How to Calculate Hot Products

Knowing what your hot products are is an important detail of running a successful ecommerce store. What are hot products? These are the products that are flying off the shelves. They are your bread-and-butter -- your moneymakers. Staying ahead of Hot Product trends means you are able to increase marketing efforts without selling out of inventory. By collecting all of the data and knowing which products are performing the best, you can tailor your marketing and promotion strategies to sell even more of these items.

Why Should You Calculate Hot Products?

For ecommerce stores, hot products are defined as those products with the largest growth in orders period over period. These are the items that are producing the highest gross profits, have the highest sales margins, and are the most profitable for your business. Hot products can also be the top products from paid search and the best bundles by revenue.    

You always want to know exactly which products are making you the most money. By calculating your hot products, you have the necessary insights to ensure you maintain an adequate inventory of these items. Additionally, you also have the opportunity to optimize and ramp up your strategies to sell even more of these hot products.

Strategies to Promote Hot Products

Use Social Media to Your Advantage

When used correctly, social media can be an extremely powerful tool. Since you have likely already made the effort to build a following on your various social media channels, let these individuals know about your hot products. Of course you should share content about your hot products on your own social media channels, but why end there? Reach out to existing customers and industry influencers and ask for collaborations or endorsements.

Allow Customers to Sort

Ecommerce customers like to sort when they are shopping online. Popular sorting methods are by:  

+ Price (Highest to Lowest, Lowest to Highest)

+ What’s New

+ Most Popular

+ Highest Customer Reviews

Include this feature so that other shoppers can see what items are most popular. In the age of Amazon, product reviews and sales quantity go a long way.

Do Not Be Scared to Promote

While you may be hesitant to come off as too “salesy” or you don’t want your website visitors to get frustrated with your sales attempts. Product promotion is never a bad thing when done the right way. By displaying banners or carousels at the top of your homepage, you can quickly and easily alert website visitors about your hot products in an effort to boost sales even more.

How to Calculate Hot Products

Determining your hot products is a relatively simple calculation. First find how many order were placed during any given period. This could be a weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly timespan. Then, compare a similar window of time to see if sales had a percentage increase or decrease.  

‍(Current Period Orders) - (Previous Period Orders) / (Previous Period Orders)  

For example, the sales of a certain pair of women’s shoes could have increased from 100 in May to 350 in June, so the Difference PoP is +250%. In another example, the sale of a particular men’s watch could have increased from 300 in Q1 to 500 in Q2, making the Difference PoP +66%.    

Hot products have the highest percentage of positive change period over period.

Glew Uses Data to Find Your Hot Products

Glew makes it easier than ever to instantly see which products are performing well. By pulling data from your Google analytics account, ecommerce platform, and primary ecommerce advertising sources, Glew can help you to make sense of all the numbers. This data can sometimes be difficult to comprehend and act on, but it’s much easier to see the big picture when it’s all put together and simplified.     

The Glew platform pulls details such as orders, quantity sold, quantity left, revenue, gross product, and difference period over period. This makes it possible for you to turn numbers into revenue generating opportunities.     

To see the benefits of Glew firsthand, we invite you to get started with a free trial.