Amazon Buy Box is so important as owning the Buy Box increases your chances of making sales. 83% of sales on Amazon happen through Buy Box.
Sometimes sellers list their items on Amazon but do not get any sales. Because many of them don’t know about the fact Buy Box. Here, you are going to learn what buy box is, how it affects on sales and how to win Buy Box
In this article you’re going to learn about the following things:
- What is Buy Box?
- How Does Buy Box Affect Amazon Sales?
- How to Win Amazon Buy Box?
- Buy Box factors for a Private Label Sellers
- Amazon Hijackers
- Reason for losing Buy Box
- Advance tricks
- Facts of Amazon Buy Box
What is Buy Box?
Buy Box is the section featured on the right side of a product page that allows buyers to buy or Add to Cart directly. Also, the price, estimated delivery time, Fulfillment information, coupons and other offers are displayed on the BuyBox.
How Does Buy Box Affect Amazon Sales?
Buy Box is so important for retailers because many retail sellers are selling a product on the same listing on Amazon, this is called the Amazon Catalog system or selling an existing item on Amazon.
On an existing listing, there will be many sellers with different offers. But only one seller will have the buy box. That means customers will only have the option to purchase through the Buy Box from one seller.
And the seller who wins the buy box will gain momentum as mentioned earlier that 83% of the sales happen through the buy box. This is because all customers aren’t aware of the other buying option from other sellers with different prices and conditions and delivery options.
Even some retail sellers aren’t aware of this and that’s why they become frustrated with not getting sales.
Another psychological reason is the customers don’t want to take that extra step to see other buying options and move to the next product page. And that’s why still the buy box is important even if you are selling your own product and you are the unique seller on your own listing.
If you are a unique seller but don’t have the buy box, then the customer will have to click on another button called See all buying options to get a buy option. Without having the Buy Box.
There is a greater chance that customers may walk away without purchasing the product.
How to Win Amazon Buy Box?
You need to understand what are the criteria to win the Buy Box. And here we will cover the points on how you can win the Buy Box against other sellers.
- Product Condition: First thing first, the product has to be new, used or refurbished condition product will not be eligible for the Buy Box.
- Fulfillment Method: Then the MOST IMPORTANT factor is by whom the Fulfillment will be done. Fulfillment can be done in 3 ways. 1) FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon), 2) FBM (Fulfillment by Merchant), 3) Seller-Fulfilled Prime (SFP).
- Price Factor: One of the most driving factors is the price. The less price you will offer, the chances are more you will win the Buy Box. But the lowest price always doesn’t necessarily mean that you will have the Buy Box.
Note: You can actually have a higher price and still have the Buy Box vs someone who doesn’t have FBA.
- Prime Listing: Prime listings compete more effectively with Buy Box. That means there is more chance to win the buy box if the listing gives a prime shipping offer.
- Shipping Speed: Then it comes to shipping speed, the more fast delivery you offer, the more chance that you will get the Buy Box. Handling time more than 14 days will not get the Buy Box anyway.
- Account Health: Also, there are several factors relate to account health that come into consideration of winning Buy Box, like
*Order Defect Rate (ODR): Recommended under 1%
*Valid Tracking Rate (VTR): Recommended over 95%
*On-time Shipment: Recommended over 97%
*Cancellation rate: Pre-fulfilment cancellation rate, recommended under 2.5%.
*Feedback Score: Most recent feedback having the greatest impact, feedback count, customer response time.
You need to maintain good account performance to increase the chances of winning buy box on Amazon.
- Account Size: Buy Box also depends on the account size. Like duration of account, total number of items listed on that account, monthly sales revenue.
Buy Box rotates between sellers who have Buy Box Eligibility and are competitively priced. Amazon will rotate the Buy Box depending on the Delivery time, feedback, Performance metrics, previous account suspension history or the account size also.
Buy Box factors for a Private Label Sellers
Buy Box factors for private label sellers or the sellers who are selling products of their own brands. If you are selling your own products, not selling any existing item through Amazon Catalog, you can still lose the Buy Box on your own listing. It can happen in two ways.
- You can lose Buy Box to hijackers or other sellers who will come into your listing.
- You can lose your Buy Box to yourself.
- Amazon Hijackers: Other sellers on an Amazon listing, called Hijackers can jump into your listing by creating the listing from Amazon catalog system by using your ASIN. And they can take the Buy Box away from you. To protect yourself from Hijackers, you can add a private label, your brand logo to your listings. So that customers can see easily that this is your brand product and other seller can not sell that item by claiming that this is their product.
So if you do not use a private label, you will have a price war with Hijackers to win the Buy Box. You may need to lower the price to get back the Buy Box from hijackers. Or you have another option to remove hijackers from your Amazon listing if you have a Brand Registry. You can report to other sellers from Report a violation tool from Amazon Brand Registry account.
- Losing Buy Box to Yourself:
- Changing Listing Price: If you change your listing price too often, you can probably lose the Buy Box. Amazon tracks your product price history and if you change your price every now and then, Amazon may think there’s something unusual with your pricing and will take away the Buy Box from you.
If you want to get Buy Box back, then set the price at a point and leave it for a certain amount of time, you will get back the Buy Box after some time. But the question you may ask is, when? Here one thing you need to understand is that Buy Box is an automatic process by Amazon algorithm, there are some guidelines to increase the probability of winning the Buy Box but no guarantee or any specific time frame or any target to win the Buy Box.
- Out of Stock: If you don’t have the item in stock, you will lose the Buy Box and it will rotate to another seller. This is why it is so important for you to keep good stock available always of your best selling items.
- Higher Price Compared to a Niche: Another way to lose the Buy Box by yourself is if the price is too high compared with the similar listing price in your niche. If a product in your niche sells for 15 $ and you set the price at 50 $, amazon may think you are doing a price gouge. So make sure to know the price of your niche by researching the competitors before launching a new item.
Here is a advance trick:
You can set your price at a higher point while creating new listings and then you add a sale price on which price you actually want to sell your product. This way you can later higher the price of your listings without losing the Buy Box.
For example, if you want to sell a product for 20$ then you can set your price 30$ and the sale price 20$. In this way, you will sell your product at your desired price. But you will get extra flexibility that you can update the sale price up to 30$ without losing the Buy Box, as your initial price was 30$ at the beginning.
Remember, the strikethrough price will not be shown on the listing that the previous price was 30$ and the current discounted price is 20$ as you didn’t make any sale at 30$ price point.
Facts: Here are some facts that you should remember.
- You can not run PPC to your Amazon listing if you do not have the Buy Box.
- Buy Box may vary depending on the location of the Customer.
- FBA listing always wins the Buy Box, though in some rare cases FBM can win the Buy Box over FBA. Actually, the fact is, FBA listing automatically gets a perfect listing score of multiple variables like shipping method, on-time delivery, feedback and defect rate. That always makes FBA eligible for winning Buy Box. But in some rare cases like in the Corona Pandemic situation, some FBM listings became eligible for Buy Box over an FBA seller.
- For a similar reason, prime listing compete more effectively with Buy Box as prime sellers already achieved the recommended threshold of Delivery time, Feedback, On-time shipment, ODR and VTR.
So to recap, the main factor to get the Buy Box is the performance metrics of a seller. FBA, Prime are so important as FBA and Prime members’ performance is already very high. And then the price, account size and so on.
