ASINspector Review: Updated January 2016
ASINspector is a research tool for Amazon sellers to analyze product opportunities with efficiency. Although it can be used to research opportunities for various business models, it generally targets private label sellers.
The tool is installed as a Chrome browser extension and does not work with any other browser. The primary benefit of a browser extension is that it’s very easy to access while you research. Simply click the ASINspector icon while you’re on any Amazon page and it will show you everything you need to know about the products on that page.
ASINspector Review: How It Works
The first step is to do a search on Amazon.com to pull up a results page (although ASINspector works on other Amazon pages as well). For this example, I did a search for “silicone spatula”. The screenshot below should be very familiar to you. You’ll see sponsored results on the top and right hand side, and organic results will be shown below.
Once you click on the icon that sits in the corner of your browser, a new window will pop up that shows the following:
There are many more columns to the right of “Price/Rank History”, but let’s focus on these since that’s what shows up in my main screen without having to scroll to the right.
ASINspector Review: Features – Standard Version
The first thing I want to point out is that ASINspector also shows the sponsored ad results first. While this probably makes sense, I would really like if it was clearly highlighted on the list and didn’t include those results in the summary stats. It can skew your analysis if you forget that the first few results are ads…
In any event, at the very top of the results page, you’ll see some summary information that shows you averages for results on the first page. This is nice because it gives you a high level overview of what kind of market you’re looking at before you even start going through some of the individual results.
Once you look down below, you’ll see that the default view shows you key information:
- Brand
- Category
- Best Seller Rank
- Estimated Sales (Month)
- Estimated Revenue (Month)
- Number of Reviews
- Review Rating
- Buy Box Seller
- Price/Rank History
Most of these columns should be self explanatory, but you’ll notice that the Price/Rank History column says “Click to see”. Clicking on the link for the first organic result (the Wilton brand spatula), the following pop-up box appears:
This basically shows you the price history of the product over time so you know how confident you should be that the current price level will be consistent over time. You can also elect to have it show you the sales rank of the product during the same period to give you a sense of how consistent demand is.
It’s hard to make use of this information when you’re doing broad based research into a market, but it’s definitely valuable information once you narrow down a market and are digging deep into an analysis of the competition.
If you scroll further to the right in the ASINspector results page, you’ll see a lot more information. Honestly, there’s really more information than you need, but the tool gives you the option to hide/show only the columns you want. The only other available columns I’d like to mention are:
- Package Dimensions
- Weight
- FBA Fees
- Actions
The first three will give you a better idea of costs. Obviously, dimensions and weight are a big factor in shipping costs, so it’s nice to know up front if something might be prohibitive. The FBA fee column serves a similar purpose as it let’s you know the Amazon fees you could expect to pay for this product (including the referral fee/commission). A nice added feature, is there’s a little button that shows you the breakdown in fees if you want more detail.
The Actions column is very interesting.
The first six columns will perform a search on various sites using the product title. It searches the following:
- Alibaba
- Aliexpress
- eBay
- Walmart
- Target
- CamelCamelCamel
These sites can basically be broken down into three categories: sourcing sites (Alibaba and Aliexpress), competitive sites (eBay and Walmart) and a research site (CamelCamelCamel). To be honest, I don’t use these much since I’ll generally search these sites using a term other than the title if I want to do extra research.
However, a couple of options in the next few columns can be somewhat useful:
- Net Payout – if you click on this button it will bring up a window that allows you to enter your delivered cost. Once entered, you can see the expected net profit and ROI after Amazon fees.
- Compare Price with Competitors – this will compare the price of the product on Amazon against prices on eBay, Target and Walmart. It’s not usually something a private label seller will need, but can be helpful if you use other business models.
- Frequently Bought Together – this will show you some of the Frequently Bought Together products on Amazon, which is nice to be able to see at a glance.
You have the option of saving the results page in a spreadsheet to save for future reference or to manipulate for further analysis.
Overall, I think the quality of the ranking estimates is pretty good. There’s no way to get 100% accurate information from Amazon, but I think they do a fairly good job of estimating sales and revenue figures for different BSR levels. Just keep in mind that they are estimates, so they should only be used for relative guidance.
It should also be noted that the above example was based on a keyword search for the term “silicone spatula” on Amazon, but you could review other Amazon pages as well. For instance, you could go to the Store page for a particular merchant and similarly analyze all the products they sell. It’s a great way to spy on your competitors for product opportunities.
The BIG disadvantage of ASINspector is that they don’t do a great job of analyzing individual product pages with variations. There’s a competing product called Jungle Scout that will actually show you the details for each child variation on a page. This is something that I think is really important, so I’m disappointed ASINspector doesn’t offer it.
ASINspector Review: Features – Pro Version
The Pro version costs $97 per year (about $8 per month). Standard offered pretty much everything I needed, so I’ve only purchased the Standard version and can’t do an in-depth ASINspector review of the Pro features. However, according to the sales page, you get everything in the Standard version plus the following:
- Spy on your competitor
- Mobile Scanner
- ASIN Product Keywords
- Manage and Save your favorites
- Import ASIN’s in bulk
- Reverse Search on Ebay
- Reverse Search on WalMart
- Related Keywords
- ASINspector Product Tracker
- Filtering with Parameters you set
- Recover and Apply Filters with your Parameters
- Show Sponsored Links
- Opening Products on a separate Page
- Loading Similar Products
- Remove Irrelevant Products
- One Click Import from App Scanner
- Brainstorm
- Import
- Reverse Search
- Related Keywords
- Store and Save
- Currently Includes the Tracker valued at $39 per month
- With the Tracker:
- Find profitable products in seconds
- Track any Product on Amazon
- Track by Revenue, Best Seller, Rank, Units Sold or any other Parameter you choose
- Set Alerts based on the criteria you set
- Track Changes in your competitor’s products, inventory, pricing, profit margins, keyword positioning and more
Maybe I’d be more inclined to sign up for Pro if these features were better explained, but he didn’t do a good enough job of showing the value to convince me that it’s worthwhile. I’m relatively happy with the Standard version as it is.
[EDIT: A reader in my Jungle Scout vs ASINspector comparison post added comments about ASINspector Pro that I think are very helpful, so I’ve copied it below:]
The Pro version has a couple of functions that I think are noteworthy:
– There is a button that reveals the amount of inventory on hand for any product. I’ve found it to be very accurate. I just tested this on one of my products and it predicted my exact number of inventory. It wasn’t just close, it was on the money. One limitation, however, is that for any number over 1,000 it simply shows “over 999” and not the actual number.
-Asinpector Pro has a useful function for anyone doing retail arbitrage. There’s a button that allows the user to upload a .csv file (a manifest). It estimates the selling prices, Amazon fees, and profitability for a lot. While I haven’t used this myself, I can imagine this could be really impactful for analyzing the profitability of different lots for anyone buying wholesale lots to sell on Amazon.
At the end of the day, is Asinpector Pro worth the premium vs. Asinpector? Probably only if retail arbitrage is part of your business model.
ASINspector Review: Conclusion
Other than not showing child variations on the product detail page, the one other thing I don’t really like is the general user interface. I can’t really pinpoint how it could be improved, but I do find that it’s a little tough to digest. Maybe it’s just boring? I suppose I shouldn’t complain because it’s not too bad and it’s really the quality of the information that matters. However, it would be nice if the interface were a little easier on the eyes.
Overall, I like the product and I use it regularly. As mentioned above, the primary drawback is that the tool doesn’t show details for child variations, but it’s certainly better than the manual research method I was using before.
If you’d like to learn more about the tool, please review the official ASINspector page
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