more a product has sold in the past, the more it will sell in the future.

We know what you're thinking and yes, there are quite a few assumptions underlying that line of thought. No doubt about it. 

But as a general rule, as a guiding principle, our experience suggests the Product Variations tool delivers some pretty amazing data.
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1  Entering search data  tool

There are two ways to locate the Product Variations tool.
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a. Scroll to the bottom of the dashboard page and locate the Product Variations toolbar.

  

b. Go to the main menu on the left side of the screen. 

  1. Click the Analysis tab. A drop-down menu displays.

  2. Click Product Variations. A new window displays with the
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c. Go to the View Data page

If a product on the View Data page has variations, you can click the ASIN number. You can also see a number with binoculars in the Variations column. Click the binoculars to open the Product Variations page.


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2  Entering search data

Before using this tool, you need to select a product and collect the ASIN. 

  1. Locate the product you want to research on Amazon.

  2. Copy the ASIN.

  3. Return to Tactical Arbitrage.

  4. Paste the ASIN into the Product Variations toolbar.

  5. Add an estimated cost.

  6. Click FETCH INFORMATION. The Product Variations page displays.

  • Note: In this example, we are researching women's yoga pants.

 

3  Reading search data

The Product Variations page displays three sets of data:

  • a box of basic product information at the top of the page

  • a table with rows of products, customer reviews, and profit estimates in the centre of the page

  • summary tables at the bottom of the page

We're primarily interested in a few columns of data in the centre table and the summary tables.

  • The image below shows several rows of yoga pants. They have different colours and sizes.

 

3.1  Adding review percentages

When the Product Variations page first displays, the customer review percentages are all zero. We need to insert those percentages for the analysis.

  1. Scroll up to the top of the Product Variations page.

  2. Click the green Analysis button. The Analyze Review panel displays.

  3. Enter the number of pages of customer reviews you want to search.

  4. Click FETCH. Tactical Arbitrage searches Amazon results 

 

3.1.1  How many pages to check?

The Analyze Review panel asks you to select the number of Amazon page results to search.
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What's the right number?

It depends. Here are a couple of guidelines.

  • If the total number of pages is less than 100, search them all.

  • If the total number of pages is more than 100, choose 100.

 

3.1.2  Sorting results

After the Analyze Review completes its work, check the results in the Review % column. 

  1. Click the arrows next to Review %. The list order starts with the largest percentage.

  2. Be sure the top products (measured by percent of all reviews) are listed first.
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3.2  Reading the product table

The aim here is to find the top product variations.

Let's look at the yoga pants example.

  • The top 3 products account for 36% of all customer reviews. 

  • By the time you get to the seventh product on the list, the percentage of customer reviews drops below 2%.

  • Black is the dominant colour.

3.2  Reading the summary tables

There are two summary tables: size and colour. 

3.2.1  Colour summary

The Colour shows the number of customer reviews by colour. Almost 50% of all reviews are related to black products.
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3.2.2  Size summary

The Size summary table shows us almost 70% of all customer reviews involve products with 3 standard sizes.
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4  Moving on

You might, by now, have a few ideas about which product variations make sense for you and your business aims. The next step is to deep dive into more data.

The Product Variations page gives you some cost data as well as a link to Tactical Edge.

Keeping digging until the answer is clear.


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