The Amazon Bestseller List – Understanding Sales Insights

The Amazon Bestseller List is updated hourly to reflect recent and historical sales of every item sold on Amazon. This list provides great insights into buying behavior and product features.

How are Bestsellers ranked?

Amazon Best Seller Rank shows how well a product is selling as compared to other products within the same category. Contrary to popular belief, the best sellers rank only takes into account sales numbers (both recent and historical). However, overall sales volume has very little to do with the rank of a product. The algorithm takes into account the most recent sales numbers, within the stipulated time.   Moreover, a product experiencing higher sales numbers may not necessarily have a higher rank. It must sell more units than other products in the same category within the given time to have a higher position.

Brand Participation Across Top Categories

The graph below shows number of distinct brands that sell products within each category. Patio, Lawn & Gardening has the most number of brands making it to Bestselling list, while apps and games have 35 brands. The higher this number, lesser the monopoly of brands in given segment. Computers and categories have 30 brands (HP, Dell being most popular) while TV and Gift cards have just 9 sources (highly monopolized by Amazon).

Highest Selling Brands on Amazon

The graph below shows the highest selling brands on Amazon platforms and their product counts (devoid of minor variations). Amazon Products (including Prime entertainment and Gift cards) rank the highest with 175 products, while Nintendo’s gaming products rank third. HP comes 4th, while Acer ranks 16th with 11 products on a whole to be listed in the Bestseller section.

Consumer Ratings and Reviews

Though it has very little to do with Bestseller Ranks, customer ratings and reviews are what makes Amazon a very popular E-commerce platform. According to the annual loyalty study, Amazon is ranked #1 when it comes to customer allegiance, while eBay, yet another popular online retailer is ranked #35 on the list. Reviews and Ratings from consumers have a direct impact on sales, enabling shoppers to find out more about a product before buying.

Most Reviewed Brands on Bestseller List

The graph below shows brands on the Bestseller list to receive maximum reviews. Amazon, being the highest selling brand has the most number of reviews (dominated by Gift Cards). Amazon Basics, the Amazon market for small electronic goods and accessories ranks second with only 0.57 million reviews. NETGEAR, SanDisk and Microsoft rank 5th, 6th and 7th with 0.7 million reviews. Reviews and sales numbers being proportional only applies for Amazon here, while for the rest of the brand, there isn’t much correlation between these measures.

Least Rated Bestsellers on Amazon

Reviews and ratings don’t have much impact on Bestseller ranks. Some of the least rated products and brands have made their way up to the Bestseller list, least rated on this list being Scary Home Studio’s app.  The three least rated products on Bestseller list are gaming apps, with a rating of just 1. Apps and games is the category with the most number of least rated products to come on Bestseller list. The graph below shows products rated between 1 and 2 to be present on the Bestseller rankings. For a full list of Bestsellers and other valuable data to be scraped from a variety of websites, contact us on the form below.

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