Why do your competitors outperform you in traffic and sales? It could be all about Buy Box. Without this feature, your chances of selling the product are significantly lower. According to statistics, more than 80% of all purchases on Amazon are made via Buy Box.
Stay tuned to learn how to win the Buy Box on Amazon!
Table of content:
- What is the Buy Box on Amazon?
- Amazon Buy Box Benefits
- The Importance of Buy Box for Mobile
- Crucial Buy Box Factors
- How to Win the Buy Box on Amazon
- Amazon Buy Box Percentage
- How to Lose the Buy Box
- Amazon Automatic Pricing
- Buy Box Suppression
- Final Word
What is the Amazon Buy Box?
Amazon Buy Box is the best offer for a specific product, located in the right corner of the screen. To purchase, a consumer should click the “Add to Cart” or “Buy Now” button.
The Amazon algorithm determines Buy Box, so the buyer does not independently select the most suitable product.
Sellers compete for the Buy Box by offering first-class service, the best price, and the most informative and user-friendly listing.
Amazon Buy Box Benefits
Winning the Amazon Buy Box has many benefits for your business:
- Buyers associate Buy Box with a truly high-quality product and thoughtful service.
- Buy Box products are in a better position, positively affecting traffic and conversion rates.
- Buy Box allows you to drive extra sales with Amazon PPC ads.
- Buy Box contains an element of personalization for the buyer, which also favorably affects your product’s perception.
The Importance of Buy Box for Mobile
The number of people shopping on Amazon through mobile devices continues to grow. At the same time, the marketplace mobile version provides even more benefits for sellers who win Buy Box:
- The “Buy” button is located immediately below the product image, which is convenient for the user and beneficial for the seller.
- The buyer does not see the “Other sellers on Amazon” field, increasing purchase chances.
Crucial Buy Box Factors
Chances of getting a Buy Box depend on many factors. The most important are:
- Fulfillment Strategy: Amazon sellers need to meet the high level of the marketplace, for example, with the help of FBA.
- Customer Response Time: the faster you respond to customer questions and reviews, the better.
- Landed Price: the total item cost, which includes all the fees. Sellers with low-performance metrics should cut their prices to win the Buy Box competition.
- Shipping Time: in eCommerce, fast shipping is an excellent competitive advantage.
- Stock Availability: customers do not like to wait for goods, so replenish stock on time.
Also, pay attention to other factors that affect your chances of Buy Box:
- Order Defect Rate: percentage of defective orders with negative reviews and/or formal claims from the customer.
- Cancellation Rate: percentage of orders canceled by the seller.
- Late Delivery Rate: percentage of orders delivered after the agreed time.
- Actual Tracking Rate: percentage of orders with the ability to track the package.
- On-time delivery ratio: percentage of orders delivered on time.
How to Win the Buy Box on Amazon
In addition to the metrics and factors you need to keep an eye on, there are efficient strategies to bring Buy Box closer. Carefully check them out to choose what will work best for your business.
New Products
The “Used condition” products rarely win the general Buy Box as this feature is presented separately for second-hand items. So make sure your products are newly manufactured.
Competitive Prices
On Amazon, sellers set their own prices for products. But to win Buy Box, the price should match the market and not be too high or too low.
The following tools will help you set an acceptable price:
- Amazon Pricing Dashboard, which allows you to compare your offer with competitors’ prices;
- Amazon Selling Coach with price recommendations from the marketplace itself;
- External AI-Based Tools that help determine the optimal price for both the buyer and the seller.
Prime Program
Of course, you have a chance to win the Buy Box even without an Amazon Prime membership. But the marketplace does not hide the fact that priority is given to Prime sellers. With FBA, you automatically become a Prime member, but with FBM, it is also possible through the Seller Fulfilled Prime program.
Inventory Planning
Amazon encourages sellers who can quickly deliver their products to customers, so keeping inventory levels up is essential.
Also, the one whose warehouse is closer to the buyer is also preferred. And this is another argument for choosing FBA because the system optimally distributes your goods, sending most of them to places with higher demand.
Positive Reviews
Make sure that most of your reviews are positive and their amount is sufficient. Sellers with poor performance are much less likely to win the Buy Box.
High Level of Sales
No one knows how many sales your product should have to get Buy Box. It is directly related to the product niche and price. If you have average sales in your subcategory, the price is in line with demand, but if sales are below average, the high price may be a reason.
Amazon Buy Box Percentage
Amazon Buy Box percentage is the total number of page views where you are a featured offer divided by the total page views of your products. So if your listing gets 100 views, 70 of which are due to Buy Box, your Buy Box percentage is 70%.
And if your competitors sell the same product and have a similar price and performance, you can divide the percentage by the number of such competitors.
What is Buy Box Eligible?
Buy Box indicates that the seller deserves buyers’ trust and guarantees high product quality and customer service.
It used to be called Featured Merchant, and every Amazon user could see who the recommended seller was by looking at the product list page. Now, this data is available only to sellers in Seller Central.
How to Lose the Buy Box
What do you need to remember to avoid losing the Buy Box? Pay attention to these points:
Dishonest Competition
The Amazon algorithm rewards new sellers if they set lower prices. The problem is that competitors can take advantage of this and use your own-labeled products listed on Amazon and lower the price — it is called “hijacking.”
Inefficient Pricing
To win the Buy Box, your price must not be much lower or higher than the market price. Too low price means to Amazon that you want to get early sales and reviews to increase it when the organic ranking is good enough. But you can bypass this rule by offering a coupon or running a promotion so that you do not have to change the price manually in the future.
Poor Account Health
Always keep an eye on Amazon Account Health because its severe drop will not only deprive you of Buy Box but also lead to ASINs or even a seller account loss. Account Health is affected by metrics such as product policy compliance, shipping performance, and customer service evaluation.
Amazon Automatic Pricing
If you are not sure about product price, Amazon offers a solution — Automatic Pricing. This tool automatically reduces prices if they differ from the Buy Box’s existing offer.
You can get started with Automatic Pricing by going to Seller Central and selecting Automate Pricing in the Pricing tab. Click “Create Custom Pricing Rule” by choosing one of the pricing strategies:
- Competitive Buy Box sets the same price as the product with the Buy Box;
- Competitive Lowest Price adjusts the lowest price, regardless of the price of the Buy Box competitor;
- Competitive External Price revalues your listing based on Amazon prices;
- Sales Units Based lowers the price based on your sales to sell off surplus;
- Price Synched changes the price depending on the standard prices for your product.
Buy Box Suppression
Amazon cares about its reputation and high customer satisfaction. Therefore, the marketplace may hide the BuyBox in the listing for several reasons:
- If the product price is too high, Amazon pushes the buyer to a more affordable alternative.
- Violation of Amazon policy due to inappropriate content, incomplete product information, and product mismatch with description is forbidden.
- If all product sellers are non-competitive (in case of poor service or product quality), none of them will get Buy Box.
You can correct this situation by updating the violation and improving your Account Health.
Final Word
Buy Box allows the buyer to purchase the most optimal product without any extra effort. It makes this feature a crucial element of sales growth and company development. So do your best to get the Buy Box and attract more prospects to your listing.
Remember that paid promotion helps to improve the organic rankings and increase your chances of getting a Buy Box. Contact Profit Whales if you need help with optimizing your listing and PPC ads.
