You cannot relaunch everything at once. **The product comparison table exists to decide which one or two products get your attention, your budget and your time** — and to make that decision on evidence rather than on which product you happen to like.

**The central question is not "which product is best?" It is "which product has the strongest offer relative to the competitors it is actually up against?"**

**Because a strong offer is what makes a relaunch succeed.** A weak offer pushed hard just spends money.

[Watch the walkthrough](https://kb.trackiq.com/kb-assets/kbvideo-comparison-explainer-a01f8823.mp4)

*Prefer to watch? One hundred and sixty-one seconds on the four elements of an offer, building the comparison per candidate, and weighting offer and margin above everything else.*

## **What "offer" means here**

Four things, judged against your direct competitors — not in the abstract:

**Price and value for money** — your price against what you actually provide.

**Main image** — quality and appeal, which decides your click-through — see [**Why the Main Image Decides Your CTR**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/why-the-main-image-decides-your-ctr).

**Review count.**

**Rating.**

**The stronger you are on these four relative to your competitors, the more likely a shopper picks you** — and the more likely you can hold a higher position once you get there.

## **Step 1: shortlist your candidates**

**Pick the best products in your catalogue**, on three criteria:

**Higher sales volume is better.**

**More reviews is better.**

**Higher margin is better — minimum 33% gross margin before PPC.**

**Two practical ways to draw the shortlist:** the top four products by net margin last month, or the four products with 300+ reviews.

**Below 33% gross margin before PPC there is not enough room to fund a launch**, so those products are not candidates regardless of how appealing they look.

## **Step 2: build one comparison per product**

**One tab per candidate, named after its main keyword.**

**Find 7–10 direct competitors** for each — genuinely similar products, not merely the same category.

Then record, per competitor and for yourself:

| Column | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| **Price** | competitor's listed price |
| **Units / size** | how much they give you for it |
| **Price per unit** | price ÷ units |
| **Reviews** | count |
| **Rating** | stars |
| **30-day sales** | to place yourself in the top 10 |
| **Search volume trend** | 90-day growth for the niche |
| **Inventory** | your units in Amazon + 3PL |

**Price per unit is the column people skip and the one that decides it.** A 4-pack at $10 is $2.50 a unit; a 5-pack at $11 is $2.20 and a better offer, despite the higher shelf price.

**Search volume trend comes from Product Opportunity Explorer** — Seller Central → Growth → Product Opportunity Explorer, searched on the main keyword, then read the search volume growth percentage for the last 90 days.

![Your position against the competitors you actually compete with](/kb-assets/shot-b25-cmp-view-7ba90b.png)

**Sales, rank, review count, rating and price for you and ten competitors, in one place, is exactly what the comparison view produces** — see [**Tracking Competitor ASINs Alongside Your Own**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/tracking-competitor-asins) and [**Category Insights**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/category-insights). Assembling it by hand across four candidate products and forty competitors is a day's work that goes stale within a fortnight.

## **Step 3: read the table**

**Bring every candidate's answers onto one summary sheet**, then compare across products:

| Criterion | How to read it |
|---|---|
| **Price / value for money** | **lower rank is better** — you want the strongest offer |
| **Reviews** | **lower rank is better** — you want the most reviews |
| **Sales to grow to** | **higher is better** — more headroom in the niche |
| **Rating** | **higher than competitors = best**, level = fine, **lower = avoid** |
| **Search volume growth** | **higher is better** |
| **Gross profit margin** | **higher is better** |

**Mark the winner on each criterion, then pick one or two products.**

## **How to weigh them**

**Offer and gross margin matter most.**

**If margin is very high but the offer is weak, the fix may be price.** Cutting price strengthens the offer directly, and there is usually room to do it while staying in a healthy **33–42%** band — see [**Pricing and Gross Margin**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/pricing-and-gross-margin).

**Being in the top 3 on review count materially raises your chances.**

**Strong search volume growth is a genuine tailwind** — the niche is expanding while you push into it.

**A rating below your competitors is close to disqualifying.** Rating is the hardest of the four to move quickly, and launching into a rating deficit means paying for traffic that converts worse than the competition — see [**Why a Rating Drop Costs More Than It Looks**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/why-a-rating-drop-costs-more).

**Then take one or two. Not four.** The whole point of the exercise is concentration.

## **Common mistakes**

**Comparing against the category** rather than 7–10 genuinely direct competitors.

**Comparing shelf price** instead of price per unit.

**Choosing the product you like**, and using the table to justify it afterwards.

**Launching into a rating deficit** because the other numbers looked good.

**Ignoring the margin floor**, and launching a product with no room to fund advertising.

**Picking four products** and giving none of them enough budget or attention to work.

## **Related**

- [**Reviving a Sleeping Product**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/reviving-a-sleeping-product) — where this selection step is used.
- [**Designing the Offer**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/designing-the-offer) — improving the thing you just measured.
- [**Scoring Product Opportunities**](https://kb.trackiq.com/hc/knowledge-base/articles/scoring-product-opportunities) — the same discipline applied to new products.