When selling on Amazon, success often hinges on understanding your competition and product performance at a granular level. For products with multiple variations—like size, color, or flavor — identifying the top-selling variation can make or break your strategy.
While tools like Amazon’s Best Seller Rank (BSR) provide valuable insights, they fall short when it comes to evaluating sales for individual variations. That’s because variations under the same parent ASIN typically share the same BSR.
Fortunately, there’s a reliable hack to help you uncover which variation is driving the most sales. In this guide, we’ll walk through how to estimate sales and revenue for individual child ASINs using review data and Helium 10’s tools. Let’s dive in.
The Challenge with Child Variations
When you look at products with multiple variations on Amazon, each variation (also known as a child ASIN) falls under a parent ASIN. The parent ASIN consolidates all sales data and reviews for its child ASINs, and Amazon assigns one BSR to the entire parent ASIN. While this helps sellers track overall performance, it leaves a gap for anyone trying to identify which variation sells the most.
For example, if a parent ASIN has three variations—4-Pack Soap, 8 Pack Soap, and 18 Pack Soap—you won’t know whether the 8 pack outsells 4 or the green pack unless you’re the seller with access to detailed backend reports.
As a competitor or analysts, this information is critical when launching your own product so you’re choosing what consumers actually want.
Helium 10’s Variation Sales Strength KPI
Helium 10, a leading Amazon seller tool, offers a feature called the Variation Sales Strength score within its X-ray extension. This feature assigns a score (1-10) to each child ASIN, representing its relative market share within the parent ASIN. For example, a child ASIN with a score of 10 dominates its variations, while a score of 1 signals low performance.
While this score is helpful, it doesn’t directly translate into sales or revenue. To convert it into actionable data, you’ll need to calculate sales and revenue using another metric: review share.
The Review-Based Hack
Reviews hold the key to uncovering sales data for individual child ASINs. Since each child ASIN accumulates reviews independently, the proportion of reviews for a specific variation often correlates with its share of total sales.
By combining review data with total parent ASIN sales, you can estimate the sales and revenue of each child ASIN.
Step-by-Step Process
- Open the Competitor’s Detail Page
Identify the parent ASIN and the child variations you want to analyze. For this example, let’s use Dove soap with the parent ASIN B08LM7291W. - Run Helium 10’s X-ray Extension
Use the Helium 10 Chrome extension to gather product data. Open the Review Insights tab to see detailed review breakdowns. - Click on “Variations”
Helium 10 provides a table showing the percentage of reviews for each child ASIN. This data reflects the review share of each variation. - Export the Data
Use the “Export Table” option to download a spreadsheet of review percentages. - Calculate Sales & Revenue
Multiply the review share percentage for each child ASIN by the parent ASIN’s total sales or revenue. This gives you an estimate of how much each variation contributes to overall performance.
Example Analysis: Dove Soap
To demonstrate, let’s analyze a Dove soap product with 12 size variations under parent ASIN B08LM7291W. Here’s the available data:
- Parent ASIN Monthly Sales: 41,486 units
- Parent ASIN Monthly Revenue: $669,173
Review Share Breakdown
| Child ASIN | Review Share (%) | Sales Estimate | Revenue Estimate |
|---|---|---|---|
| B005HO0AR2 | 40% | 16,572 units | $267,962.77 |
| B08LM7291W | 36% | 14,914 units | $241,166.49 |
| Other Variations | 24% | 9,999 units | $160,043.74 |
Key Insights
- B005HO0AR2 is the clear leader, contributing 40% of reviews and accounting for approximately $267,962.77 in monthly revenue.
- B08LM7291W, another strong performer, captures 36% of reviews and generates $241,166.49 in monthly revenue.
- The remaining variations combined account for 24% of reviews, showing significantly lower performance.
Why Does This Data Matter?
Knowing which variation sells the most helps you:
- Optimize Your Product Listings: If one variation consistently outperforms others, prioritize it in your marketing efforts and inventory planning.
- Develop Competitive Strategies: Understanding competitor performance allows you to tailor your product offerings to align with market demand.
- Plan Product Launches: Focus on launching variations similar to top-performing options to increase your chances of success.
For instance, if you’re planning to launch a soap product, this analysis shows that certain sizes or scents are more popular among consumers. Adjusting your product mix to cater to these preferences can increase your sales potential.
How to Automate the Process
Manually calculating sales for each variation can be time-consuming. To simplify the process, I’ve created a spreadsheet tool that automates the math. All you need to do is:
- Paste the exported data from Helium 10.
- Enter the parent ASIN’s total sales and revenue.
- Let the spreadsheet calculate the sales and revenue for each child ASIN.
Comment “template” and contact us for a free copy.
Conclusion
Understanding which child variation sells the most on Amazon is a game-changer for sellers. By leveraging Helium 10’s tools and this review-based hack, you can gain valuable insights into competitor performance, refine your product strategy, and maximize your sales potential.
With tools like the Variation Sales Strength KPI and a systematic approach to analyzing review data, you’re equipped to make data-driven decisions that give you a competitive edge. Try this method today, and watch your Amazon business grow!
