Bol.com

How do you analyse your bol store for profit and ROI?

Lars Hurkmans·Co-founder·10 June 2026·Temps de lecture 11 minutes

You analyse your bol store by first getting the basics right (your products, purchase costs, shipping method and VAT), then reading your net revenue, profit, ROI and TACoS per product weekly and comparing it against the market. PurelyGoods, a seller with about 2000 orders a month, does this in about two hours a week.

For this store analysis, we sat down with PurelyGoods, a bol seller started about three years ago by brothers Floris and Jelle Boeijer, who also run a second brand, Lacera. At PurelyGoods, Jelle handles the back end: store analysis, purchasing and transport; Floris handles the front end with listings, advertising and the webshop. PurelyGoods reportedly does around 50,000 euros in revenue a month with roughly 2000 orders, which run through Shipped by bol (LVB). In this article we walk through the weekly analysis the way Jelle does it, from the basics to the profit and loss statement. If you'd rather do the upfront calculation before buying in a product, read how to calculate the profitability of a product on bol.

How do you make sure the basis of your store analysis is right?

Get the basics right first, otherwise every conclusion you draw later will be off. In the My products overview you fill in the relevant details per item. You see how many products you have, and which have low or no stock left. The selling price is loaded in automatically by MarktMentor and the commission comes from the category, but the purchase cost per unit, the cost of goods, you fill in yourself. At PurelyGoods that's 6.20 euros for the example item.

Include in those product costs every variable cost you can trace back to a single product: the purchase price, packaging costs and prep costs. Also set the correct rate in the VAT settings, often 21% and adjustable per product to 12, 9, 6 or 0%. Then always look at revenue excluding VAT, because that's your real revenue. Including VAT your revenue looks higher, but that's misleading yourself, since VAT is money you pass on.

Which shipping method do you choose, and what does that mean for your numbers?

On bol you ship in three ways, and your choice determines which costs you need to fill in yourself. With Shipped by bol (LVB) you bring your products to bol's warehouse in Waalwijk and bol takes full care of you, including returns and customer questions. With Send via bol (VVB) you drop off at a collection point and bol takes over shipping responsibility: handy in peak season, so variable delivery times don't hurt your performance score. Customer questions about shipping then go to bol, but returns stay with you. With your own fulfilment you ship yourself, and the risk of errors by PostNL or DHL is also on you.

PurelyGoods does around 2000 orders a month and is on LVB. The benchmark for LVB is around 1500 orders a year, so with just over 100 sales a month you already qualify. For your numbers, the method makes a difference. With LVB you don't need to configure anything in MarktMentor, because the dimensions, package type and shipping costs are retrieved automatically. With VVB and your own fulfilment you fill in the dimensions and pick-and-pack costs per package type yourself, otherwise your costs, and therefore your conclusions, won't be accurate. Which method fits which order volume is covered in shipping via bol: which shipping option fits you.

What's the difference between gross and net revenue, and why do sellers underestimate return costs?

Gross revenue counts your sales without subtracting returns; net revenue subtracts the revenue you lost through returned products, giving a more accurate picture of your effective revenue. In the My store dashboard you see gross revenue with a comparison to the previous period. Click the icon next to the negative trend to switch to net revenue.

Return costs are underestimated by many sellers because they involve a lot of individual components. Is the product returned? Do you refund the money or send a new unit? And is the returned product still sellable? If you refund the money, you lose the sale, but you also get bol's commission back. Hover your mouse over the total costs figure and you'll see the full breakdown of what happens, including negative costs. If you don't want to include that more complex return calculation, click the arrow next to sales costs for a simpler view, so you can put the two side by side: the impact of returns on your costs and profit versus the situation without them. The same applies to profit: total profit includes returns, sales profit doesn't. PurelyGoods looks at total profit. In practice, return rates are often around 4 to 5%. Exactly how the return rules work is covered in how bol's return rules work for sellers.

How do you read profit and ROI per product?

For the weekly analysis you look per product, in My performance, for example over the last 7 days, at your net revenue, advertising costs, total costs and profit. The figure that matters most is ROI. ROI (return on investment) is your net return divided by your investment. You want it as high as possible, but in any case above 20 to 25%, so you keep enough margin to advertise and run promotions.

Put simply: at an ROI of 25%, you can buy one new unit for every four you sell, so the number tells you how fast you can scale up. Below 0% you're operating at a loss. In the early stage of a new SKU that can be acceptable, provided you become profitable in the longer run. An ROI of 50% is often unrealistic on bol, due to competition and comparable supply. The main cost item to keep room for is advertising. Also keep in mind that some items have a higher return rate: for a sleep mask with bluetooth, PurelyGoods saw it run up to 10%, and you factor that into your profit calculation. Those target figures are PurelyGoods' own guidelines, not a standard that applies to every product. If you want to learn to calculate margin and ROI yourself, how to calculate the profitability of a product on bol will help.

What is TACoS and what percentage do you aim for?

TACoS (total advertising cost of sales) is your total advertising costs over a period, divided by your total revenue: so not just revenue from ads, but all sales of that product. That's why it's a better measure in the long run than ACoS, since it accounts for the ratio between paid and organic sales.

These days, PurelyGoods aims for a maximum of about 12% across the whole store; around 15% they feel is too much going to advertising. New items temporarily run a high TACoS to kickstart sales, while products that have been selling longer and rank high organically have a much lower TACoS. Always factor TACoS into your profit calculation. You also compare your conversion rate to the benchmark, the lowest category, and keep tracking that in the weekly analysis. That 12% is also a PurelyGoods guideline, not a fixed limit.

Is a decline in the market or in you?

Before drawing hard conclusions from your own numbers, compare them against the market, because a decline can be down to the market rather than to you. PurelyGoods reviews market share monthly per category and logs it in a separate file. You choose between revenue and sales volume; on bol it's better to look at sales volume, because the shared data is on sales and selling prices differ. At PurelyGoods, two products together account for 25% of sales volume, and the top 20% of the assortment accounts for 40%.

At category level you see your market share per lowest category, plus the competing brands: how big they are and whether they're gaining or losing market share compared to the previous period. If your top product declines while your market share in that category is actually rising, there's usually less demand in the market overall, and customers haven't moved to a competitor. In the impressions column you see your Share of Voice with a trend: you can be found relatively better than before, while total traffic is lower. This analysis is especially relevant for larger sellers and is a starting point: is a change caused by a shift in the market, or are you performing worse yourself? From there you move into the other analyses, such as your performance and your profit.

Which rankings do you track, and why not bol's own?

For the weekly analysis you track your positions at keyword level, by default in the mobile app, because about 60% of purchases on bol happen through the app. App positions largely overlap with desktop, with small differences: on desktop, variants from a product family are shown as one position, in the app they aren't. An example from PurelyGoods' store: for the main keyword sleep mask, a product ranks at position 33, thirteen spots higher than seven days earlier. Why a product has dropped is always the first question to ask.

Rankings also steer your advertising. On a keyword where you rank around position 20 to 33, you advertise more; on a keyword where you already rank organically at position 5, such as cotton sleep mask, you advertise less or not at all. Use MarktMentor's data for this rather than bol's own, since it's more current and gives more insight. Bol's findability feature shows a weighted average of your sponsored and organic position, based on impressions. If you've advertised nearly the whole day, it'll show position 1, even though that's a sponsored spot; and on a day without visibility you have no impressions and therefore no information. A ranking tracker shows your positions all the way past 100, even on days when you rank low.

Also look at your category rankings. The lowest category matters just as much as the main keyword, because the category position is the foundation and the search position is a layer on top of it. Turn off levels 1 and 2 and keep only the lowest category on for a clean picture per product. About half of traffic comes from outside bol (via Google Shopping, AI and similar) and lands directly on a product page; the other half starts inside bol through keywords and categories, with keywords roughly three times as important as category pages. Why you should never rely on a single position source is covered in rankings on bol: why you shouldn't rely on a single source, and how advertising improves your organic position is covered in improving your findability with rankings.

How often do you analyse, and what do you do with the results?

PurelyGoods does the full analysis weekly, in about two hours, and is moving towards every two weeks, though weekly remains advisable. The profit and loss statement is the report where you go deepest: the same profit analysis, but more accounting-oriented, with costs broken down and filterable per category or per country, and you review that at least monthly. In the example Jelle shows, net revenue is 15% lower than the week before and total profit comes to about 27.1%, compared to about 25% the week before. Don't over-analyse: sometimes give the data a bit more time.

The weekly analysis leads to concrete actions.

• Price. If your conversion rate stays above the benchmark for a longer period, say four weeks, you can raise the price, since consumers are often willing to pay one euro more. A temporary promotion is an alternative.
• Advertising. Increase your budget when TACoS or ACoS is low, and lower it when results disappoint.
• Stock. Keep an eye on your buffer. PurelyGoods maintains about 14 days of buffer stock, so fourteen times the average daily sales, and for a new product prefers to buy in slightly too much rather than too little to protect the ranking. Lead time with the supplier is usually between 7 and 30 days.

Strategic choices, such as pulling a SKU with high storage costs out of LVB, you review over a longer period, such as a quarter, because you need more data for that. The next step after the analysis is optimising.

In short

• Get the basics right first: fill in your purchase cost (cost of goods) and the correct shipping method per product, and look at your revenue excluding VAT.
• With LVB, your dimensions and shipping costs come in automatically. With VVB and your own fulfilment, you fill those in yourself, otherwise your conclusions won't be accurate.
• Calculate with your net revenue, so with returns subtracted. Return costs are often underestimated; in practice the return rate is often around 4 to 5%.
• ROI says the most about how fast you can grow. PurelyGoods aims for at least 20 to 25%, as a guideline.
• Track your TACoS across the whole store, at PurelyGoods a maximum of about 12%, to keep paid and organic sales in view together.
• Compare your numbers against the market: a decline can be down to lower demand rather than to you.
• Track your rankings in the app and on the lowest category, using current data instead of bol's average findability score.
• Do the analysis weekly, about two hours, and save strategic choices for a longer period.

A good store analysis is one of the things you need to master as a seller. Everything else you need, from understanding the market to calculating your profitability, is covered in what you need to be able to do to succeed on bol.

Read more:

• How do you calculate the profitability of a product on bol?
• Shipping via bol: which shipping option fits you?
• Rankings on bol: why you shouldn't rely on a single source
• How do bol's return rules work for sellers?