The Buust Score: how well does your listing actually sell — and what to do next

Most product listings aren't bad. They're solid — and that's exactly the problem.

A solid listing has decent photos, a usable title, a description someone wrote at some point. It sells. But it sells below its potential, and nobody tells you why. You see a number in the marketplace back-end — views, maybe a conversion rate — but not which of the ten levers is the one quietly costing you sales right now.

That's the gap the Buust Score closes. It turns the vague feeling of "there's more in this" into a concrete number and, more importantly, exactly one next step.

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A number instead of a gut feeling

The Buust Score is a number from 0 to 100 per listing. But the number alone would be useless — what matters is what's underneath it. The score is built from four pillars, and each one answers a different question that a buyer (and the marketplace algorithm) asks of your listing:

• Images — Do you have enough shots? Are they cleanly cut out, sharp, at the right resolution? A single dark phone photo is scored differently than eight professional shots.
• Video — Is anything moving on your product page? Is the video embedded in the right format, where the buyer actually sees it? This pillar is the weakest on most listings — and at the same time the one with the biggest leverage.
• Text & SEO — Does your title carry the right terms? Is the description more than a keyword salad? Is there structured data that lets Google understand your product?
• Reach — On how many channels is this product even visible? Does it sit only in your shop, or does it also run in the Google Shopping feed, on social, on the marketplace? A perfect listing nobody finds isn't a perfect listing.

Why category-aware is the whole trick

A score that judges every product by the same yardstick is worthless. A diamond ring needs different images than a cordless drill. A piece of furniture lives on different copy than a supplement.

That's why the Buust Score benchmarks each pillar against your product category. For jewelry, motion in the image counts above average, because sparkle never reads in a still. For tools, the proof-of-function counts. For fashion, the cut in motion counts. The score knows which category your listing plays in, and grades accordingly — instead of holding up a generic 1-to-100 scale that fits no one.

The one next step — and why not ten

This is where the Buust Score parts ways with classic "SEO audits" that show you 27 red checkmarks and then leave you alone with them.

Long to-do lists don't get done. You open them, feel buried, close them again. So the score deliberately shows exactly one next step per listing: the weakest pillar, weighted by its measured revenue impact in your category. In the example above that's the Video pillar — at 20 out of 100 the obvious hole, and at the same time the lever that, in experience, moves the conversion rate the most.

You finish that one step. The score rises. The next step moves up. That's how a catalog actually gets done — listing by listing, instead of suffocating in a 12-item list.

Honest about revenue: what the step actually brings

One thing matters to me: the score doesn't promise fantasy numbers. At the video step there's no "+300% revenue!" — there's an honest calculation: your existing revenue on this listing, multiplied by the measured impact of video in your category. Not an ad number, but a projection based on your own data and our measurement.

And you don't have to trust blindly: at the image step you get a free before/after preview of what a cut-out subject would look like. If you want, an AI image analysis checks your existing photos and tells you concretely what's wrong — too dark, cropped, distracting background. You see the result before you decide.

How exactly we measure whether a video really works — and not just the season — is in this post on honest uplift measurement.

The trend matters more than the snapshot

A score at a single moment is a snapshot. It gets interesting as movement. So the overview shows you not just the current number but the trend versus last week (+6 since last Monday) and a 30-day curve. You see whether your work is paying off — and which listing is slipping right now because a competitor stepped up.

On the overview the score also works worst-first: the listing with the biggest unused potential sits on top, not the newest one. If your time is limited, you automatically work on the spot where an hour buys you the most.

When you want it for the whole catalog

For three products, eyeballing it is fine. For three hundred, it isn't. That's exactly why the score comes with a bulk accelerator: for all listings missing the video pillar, a first video can be created with one click — the most common lever, pulled once across the whole catalog. You decide the rule, the execution runs in the background.

That turns the score from a wagging finger into a work plan: a number that shows where you stand, a step that shows what comes next, and a button that does it for the whole catalog.

How to start

1. Connect — link Shopify, eBay, Amazon, or OTTO with one click
2. Read the score — it's calculated automatically for every listing, sorted worst-first
3. Take one step — the one on top, not all ten
4. Watch the trend — next week you'll see whether it worked

Start for free and see the Buust Score of your three best-selling products. You get three free sales videos on the Free plan, no waitlist — enough to see, on your weakest listing, what a single well-placed step moves.