Why a spreadsheet matters more than ad bids
Most advice says advertising is the key growth tool and that a store without working ads is doomed. In practice, the biggest gains on Ozon come from unglamorous spreadsheets: formulas, ratios and dozens of small metrics that most sellers never look at. Each one looks minor on its own, but together they drive both organic search sales and paid advertising results.
Set aside 15 minutes a day for the numbers and growth becomes a task of improving one or two metrics.
Metrics worth tracking
Start with these three:
- Return rate for your products. A small metric that quietly eats into sales.
- Content rating. Easy to overlook, but it feeds the result.
- Listing conversion. Directly determines how many visitors reach a purchase.
Ozon has several dozen more metrics like these that affect sales. The goal is not to guess which one matters, but to calculate all of them and find the point where extra effort pays off.
How it works in practice
On one project we manage, we started by calculating the numbers and spotting a growth zone. We raised the ad budget by 50% and sales grew 1.5x. Growing sales turned into a simple task of pushing one or two metrics in the statistics sheet.
Business owners routinely ignore their numbers. Yet 15 minutes a day with the metrics tells you so much about the business that the next step is just arithmetic.
A daily sales report
On a test store we set up a daily report on the previous day's Ozon sales. It works and arrives on schedule. Next we roll it out to all the other stores.
What to do
- Build a statistics spreadsheet and calculate your metrics in it.
- Start with three: return rate, content rating, listing conversion.
- Add the rest - there are several dozen, and each one affects sales.
- Spend 15 minutes a day on the numbers.
- Set up a daily report on the previous day's sales so the numbers come to you.
