How to Win the Amazon Buy Box in 2021?
What is the Amazon Buy Box? In simple words, Amazon Buy Box is a CTA (Call To Action) that leads shoppers to purchase the item from a designated seller. The Amazon Buy Box is on the right side of an Amazon product detail page where shoppers can add a product to their cart or “buy now.”
Each product on Amazon has its own product detail page, and multiple sellers can sell the same item through a single detail page. For sellers, that means the competition on Amazon is more intense than the competition on other platforms.
Amazon determines the Buy Box winner by its complex Buy Box algorithm, but Amazon does not officially disclose the actual factors that go into winning the Buy Box. So we’re here to give a better understanding of how the Buy Box works and provide you tips to increase your chances of winning the Buy Box.
Why is the Buy Box important?
Over 90% of sales come through the Buy Box, so we can say no Buy Box no sales. Sellers must win the Buy Box to get visibility for their products to be sold.
In addition, sellers can only create Amazon PPC ads if they win the Buy Box. Amazon PPC (pay-per-click) allows sellers to bid for specific keywords; the seller who bids highest on a word wins the auction and gets their ad displayed at the top of the search.
What do you need to know about the Buy Box?
Winning the Buy Box isn’t easy, and dominating it is even harder. You need to understand how it works so that you can prepare yourself to outperform the competition. Here’s a quick overview:
- When no sellers are eligible for the Buy Box, there will be no winner.
- If all of the sellers on the listing have priced their items much higher or lower than the average sales price, thenＡmazon will suppress the Buy Box for everyone on that listing.
- The Buy Box will not show on out-of-stock listings, except for back-ordered items only if they will be restocked within 2 days.
- New FBM sellers are not eligible for the buy box unless they make sufficient sales volume, determined by Amazon and varying by category.
- New items compete in the Buy New Box, used items compete in the Used Buy Box.
- Amazon will always have the Buy Box when selling new books
- It is a common misconception that the lowest priced seller is the Buy Box winner.
Who can win the Buy Box?
To be eligible for the Amazon buy box, you have to pass Amazon’s minimum eligibility requirements:
- Have a Professional Seller account
- Products must be new. Used products have their own Buy Used Box.
- Items must be available in stock
- Have Buy Box Eligible status for the product
How to check your listing eligibility?
- Log into your Amazon Seller Central account
- Go to the Inventory tab
- Click on Manage Inventory
- Click on Preferences in the top right corner
- Select Buy Box Eligible from the column display list
- It states “Yes” or “No” if you are Buy Box eligible for the product or not.
How to win the Buy Box?
Here are 4 ways to winning the Buy Box on Amazon:
1. Select the right fulfillment
Fulfillment is probably the most important factor in Amazon’s algorithm. Amazon fulfillment falls into three categories: FBA (Fulfilment by Amazon), FBM (Fulfilment by Merchant), or Seller-Fulfilled Prime (SFP). If you want to win the Buy Box, you should consider using FBA. Amazon favors FBA sellers because it knows you always have the perfect scores for Shipping Time, On-Time Delivery Rate, and Inventory Depth. Also, FBA products automatically sell as Prime.
However, this doesn’t mean FBA sellers are hard to beat. FBM sellers can use Seller-Fulfilled Prime to deliver goods directly to Amazon Prime members from their own warehouse. This means they are committing to fulfill orders with Two-Day Delivery at no additional charge for Prime customers.
2. Offer competitive pricing
Price is the second most important consideration for Amazon. You can say that you can attract so many potential shoppers by offering a below-average price and increase your chance to win the Buy Box.
Offering a lower price than your competition is just a short-term strategy. You can carry out this strategy if your seller rating is not perfect or you are a new seller.
Attracting customers isn’t all about having the lowest price, there are several other factors that can influence customers when making a purchase decision. If you do have good metrics and established sales history you might win the Buy Box even offering a price above your competition.
The best pricing strategy here is to strike a balance between keeping your business profitable and holding the Buy Box as long as possible. Tools like BQool Repricer can help you stay profitable and optimize your prices automatically.
What’s unique about BQool’s Repricer is that it is powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI), which uses machine learning to profile your competitors and provide you the best strategies to win the buy box and at the same time incrementally reprice to maximize your sales price. BQool’s AI Repricer offers three AI strategies to choose how you’d like to perform your listing in different scenarios to achieve a specific outcome successfully.
3. Know your metrics
As Amazon’s success is the total customer-centric obsession, the seller performance metrics are a key measurement for your ability to provide a good customer experience. And it will also be considered as one of the factors in winning the Buy Box. You can check if you meet all the essential criteria as follows:
- Order defect rate: less than 1%
- Cancellation rate: less than 2.5%
- Late shipment rate: less than 4%
- Valid Tracking Rate at least 95% (only applied to FBM sellers)
- Best to have a delivery time of 1-3 days
- Customer response time less than 24 hours
- Manage feedback to increase feedback rating and count
- Have a successful sales history
- Minimize refund rate & A-Z Guarantee Claims
To check your Account Health, log on to your Seller Central, and click on Performance > Account Health.
4. Maintain stock availability
If you are out of stock, your listing will be inactive so you will not be able to sell the product, and the Buy Box will simply rotate to another seller. Amazon prioritizes the listings having sufficient levels in stock because of shorter handling time and faster shipping time.
Key takeaway
Winning the Buy Box can be concluded in a simple formula: FBA, competitive price, and outstanding customer service. The hard part is to win the Buy Box while staying profitable in the intense competition on Amazon.
You can absolutely dominate your competition using BQool AI Repricer that raises and lowers your buy box price to continue keeping the buy box and adjust your price based on different types of competitors. For the best practices to win the Amazon Buy Box using our AI Repricer, watch our videos on YouTube.
We’ve also created this awesome infographic here to give an easy-to-understand overview – Everything you need to know about Amazon Buy Box.
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