Keri Cusick on analytics that pay for themselves
Speaker: Keri Cusick, Director, Perfect Order Experience
Who this is for: Data-driven operators, brand owners, and finance leads who want to move from scattered reports to actionable insight.
What Keri put on the table
Keri’s premise was simple. Better decisions come from better visibility. Amazon is packaging the sprawl of Seller Central data into two tools you can use together or separately: Custom Analytics to build the exact views you need, and Profit Analytics to see true costs, model tradeoffs, and choose the most profitable route before you act. Her emphasis was speed. Sometimes you need a deep dive, other times a fast answer that tells you where to focus right now.
Your data, your way: Custom Analytics
Custom Analytics centralizes data that used to live across many surfaces and lets you design reports around your goals. Keri highlighted “over 100 different metrics” across sales, traffic, inventory and more, many of which were “previously spread across more than 15 different reports and dashboards.” The tool now includes added signals like account health, promotions, product ratings, and reviews, with ads performance data “coming soon.” Search is faster, you can drag-and-drop metrics, and compare time periods side by side.
On visualization, Custom Analytics introduces heat maps to time your promotions, and funnel diagrams to expose where customers fail to convert. Keri’s example: spot a shoulder-season drop in glance views and sales, launch a targeted promotion, then compare the before-and-after in real time and add inventory metrics to ensure supply keeps pace. If you do not want to start from a blank canvas, curated dashboards ship ready to use, including a high-velocity sales event dashboard.
Keri underscored adoption and value: “In just the first few weeks, sellers created over 35,000 custom dashboards,” and feedback is that the tool saves hours each week and is free to use.
Margins without guesswork: Profit Analytics
Profit Analytics pulls cost data from “more than eight Seller Central sources” in one place, including fees, ad spend, refunds and returns, and lets you add outside costs for a complete picture. From there you can assess profitability across your catalog, drill into individual items, simulate price changes, and forecast the impact of new services before you commit. The Alpineverse example was direct. Rising ad costs with flat sales were visible at a glance, which led Riley to shut off underperforming campaigns. Keri called out the principle: “Profit Analytics helps you stop spending money on what isn’t working, even if that means you’re spending less money with us.”
What is next matters too. Scenario planning is coming soon, so you can test questions like “What if we add a promotion to sell through stock” or “What if we launch in an additional store” and see projected outcomes in advance. Proactive notifications are also on the roadmap to alert you when demand spikes, recommend inbound quantities, and help you avoid stockouts. Amazon is working to extend these capabilities to other sales channels so you can see cross-channel cost and profit, not just what happens inside Amazon.
Moves that compound quickly
- Stand up a weekly revenue and profit view. Combine sales, traffic, unit economics, and returns. Make it the single source for go or no-go decisions on pricing, ads, and promos.
- Use heat maps and funnels to decide actions, not just observe them. If the funnel shows drop-off on detail pages, pair the finding with a specific listing fix and a review date.
- Treat Profit Analytics as your first pass for budget trims. Identify ad sets and SKUs below break-even and redirect spend to proven items before you expand tests.
- Define guardrails for scenarios. Set minimum margin thresholds, price floors, and inventory buffers so simulations propose options that respect your constraints.
- Capture what you learned. When a promotion or price change works, save the configuration and the context so it becomes a template for the next seasonal cycle.
Controls that keep analysis honest
- One catalog of definitions for margin, contribution, and fully loaded cost.
- Time-boxed comparison windows so “wins” are not artifacts of calendar drift.
- Approval gates for price and promo changes until you finish two clean cycles.
- A change log that records the metric set used, the decision taken, and the result
Proof points worth watching
- Hours saved per week pulling and cleaning reports
- Share of ad spend above break-even after trims
- Gross margin and contribution margin movement by priority SKU
- Conversion lift tied to funnel-diagnosed page fixes
- Avoided stockouts and avoided aged-inventory fees after alerts
Where ZonHack fits if you want help
We can blueprint your decision stack, wire Custom Analytics views that match your goals, and stand up a Profit Analytics rhythm where pricing, ads, and inventory decisions roll up to one weekly call. If you prefer to run it in house, use the moves above and we can be a second set of eyes during the first two cycles to validate definitions and outcomes.
The thread across sessions
Mary Beth raised the PDP baseline. Jay showed creative that learns as you scale. Chris put an operator on your desk. Claire turned policy into guidance that prevents lost days. Keri added the decision layer that makes those moves measurable and repeatable, with Custom Analytics for clarity and Profit Analytics for profitable choices.Coming up next….
Nadya Dhalla
Supply Chain by Amazon updates and how inventory programs tie to delivery speed and availability.
