A new data analytics platform has been launched to help sellers on Takealot track sales of various products so they can make strategic decisions about which products to sell on the website.
Called Takealytics, the platform ingests data from Takealot’s public API (application programming interface) to track products and sales forecasts that help sellers predict the rate of return of specific products. Takealytics is independent of Takealot.
“When you are a seller on Takealot and you are looking to bring in a new product, you put the money in upfront, buy the stock in and list it on Takealot. Sometimes it doesn’t work so well, but you would have invested a lot of money without knowing if you were going to get a return on your investment,” said Robert Bodley, co-founder and CEO at Takealytics, in an interview with TechCentral.
“With Takealytics, we allow you to see sales data upfront before you purchase the product so you know if it will sell or not.”
According to Bodley, Takealytics ingests various data points on Takealot products, including reviews, the number of competitors, descriptions and imaging – and it does this daily. To make its sales predictions, the platform updates real-time sales data on an hourly basis for a period of two weeks and then generates monthly sales forecasts for each product.
Sellers can use the data to discover new best sellers, glimpse into categories that work well or compare their products against competitor sales rates.
Beyond Takealot
Sellers can access the Takealytics platform via the web. Monthly subscription plans are tiered according to a combination of the number of product searches and number of products to track that a seller may need. Enterprise customers, which expect to experience especially high volumes of searches and products tracings, can contact Takealytics for custom packages.
Bodley said he and the team aim to expand their data analysis platform beyond Takealot so that sellers eventually have a view of sales data for products across multiple marketplaces, not only Takealot’s.
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“Eventually, our goal is to track all marketplaces and even move out of South Africa to platforms that are like Takealot in different markets. Jumia, for example, is big in Nigeria and Kenya,” said Bodley. — (c) 2024 NewsCentral Media
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