If you sell on Amazon, you may have noticed a metric in your
account called the Perfect Order Percentage (POP). However, many retailers do
not understand what the POP metric is and how it can be used to improve your
overall Amazon performance.
Customer satisfaction
is at the core of Amazon’s business model, and there are a number of
performance measures that Amazon uses to determine how well you are doing as a
seller. The Amazon POP metric is one of these performance measures; it tracks
the number of perfectly accepted, processed and fulfilled orders.
Before we dive into the POP metric, it is worth defining
what constitutes a Perfect Order on this channel. According to Amazon, a
Perfect Order is one that does not experience issues such as: A-to-z claims,
negative feedback, chargebacks, cancellation, late shipment, refund or a
buyer-initiated message.
Your POP score by itself is not a performance target.
However, some metrics included in this metric have performance targets and may
result in action if they fall below the stated goals. These metrics include
order defect rate (<1%), pre-fulfilment cancellation rate (<2.5%), and
late dispatch rate (<4%).[i]
While this metric is not used by Amazon as a performance
target, it can be used as a great tool for assessing your Amazon
performance and identifying areas where you can improve.
95% or higher
To review your POP metric, visit the Account Health tab,
under Performance in your
Amazon account.
Alternately, ChannelAdvisor customers can look at their Amazon 360
dashboard. Amazon recommends that a retailer’s POP metric remain over 95% at
all times. You can calculate this percentage by counting the number of perfect
orders from the past 90 days divided by the total number of orders received during
that time. You can also download a Perfect Order report for the last 7, 30 or
90 days to identify your performance by product. You can use this report to
diagnose and respond to the issues that are impacting your Amazon metrics.
Improving your POP Metric
Amazon is clearly striving for perfection with all sales,
and in order to keep your percentage over 95% you need optimised listings, the
best fulfilment options and customer services offerings. Once you have
identified your current POP percentage, the next step is to identify your
poorest-performing products. If a large numbers of refunds, negative feedback
or claims are associated to a specific brand or product, you may want to remove
this from your Amazon inventory while you try to rectify any issues.
Amazon has found that inaccurate listings, late shipments,
missing tracking information and cancelled orders are the most common issues
that negatively impact retailers’ POP
metrics, so these can often been a good place to start when working on improving
your metric. You should also look to your best-performing products and identify
if you can implement any of those successes to the poorer performing products.
- Incorrect or unclear listings: Any inaccuracies or missing
information in your listing can lead to an unsatisfied customer. Each customer
has their own buying criteria and will search for individual benefits from one
product. Providing the most detailed information and description as you can
gives you a better chance of satisfying more consumers. However, burdening
consumers with too much information can also be off-putting; stick to a maximum
of 200 words for your description. Most categories also allow up to five bullet
points in product descriptions, so use these to convey a high-level overview of
the product with bullets that provide the broadest appeal.
- Cancelled orders: Cancellations caused by out-of-stock
inventory or pricing errors create a poor buyer experience and can really
diminish your brand. Keep your inventory up-to-date on Amazon, and if a product
is out of stock pause the listing so that customers are not attempting to
complete a purchase on something you cannot fulfill.
- Late shipments: When customers do not receive orders or
shipping confirmations by the stated date, they often contact sellers to
inquire about the order status and tend to be less satisfied with the overall
buying experience. If you find this is a regular issue, work to streamline your
fulfilment process or consider using Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) to deliver your
products. Buyers also like to be updated as their product is being delivered,
so try to offer accurate product tracking information that they can check
regularly.
Though the POP score is not used as a performance target by
Amazon, some metrics used to calculate this number have targets, and may result
in action if they fall below the stated goals. Monitoring and improving your
POP score along with your other Amazon reporting will not only give you a great
h
olistic view of your sales, but should help you identify ways to optimise and
improve your Amazon performance.
Blog post by David Le Roux, ChannelAdvisor Account Manager
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[i] Amazon, Perfect Order Percentage,
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_rel_topic?ie=UTF8&nodeId=201156000
