Understand which products are selling well, which products produce the most gross margin / unit, product affinity and more
Key Topics
Dashboard Description
Knowing what products are selling, which products produce good gross margin per unit, and which products are typically purchased together is critical to optimizing your product portfolio and your overall business. Use this dashboard in conjunction with the Inventory Dashboard to make sure you always have enough of the products that matter most to your customers.
The analysis contained in this dashboard will allow you to answer questions related to your product portfolio such as the following:
- Are there any products with conversion problems due to the design / set up of the product page?
- Which products should you use as acquisition SKUs?
- Which products should you feature in emails to existing customers?
- How can you segment your customer file based on which products they've purchased?
The Product dashboard is split into five sections:
PDP Performance (Product Detail Page)
The Product Detail Page Performance visualization contains detailed data focused on the performance of your product pages. This visualization shows GA reported page views, GA reported Adds to Cart, GA reported Conversions and Sales, along with the GA reported conversion rate for the top 20 products viewed in the date range selected.
This PDP Performance Report is created using the Product Page Explore
NOTES AND TIPS:
- Google Analytics utilizes product SKU for this reporting. Best practice is to always use a different SKU for bundles or Free Gifts, else your PDP performance results may be inaccurate.
- Product Detail Page performance is only available if you have Enhanced Ecommerce set up correctly in your Google Analytics instance. More information coming soon.
- Look for product pages with low conversion rates and consider the questions in the text box to the left of the visualization. Sometimes there are simple fixes to broken links / poor design that can dramatically improve conversion rates.
Top Products Sold
The top products sold section displays your top-selling products by both Revenue & Units Sold. Sometimes these two ways of looking at product sales result in a different list of SKUs depending on AOVs. This quickly illustrates which product(s) are your high volume movers (Units Sold) vs. which are driving your top line sales (Revenue).
You'll want to make sure you are always stocked with these products and they are well-positioned on your website. Running out or de-prioritizing their site presence could negatively impact your conversion rate (CVR) and your sales.
Product Assortment Optimization
The next section illustrates which products bring in the highest and lowest gross margin per unit as well as units sold for each product. The size of the circle represents the relative volume of products sold during the time period of the dashboard, with larger circles representing more units sold. The placement on the Y axis represents the average gross margin per unit sold, with circles higher on the graph representing higher gross margin / unit.
DATA TIP: HOW TO USE THIS DATA
This visualization can be broken down into four quadrants to answer questions such as "Which products should be used as acquisition products?", and "Should I raise prices on a product or bundle products together?"- Products that have few sales and a low gross margin per unit (small circles and low on the Y axis) are poor performers. You may want to think about removing these products from your assortment.
- Products that have a lot of sales and a low gross margin per unit (large circles low on the Y axis) are popular products but don’t deliver much, if any, profit for your business. You might want to consider raising the price on these products or bundling them with other products. They may still be valuable products, particularly if customers that purchases these products have higher repurchase rates than other customers.
- Products that have few sales and a high gross margin per unit (small circles higher on the Y axis) are not selling well but offer you a lot of levers to pull to increase sales. Consider featuring these product more prominently in emails and on your site, or potentially lowering the price to a point where you are still receiving a healthy margin.
- Products that have high sales and a high gross margin per unit (large circles high on the Y axis) are your star products! Feature these prominently in emails and on your site.
CAUTION:
- If you do not have SKU costs and shipping / fulfillment costs populated (either through a BSD sheet or through an integration with Shopify or a fulfillment provider), then your gross margin calculations will not be accurate.
- If you see products that appear to have negative gross margin this is likely caused by returns (our model assumes that a returned product cannot be resold so there is no revenue but there is product cost and shipping and fulfillment cost associated with those orders), or incorrect SKU cost / shipping and fulfillment costs in the BSD or coming from an integration.
Product Affinity
The product affinity visualizations show the relationship between products that are ordered together, and also the relationships between products that are ordered sequentially in a customers first and second order.
DATA TIPS:
- Strong connections between products that are in the same cart could indicate an opportunity to bundle products together with a higher price point. This is particularly valuable with low gross margin products or products with a high inventory level
- Products that are typically purchased together in the same cart or products that have a “1st purchase to 2nd purchase” connection (the bottom chart) can be used in retargeting and retention campaigns. For example if customers typically purchase product A in their first purchase and product B in their second purchase, you can create a list of individuals that have purchased product A but have not made an additional purchase, and send them an email campaign featuring product B.
Single SKU Carts
The final section of the dashboard focuses on SKUs that are typically purchased as the only SKU in a cart. Using this in combination with the Product Assortment Optimization visualization can reveal which products you might test in a bundle, raise the price, or drop completely from your assortment. If a product has a low gross margin / unit, high volume, and is often sold by itself, it may not work in a bundle so it may be best to try raising the price first.
The visualization on the left shows orders that had only one SKU in cart for repurchase customers. This can also reveal which products may do well in a subscription program. If you dig in to this data you can also see how long customers typically take between their first and second purchase of a specific product to understand when it would make sense to contact them about a subscription for that product.
Dashboard Requirements
The Product dashboard only requires a Shopify integration to work, however it does incorporate SKU cost data and Shipping and Fulfillment cost data. That data can come from Shopify, a BSD, or other integrations like Skubana. In order to display accurate margin values this cost data must be included, so if it is not in Shopify or another integration then merchants MUST fill out the SKU cost and shipping and fulfillment cost BSD sheets.
Reports
Product Detail Page Performance (Top 20)
Top 10 Products by % of Revenue
Top 10 Products by % of Units Sold
Low and High Gross Margin Products
Product Affinity Same Cart
Product Affinity 1st to 2nd Order
Only Product in Cart SKUs (Repurchase Customers)
Only Product in Cart SKUs