A marketplace health audit should cover seven areas, listing quality, primary image click-through, conversion rate, ad performance, traffic channel activation, pricing, and return rate. Score each pass or fail against your category, fix in that order, and re-measure monthly. Any audit that returns only an ad report has skipped five of the seven.
The short version
- Seven areas, not one. Ads are the loudest area and rarely the sickest one.
- Score pass or fail per area against category norms, then fix top-down. Partial credit hides problems.
- The main image and conversion rate outrank campaign settings in almost every account we open.
- Return rate is the ignored vital sign. It quietly eats margin and rating at the same time.
- An audit without a re-measurement date is a document, not a process.
The seven checks, and what done properly means
Seven areas decide marketplace health, and they are the same seven we test in every audit we run. For each one, here is the check and the standard that counts as done properly.
- Listing quality. Titles, bullets, and A+ complete in the local language, covering the top search intents. Done properly means a native speaker has verified content in every live marketplace, and required attributes are complete so nothing is one feed update from suppression.
- Primary image click-through. The main image wins the click against the search results around it. Done properly means the image has been tested against alternatives, not chosen by taste, and the click-through rate is tracked, not assumed.
- Conversion rate. Unit session percentage benchmarked per marketplace against the category. Done properly means you know the number, the benchmark, and which traffic source drags it, so fixes target the cause instead of the average.
- Ad performance. Spend maps to strategy by product, with wasted spend pruned on a schedule. Done properly means search term reports are reviewed on a cadence and every campaign has a stated job it can be fired from.
- Traffic channel activation. Each viable traffic source for the brand is either running or consciously excluded. Done properly means the exclusions are decisions with reasons, not gaps nobody noticed.
- Pricing. Position checked against the shelf the customer actually sees, including delivery promise. Done properly means pricing is reviewed against competitors on a schedule and margin per unit survives the current fee structure.
- Return rate. Tracked per product against category expectations, with reasons read monthly. Done properly means rising returns trigger a product or content investigation, because the cost lands twice, in refunds and in rating decay.
How to grade the results
Use the audit as a ranking device, not a report card to file away. Fix the worst failing area first, give the fix a re-measurement date, and only then move down the list. Monthly is the right cadence for re-scoring, weekly is the right cadence for watching the numbers the fixes should move.
Hold whoever runs your account to an outcome benchmark, not an activity benchmark. The one I publish for my own team: the majority of brands we manage reach profitability within their first year. Whatever operator you use, ask them what their equivalent number is and how they measure it. An operator without an outcome number is grading their own homework.
We deliver this exact audit as a written report with prioritized fixes, free, within 48 hours, through our consulting service. I am telling you the checklist anyway because the value was never the secrecy, it is the discipline of actually running it monthly.
What a free audit will not tell you
Any audit, free or paid, shows you the gaps. It does not show you the capacity to close them. The honest question after receiving one is who exactly will do the fourteen fixes it lists, by when, and what they displace. If the answer is nobody, the audit becomes shelf documentation.
Free audits also carry an obvious incentive, they are a sales instrument, including ours. The way to use that in your favor is to collect two or three from different providers, compare what each one caught, and judge the depth of diagnosis rather than the polish of the deck.
Related answers
- How to consolidate analytics across Amazon regions
- Amazon PPC benchmarks ACoS ROAS TACOS
- How to fix low Buy Box win rate
- Audit scope for inventory forecasting and IBC issues
- Amazon account measurement and audits: the complete guide
To see the seven scores for your own account this week, request the audit at Flapen.
