Jungle Scout Review: Amazon Product Opportunity Research Tool

Jungle Scout Review: Updated January 2016

Jungle Scout 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 Jungle Scout icon while you’re on any Amazon page and it will show you everything you need to know about the products on that page.

There is both a Lite ($87) and Pro ($147) version of the tool.  In this Jungle Scout Review, I’ll outline the differences between the two versions.  There’s also a web app that has a monthly fee, but the functionality is quite different, so I won’t be including it in this review.  You can sign up for a free trial if it’s something you’d like to learn more about.

Jungle Scout Review: How It Works

The first step is to do a search on Amazon.com to pull up a results page (although Jungle Scout 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, an overlay will appear on your screen like this:

You’ll notice summary stats at the top of the page that show the averages across the page.  This gives you a high level overview of the market’s potential before you start digging into the details.

Notice that the first result in the above example is the Wilton brand spatula (that’s the blue set in the screenshot of the Amazon page, although the product name was cut off).  If you take a closer look at the Amazon page again, you’ll notice that there are three sponsored ads that show up at the top of the page.  Jungle Scout only shows you the organic results, so the ads are NOT included.  All the data can be exported into a CSV file for future reference.

You’ll see 9 columns to the right of the Product Title:

• Brand
• Price
• Category
• Rank
• Estimated Sales (Monthly)
• Estimated Revenue (Monthly)
• # of Reviews
• Rating
• Buy Box Seller

While this gives you most of the basic information you’d need to make an educated decision about an opportunity, it would be nice if the Lite version gave you more detail.  There are Jungle Scout alternatives like ASINspector that provide you with more information at a lower cost.

One thing I really like about Jungle Scout is that you can see variation details for products as well.  The OXO brand spatula has a Small and Large version.

If I use the tool while on this page, it’ll pull up the following results.  You can see that it shows me the Rank for each variation individually (highlighted in orange).  This is very helpful when looking at a product that has lots of variations.

The results that are shown below the variations are things like the Frequently Bought Together products.

You can also run Jungle Scout on Best Seller pages or competitor store pages, which is very useful to generate new product ideas.

Another really cool feature of Jungle Scout is that you can save a generic screenshot of your results to get feedback from other sellers.  If you click on the camera icon shown in the bottom right hand corner, it’ll generate a .png file that you can download.  Here’s what I downloaded for the “silicone spatula” search:

All the data stays in tact, so you could post it to a forum for feedback on the opportunity with little concern of people knowing what product you are researching.

Jungle Scout Review: Features – Pro Version

In addition to everything available in the Lite version, you have the option to view additional columns with the Pro version:

If I choose to display all the columns, I’ll get the following results:

Most columns should be self explanatory, but let me clarify a couple that could be confusing:

• FBA Fee – This includes both fulfillment fees and the referral fee (commission)
• Tier – This designates the “size” status of the product (i.e., Standard vs. Oversize)
• Net – This allows you to input assumptions to come up with an estimated profit for the product

As an example of the “Net” feature, if I click on the $6.80 for the first OXO brand product, the following box will appear.  I can input an assumed (delivered) Product Cost ($2.00 in my example) and it will calculate an expected profit of $4.80 per unit.

Jungle Scout Review: Conclusion

The cost seems a little on the high side for both the Lite and Pro versions, but it’s really an excellent tool. It’s very simple to use and the user interface is easy to read.

Choosing between the Lite and Pro version is really a personal decision.  In my opinion, the only extra columns worth having are FBA Fees and Tier, so that’s how I’d recommend you weigh the decision.

If you’d like to learn more about the tool, please review the official Jungle Scout page.