The Fourth Quarter (Q4) is the busiest and most profitable time of year for the majority of e-commerce sellers. Being able to stay on top of high demand, inventory management, promotional periods and financial obligations can be overwhelming.
However, Q4 also brings fantastic opportunities to maximise your profits and showcase your brand.
Monitoring your SKU performance is particularly important for e-commerce sellers, especially in Q4.
What is SKU performance monitoring?
SKU performance monitoring refers to the process of closely tracking and analysing the performance of individual Stock Keeping Units (SKUs) within your e-commerce inventory.
Each SKU represents a specific product variant, and SKU performance monitoring involves assessing how well each of these products is doing in terms of sales, profitability, and other key metrics.
Why is it important in Q4?
1. Seasonal Demand
Q4 is typically the busiest time of the year for e-commerce sellers due to Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas.
By monitoring your SKU performance, you can identify which products are in high demand and adjust their inventory levels accordingly. This ensures that they can meet customer demand and maximise sales during this crucial period.
2. Inventory Management
Monitoring SKU performance helps you optimise your inventory levels.
By tracking the performance of each SKU, you can identify slow-moving or low-performing products and make informed decisions about restocking, liquidating, or discontinuing them. This prevents overstocking or understocking, reducing storage costs and the risk of stockouts.
3. Pricing and Promotions
Q4 is also a time when many sellers will offer discounts, promotions, or special deals to attract customers.
You can identify products that have margin potential and adjust the pricing strategies accordingly by monitoring SKU performance. You can also track the impact of promotions on SKU sales to evaluate their effectiveness.
This will enable you to maintain a competitive edge whilst withstanding profitability.
4. Marketing and Advertising
In Q4, competition among e-commerce sellers is high, and marketing and advertising budgets are often increased to capture customer attention.
Monitoring SKU performance helps you identify which products are driving the most sales and adjust the marketing efforts to focus on those high-performing SKUs. This ensures that marketing resources are allocated effectively to maximise return on investment.
5. Customer Satisfaction
Monitoring SKU performance allows you to ensure customer satisfaction during the busy holiday season.
By tracking SKU performance, you can quickly identify any issues that might be impacting the sales levels of a certain product whether that be the product quality, shipping, or customer feedback.
Addressing these issues promptly helps maintain a positive customer experience, leading to higher customer satisfaction and repeat purchases.
How AVASK can help you maximise profitability
Overall, monitoring SKU performance in Q4 helps e-commerce sellers make data-driven decisions, optimize inventory, maximise sales, and enhance customer satisfaction during the busiest time of the year
AVASK can provide an extensive report that not only breaks down your SKU performance metrics, but also provides deeper insight into the drivers that affect their performance and analysis for key improvement areas going forward.