As an Amazon seller, monitoring product sales and reviews is one of the most important things you can do. Keeping a close eye on those two factors lets you keep a finger on the pulse of your business, allowing you to respond to potential issues quickly.
While manual monitoring might work for smaller stores, it can be very time-consuming if you have dozens of products and hundreds, even thousands of reviews. The good news is that you don’t have to do it manually since you have Amazon APIs (Application Programming Interfaces). What are Amazon APIs, and how do you use them to monitor your products and reviews? Read on to find out.
What Are APIs?
APIs are mechanisms that link software components and allow them to share data. Essentially, APIs bridge two software components together. A good example of APIs is the “login via Google” capability you see on websites. In that case, the API checks whether you’re already logged into Google, and then the API sends your identity information to the website in question, letting you log in there.
What Can APIs Be Used For?
APIs have a wide range of uses. Some common uses include:
- Logging users into a site using Google or social media profiles.
- Allowing users to pay with payment services like PayPal.
- Helping travel booking websites pull flight and hotel information from individual hotels and airlines.
- Displaying weather information from local weather services.
- Operating social media bots that automatically trigger when somebody makes a certain post.
With their wide uses, APIs are pretty much irreplaceable in today’s world of technology.
The Amazon API Gateway
Amazon has its own API service, called the Amazon API Gateway. It’s made so AWS (Amazon Web Services) users can create, publish, maintain, monitor, and secure their APIs. In addition to building your own APIs it’s also a place where you can find APIs available to third-party app developers.
Why Should You Use APIs to Scrape Product Data?
You should use APIs to scrape product data because doing it manually can be very time-consuming. Just reading through a few dozen reviews is one thing, but doing the same to hundreds or even thousands of product reviews needs time that’s better spent on other activities.
Aside from time savings, here are more reasons why you should use APIs to scrape Amazon product reviews and data:
Know Your Market
One of the most valuable things you can learn from reviews is what your customers need. Scraping your review data with APIs can help you identify pain points in your products that you can improve in future development cycles.
Learn Customer Sentiments
One of the advantages of processing lots of review data is that you can identify whether customer sentiment is positive or negative. By analyzing customer sentiment, you can get a good feel of whether or not your customers are satisfied with your products.
Analyze Competitors
Scraping isn’t just good for examining your own performance. You can do so for competitor products to see how they perform for their customer base. If you see their customers repeatedly complaining about something, that’s a market gap that you can potentially fill.
Using Amazon API to Get Product Reviews
The way to use Amazon API to get product details and reviews is by linking eCommerce software to your Amazon product data. Generally, there are two methods to this that let you pull different kinds of information:
- Product.list: This method lets the eCommerce software access a list of all products in your Amazon store.
- product.info: This method helps the software retrieve product information, including its name, image, price, and reviews.
That said, integrating the Amazon API with eCommerce software can be very complex. It needs a lot of work and it’s not a one-time thing either, since you need to regularly maintain the integration.
Third-Party Services Using Amazon API to Get Product Reviews
If you’re not technically inclined, it might be a good idea to get the help of third-party services to set up Amazon API integration with your eCommerce software. Here are some third-party Amazon API integration services you can look into.
Tool4Seller
Tool4Seller offers visibility into all the essential insights about your Amazon store by linking to your Amazon account through its API. This tool provides you with information on cost analysis, ad performance, positive and negative reviews, and more in one place.
Tool4Seller has a free plan for you to start off with, with paid plans starting at $19.99/month.
Helium 10
Helium 10 boasts over 30 tools to help your eCommerce success, including AI-supported PPC ad campaigns, keyword research tools for competitor research, and product research tools.
Helium 10’s pricing plans start at $39/month for an annual plan and $49/month if paid monthly.
X-Byte
X-Byte’s Amazon product reviews and ratings API takes details from Amazon review pages in real time, allowing you to drill down into your product details as soon as possible.
X-Byte offers a free pilot run for its services before you discuss customized pricing.
What to Consider When Choosing Third-Party Amazon API Providers
There are lots of third-party Amazon API providers, so it might be tough to choose just one. However, since choosing multiple API providers is likely a waste of money, you still need to pick one. Here are some factors to consider when weighing your options:
- Your Amazon API integration needs.
- The third-party API providers’ pricing plans and your budget.
- The API provider’s track record and security measures.
- The API provider’s client support.
- The API provider’s ability to fulfill your integration needs.
Conclusion
Monitoring product reviews and details is an important task for Amazon sellers, but sifting through hundreds of reviews to get a good feel of how your store is performing is nigh impossible without wasting a lot of time. You can use Amazon API to export product details into eCommerce software for easier review analysis.
However, Amazon API integration with eCommerce software is a tough task if you’re not technically inclined. You can enlist the help of third-party Amazon API providers to help with the integration process so you can spend your time and effort on things that affect your bottom line.
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