If you want to be a successful Amazon seller then you need to master the skill of product research.
By using the Helium 10 Xray tool, sellers can quickly and efficiently gather all the data needed to make an informed decision regarding Amazon product research.
In this article, we’ll break down everything you need to know about Xray so you’re ready to supercharge your Amazon product research and save hours analyzing the numbers to find successful product niche ideas!
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What is Helium 10 Xray?
X-Ray is the name of the most popular tool inside Helium 10’s Chrome Extension. It combines and presents all of the data from the products on Amazon’s search results page for any given keyword so you can quickly assess the potential opportunity in a market.
The extension has other Amazon seller tools such as the Profitability Calculator and review downloader which are definitely very helpful – but Xray will be the product research tool that speeds this process up for you in a big way.
It includes all the key metrics you’d expect such as average revenue, review count, search volume, and many more which we’ll cover shortly. First, though, you need to get it set up in your Chrome browser!
How to install the Helium 10 Chrome Extension
To use Xray, you first need to install the Helium 10 Chrome Extension. Here’s how to do it:
- Head to the Chrome Extension page
- Click the “Add To Chrome” Button
- Click on the Helium 10 icon in the top right corner of your Chrome browser to activate the extension
You’ll be asked to allow some extra permissions to access the full functionality of Xray, but once you’ve done that it will remain active in your Chrome browser extensions bar. Any time you visit Amazon you will be able to load it up to help on your product research journey.
You’ll also notice new data on the search results page that is powered by Xray. At a quick glance, you can see data such as the BSR (Best Seller Rank) and how many sellers are active on the listing.
How to use Helium 10 X-Ray For Amazon Product Research
Xray works on product pages and Best Sellers pages but really comes into its own on the Amazon search results page. Any time you enter a keyword into the search bar you can load the Xray extension and instantly get valuable insight into a market and identify products with high demand and low competition.
There are several key sections of the Xray tool, so let’s take a look at each one in turn.
The Helium 10 Xray Summary bar
First up is a super helpful summary bar that presents key metrics from all product listings on the Amazon results page. Our usual process is using the Helium 10 Black Box tool to filter and find a list of potentially viable products, then checking each one that makes our shortlist with Xray. When you’re searching through hundreds of potential ideas, this summary bar is a massive time saver.
In the summary bar, you’ll see total revenue, average revenue per product, price point, BSR, average number of reviews, plus an overall success score. This gives a very quick and insightful overview of the key numbers for a particular product research opportunity to allow you to quickly move through options.
If running Xray on a search results page you’ll also find easy access to the search volume of the chosen keyword – another helpful metric when determining overall demand for a particular product. The higher the search volume, the higher the demand!
How is the Helium 10 Xray success score determined?
The Success Score takes into account all of the metrics inside Xray and summarises the overall level of opportunity for a new seller to come into the market. Things like the spread of sales across different sellers, the level of reviews, overall star ratings, and the general maturity of the market are all factored in to provide a potential success score out of 100.
I would avoid relying too much on this number – it is generally relatively low regardless of how good the opportunity is – and instead focus on learning how to use the data in the tool yourself to analyze the opportunity.
Understanding the Helium 10 X-Ray Search results
The data estimates for each product will be pulled and displayed in the main section of the X-Ray tool. There are 21 columns of data in total, so let’s make sure we understand what each one means.
- Product Details. The title of the product with accompanying thumbnail image for easy identification. If the product has variations, click the drop-down to see the breakdown for each.
- ASIN. Amazon Standard Identification Number. The unique product identifier.
- Brand. The name of the brand.
- Price. The current selling price of the product.
- Sales. The estimated number of units sold over the last 30 days.
- Sales Graph. A graph showing the monthly revenue trend. One of the interactive columns – click on the graph to see long term trends of sales. Very helpful to analyze whether consistent sales are being generated or if it’s seasonal.
- Revenue. The estimated revenue generated over the last 30 days.
- BSR. Best Seller Rank. Or, how well it is selling in comparison to other products in the same category. Click the number to see graph trends.
- FBA Fees. The total estimated FBA fees including referral fee (usually 15%) and fulfilment fee.
- Active Sellers. How many sellers are active on the listing. If more than one it may be a wholesale listing.
- Ratings. The overall Amazon star rating from 0 to 5.The more products with 4.5 or less the better as it shows there is room for improvement.
- Review Count. The total number of reviews.
- Images. How many images a listing has. The more products with a low image count the better. It means you can use more images to promote your product better.
- Review Velocity. The change in review count over the last 30 days. Shows how quickly competitors are accelerating. Lots of low numbers mean you can catch up quickly.
- Buy Box. Who owns the Buy Box. If you see lots of ‘Amazon’ on certain products it may not be a good niche to get into.
- Category. Which top-level category the product is listed in. Eg. Sports & Outdoors.
- Size Tier. Fulfilment size eg Small Standard-Size. The smaller the better from a costs perspective.
- Fulfilment. Who is fulfilling the orders. FBA = Fulfiled By Amazon, FBM = Fulfiled By Merchant, AMZ = Amazon is the seller and fulfils the order.
- Dimensions. The dimensions of the product.
- Weight. The weight of the product.
- Creation Date. The date the ASIN was first available on Amazon.
Above the results, you’ll find a very useful ‘Filter Results’ option that allows you to filter by any of the above metrics. For example, you can show only products with under 100 reviews. You can also filter by including or excluding certain keywords in the title, and a popular option is to exclude sponsored results.
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Running a keyword search with Helium 10 X-Ray
The major value add of using a combined suite of tools like Helium 10 is the ways in which the tools integrate together. X-Ray is a clear example of this in the way you can combine it with the Cerebro tool to quickly conduct powerful keyword research.
Highlight up to ten relevant products in the X-Ray results and you can then click ‘Run keyword search’ to open up the aggregated results in Cerebro and filter for the highest traffic, most relevant keywords.
We deploy this Amazon keyword research process using Cerebro for every new listing we create and it works a charm.
Finding suppliers on Xray with the Alibaba integration
The final piece of this product research tool is the ability to quickly search for suppliers with the integrated Alibaba filters. Click the ‘Find Suppliers on Alibaba’ button to quickly open a portal of potential suppliers to contact and continue the product research process.
If you want to keep a record of the results Xray is showing you can always save the data using the export button in the bottom right of the tool. There you’ll also find a button to download a ‘share friendly’ screenshot of the results redacting key product identifiers in case you wanted to seek other people’s opinion on the opportunity.
Is Helium 10 Xray accurate?
When you’re using a product research tool, you want to know that you can trust the numbers. And whilst no tool is able to pull the exact source data from Amazon, each will use its own internal algorithms to give the best possible estimation of each metric.
The only way this can be truly tested is by comparing the numbers that Xray produces in comparison to data that you can access. That’s why it’s always insightful to run Xray against your own products and see how accurate it truly is.
In order to test the accuracy of the numbers presented by Xray, we did exactly that and ran it against some of the products we sell. We compare the real data on total units sold in the last 30 days with Xray’s estimated number, and here are the results:
As you’ll see, the Helium 10 estimations were all a little bit higher than the real number but in a similar range. Of course, 3 products over one 30 day period is hardly statistically substantial, but it serves as an example for the potential accuracy. With such a significant sized user base (and therefore R&D budget), Helium 10’s tools and algorithms are improving all the time, and it is quite impressive how close they can get to a lot of these key metrics.
The key takeaway here is that these numbers are estimations, not real data. The best approach is to treat them as such and know that the overall range will be relatively accurate, but not always the exact amount to the dollar.
Is the Helium 10 Chrome Extension free?
The Helium 10 Chrome Extension is free to install, and you can launch it a total of 50 times as part of the free plan. From there on out you will need to upgrade to one of the paid plans to continue to use this product research tool to its full capabilities.
But, along with it you’ll also be getting a full suite of other powerful tools to help you launch and grow a successful Amazon FBA business. Want to learn more about Helium 10 pricing and if it is worth it for you? Check out our complete review of how to use Helium 10 here.
If you’re ready to try Helium 10 for yourself you can get an exclusive discount here by using code BBU50.
Does Helium 10 have the best Chrome Extension for Amazon sellers?
We’re big fans of it, that’s for sure. And judging by the volume of positive reviews online, so are the wider market. With Xray, you’ve got one of the most powerful Amazon seller tools designed to help you identify a product niche with good profit margins. Combined with the Black Box tool it provides all the data you need to find high demand, low competition product opportunities.
You’ve also got the added benefit of the Profitability Calculator, one of the best, most detailed profit margin calculators available along with the ASIN Grabber, review downloader tool and inventory levels tool. Not only that, but the Chrome browser tool has also been given extra functionality by being usable on the Walmart marketplace.
It’s been tried and tested with over 700,000 lifetime downloads, and we highly recommend you check it out too.
Head here to create your account with Helium 10 and unleash the full power of this must-have tool.
