Legendary band The Police once lamented “Too much information/Running through my brain” in the Eighties. It’s a problem today too, one that’s found entrepreneurs developing ways to make Big Data a little more digestible.
Algopix offers a product marketing analysis solution that can help sellers understand better where to sell and source their products. Kelley Hafer, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Algopix, gave EcommerceBytes some insights into how her business works and what it offers to sellers. The process starts when a client submits a piece of data for analysis.
“Our primary goal is to make it as easy as possible for sellers to simply take a price quote they receive, upload it into Algopix and receive insights with as minimal effort as possible,” Hafer said. “By simplifying this process, Algopix reduces a lot of the heavy lifting sellers traditionally need to do to understand what products to buy and the best market to sell these products.”
“Creating a system that processes this information and provides these product and market recommendations automatically saves time, reduces potential human error in calculations and takes the guessing game out of purchasing decisions,” Hafer continued. “We’ve also noticed that most of our sellers get pretty excited when we tell them we can spare them a few hours in spreadsheets.”
Sellers and other interested parties have been using Algopix to help get ahead of trending items, via visits to the Algopix site and using the single-search function there. Said Hafer: “We have actually seen a trend around search volume and product buzz (this is an obvious assumed trend but it was interesting for us to see the actual data in our system.)”
“For instance, we saw a huge spike in user searches for the Nokia 3310 following the announcement. We see similar trends for products that originate offline as well – our conclusion is that for a great product or a big trend (sometimes that aren’t synonymous), people are searching for it on and offline.”
Algopix’s Value Proposition: Actionable Data
Algopix collects raw data from different marketplaces including product data (description, size, image, product identifiers), product sales, and competition data (different prices across markets, lowest price, ranking, categories). It also collects data around expenses, including marketplace fees, FBA fees, shipping cost, and estimated taxes.
“From the raw data we collect, we use various calculations to provide sellers with estimations about market price, demand and profit margin,” Hafer said. “This is done across several markets selected by the seller during the list uploading process. With all of this data in the system, we then use our proprietary algorithm to make “yes/no” buying recommendations for the seller so they can determine if they should move forward with purchasing any of the products from the list they provided.”
Hafer noted that merchants selling on multiple marketplaces can find it difficult to get a holistic view of demand, price and other critical data points in one User Interface. “With Algopix, users have the ability to select which marketplaces they would like to analyze so even if a seller isn’t actively selling on eBay or Amazon, they can still see the data to help use in their overall strategy.”
Sellers with an interest in getting started on Algopix will find the following best practices to be a good jumping-in point, Hafer said.
1) Start with your current list of inventory to understand the data points that Algopix provides and to familiarize yourself with how it works. From here, you can also start to identify potential new channels to sell your current inventory or validate that your current channels are in fact, the best channels.
2) Once you’ve familiarized yourself with the system, upload a price list you recently received from a supplier. Use a list from one of your trusted suppliers so that you have a better understanding of the data and can provide feedback, ask questions, etc., as needed.
3) Algopix wants to make a seller’s life as easy as possible but also wants to make it as accurate as possible. Implementing the recommendations will be most successful if you have a system in place to measure the impact on your business.
A new release of Algopix arrives this August, with recommendations based on analysis by their algorithm debuting as a feature. “By allowing sellers to simply upload a CSV, select the eBay and Amazon markets of interest and continue on with their day while we do the analysis, is a game changer for many,” Hafer said. “It frees up their day to focus on other areas of the business that require more of a personal touch.”
A version of this article appeared in the June 15th issue of EcommerceBytes 411.
