The beverage category on Amazon.fr

Are you in the tea or coffee industry? Did you know that the grocery/beverage category was Amazon France’s top ecommerce category in January 2021 (+216% growth YOY)? (source: eMarketer)  

In this study focused on the French market, we analyzed the tea and coffee categories on Amazon, identified key brands, and had a look at what people are searching for. Here is everything you need to know to adapt your strategy or grow your business.

What are people looking for?

We used Amazon Brand Analytics and internal tools to compare hundreds of keywords on Amazon.fr. Our findings show that the most searched beverage is coffee closely followed by tea, and much further down, hot chocolate and soft drinks. 

It is interesting to see that the beverage category is extremely seasonal. We noticed that there is a strong increase in searches and reviews around three key months: March, November, and December. 

If we look more into coffee and tea searches, there are a lot of generic keywords, meaning that consumers don’t enter the category looking for a specific brand or product. They are open to suggestions and browsing to see what is available.

(source: Vendor Central – Brand Analytics, November 2020).

If you want people to find your products, you need to make sure your products are present where people are searching and browsing. You also need relevant content to ensure you see a strong conversion rate and are able to tempt potential customers. 

To increase discoverability and conversion rates in the strongest months of the year, you should include seasonal or specific keywords in your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategy and adapt your content to closely match what people are looking for. You can also use virtual bundles to match specific searches and increase your average basket price.

Examples on Amazon.fr

In the tea category, people are looking for seasonal products and associated tools during the gifting months. Targeting keywords such as advent calendar, tea accessories, tea gift boxes, and tea boxes may help you reach more consumers. You can also highlight some key benefits of your products such as detox, healthy, and energizing as people are including those details in their searches. 

It is important to understand how people search on Amazon to identify opportunities for your brand. You might miss an opportunity on a strategic keyword because you aren’t aware that people are searching for it! 

The frenzy around advent calendars and gifts

When conducting our analysis, we noticed that a lot of people were looking for advent calendars and gift ideas, especially related to tea products. 

If you want to be visible in this category, take this opportunity and offer products that directly match advent calendar searches. This is a great way to be seen by potential customers as the majority of them will search for generic keywords in this case and not branded ones. 

You can use your Amazon Analytics data such as best sellers, bundles results, and “people also bought” data to get an image of how your future advent calendar products should look. 

You also want to consider presenting your products as gift ideas; work on the packaging of your products, boxes, and bundles. And of course, adapt your title and description to match the season, for example Christmas, Mother’s Day or birthday. 

Tea and coffee machine focus

Out of all the searched coffee keywords we analyzed, 38% were focused on coffee machines or pods. The same trend can be seen for tea pods and machines. 

There is a huge search opportunity for products like coffee machines, tea accessories, and pods – consider them for future product development or to add to your Amazon assortment. 

Keep in mind that these products have more branded searches, which makes sense when you consider that once a consumer has bought a coffee machine, they will probably buy pods from the same brand. So if you decide to add machines to your product mix, strong brand awareness will help you to benefit from organic Amazon traffic. If your brand is not well known, you can use Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Campaign ads on competitor keywords so that your product ranks at the top of the pages with the most traffic. Good reviews will also help boost your rankings. To get more reviews, use the Vine program.   

Who are the most visible brands for the coffee machine category? 

Seelk Studio analysis – March 2021

The share of shelf analysis extracted from our eCommerce analytics software, Seelk Studio, clearly shows that the most visible brands on these keywords are Philips, Nespresso, Delonghi and l’Or. Competition is strong, as 70% of the organic space is occupied by the top five brands. 

What do people talk about?

We analyzed 20 million reviews in the tea category on Amazon France to learn more about consumers and what matters to them. 

First, some numbers.– Between 2018 and 2019, the number of reviews tripled on Amazon.fr showing that the category is growing fast.– The average rating in the tea category is 4 stars out of 5 and products have an average of just 44 reviews, which is not unexpected.– Similar to the analyzed keywords, we also see seasonality in the reviews, with March, November and December generating the most reviews. – We discovered that fruity tea usually generates the most reviews. For all kinds of tea, reviews are mainly about flavor, smell, packaging and price. – Unlike coffee products, the origin of the tea is not a positive marker as the average rating in reviews based on origin is only 2 out of 5. 

Consider reviewing and adapting your content to better match these learnings. Talk about what your tea smells and tastes like in your content description and make sure what you describe matches what your consumers expect. 

Conclusion

The beverage category on Amazon is growing and is getting more competitive. Make sure you are visible and your products match what consumers want. 

If you would like a deep dive into your category and to unlock similar insights focused solely on your brand, do let us know. We are happy to help!