So you already have a store and you want to increase your sales? Then one of the things that you have to learn is how to win Buy Box on Amazon. There are so many benefits to have when you know how to win Buy Box on Amazon. Aside from increasing your revenue, you’ll also get new and repeat customers when you manage to win it.
Most sellers can be broadly classified into two categories:
- The first type of seller is Amazon itself.
- The second type of sellers are the third-party sellers that typically sell one or more specialized products by choosing them from the vast product database.
There is no limit on the number of sellers that can sell on the platform. This can lead to several sellers selling the same product. When some or many of the sellers sell the same product, there must be some means by which some can go ahead of others.
That’s why they came up with the concept of “Buy Box”. Those sellers who win it can sell their items on a large scale. This provides a competitive edge to the sellers and they focus more on selling the best products to win this feature. In this article, we’ll focus on learning about how to win Buy Box on Amazon and what it can bring to your business.
Table of Contents
What is the Amazon Buy Box?
The Buy Box (B.B.) is a feature that is on the product description page on your way to checkout. Consumers, before checking out, can add the products in the Buy Box to their cart. It’s unique because it is not offered to all sellers. Only a few sellers are eligible for this feature. And those who are eligible have hit the jackpot. They are above the other general sellers in terms of selling preferences. This is why a lot of sellers want to learn how to win Buy Box on Amazon. It can instantly catapult your store higher and give you more revenue in the process.
It’s valuable and you must have excellent seller metrics to win it. This is possible only because of the tough competition.
Buy Box is extremely important and 82% of Amazon sales go through it.
There are so many factors that sellers should consider before they can even consider winning it. For example, you have to understand various algorithms to increase your performance. By doing this your chances of winning the B.B will increase by defeating various other sellers. Sometimes, it’s not enough that you know how to win Buy Box on Amazon. A lot of external factors matter too, which is what we’ll discuss in a bit below.
Changes in the Buy Box option that you should consider.
Tough Competition: You may have seen the option of “see all buying options” instead of “add to cart option” in some of the products. This is one primary change in the B.B option. It happens because AMZ has removed the one-click Buy Box option on certain products. After all, it is available at a lower price outside this platform. Knowing how to win Buy Box on Amazon is not always a “sure” way because they can change rules in an instant.
According to AMZ, this is because sellers set their prices. If the price offered is not competitive then AMZ doesn’t provide the B.B option. Rather, it provides buying options as “see all buying options”. This gives the option to choose amongst all the buying options in terms of price.
What about the perfect order percentage by Amazon? The perfect order percentage was an important factor that appeared on Sellers Central that was used for deciding whether a seller wins a B.B or not.
Now, this metric has been removed from Sellers central. It is no longer a factor for defining who wins. Instead, shipping time has been introduced as an important factor.
We will discuss the shipping time later in this article.
Buy Box for Books: Did you know AMZ originally started its business by selling books? But it has somehow neglected books for its business some time ago. The facility has also been open to books to boost competition amongst the booksellers and others.
The Battlefield of the prices: What would you do if the price was the only factor in winning any war? You would manipulate it, reduce it or increase it to win the war. Right? Well, to increase the battle of the B.B, there must be competitive pricing. And, the competition has increased drastically in the previous year. Some people think they already how to win Buy Box on Amazon, but it’s not always the case. Just changing the price sometimes won’t win you the box.
How to win Buy Box on Amazon?
The goal of winning the B.B is a priority for many sellers. While deciding whether a seller wins or loses a share of the Buy Box, there are so many factors that the algorithm looks for.
The B.B algorithm has various criteria to be broken down as per different variables. This is only possible once the seller has passed the minimum eligibility requirements. To know how to win Buy Box on Amazon, you must also understand how its algorithm works.
Most of the time, AMZ puts all the sellers into a competition based on different variables. Then, it selects the sellers selling the same products to have the B.B. If one seller is stronger than the others in these variables, then their chances of winning increase.
The top-ranking sellers may hold the B.B for 70% of the day and the other lower-ranking sellers hold the B.B for the remaining 30%. Sometimes, it’s not just how to win Buy Box on Amazon. It’s also about how long you can hold the top spot percentage that matters.
Amazon performs the balancing act for winning Buy Box
The act of balancing the position of the Amazon Buy Box is done for fairness. This allows the sellers who are trying to rank on the website and give their near-best performances. That means those sellers who have done everything to win the B.B but are not yet able to achieve the tops position are still there. It is not always about how to win Buy Box on Amazon. Sometimes, just being part of the box itself can bring you sales.
The primary objective of AMZ is to give its customers the best value for the money they pay. This is possible by showing them the best price of the products they want to purchase. Sometimes, it can be possible that the value for money is not achieved by the customers by purchasing the products at the lowest possible price.
For this, what Amazon does is give the weighted average of the lowest price with the high seller metrics. If any seller has near-perfect performance metrics then he can get access to B.B if his price is relatively higher than other sellers. Also, if someone has mid-level performance then he can still achieve the Buy Box by offering a competitive price. To know how to win Buy Box on Amazon, you also need to consider these things.
These complex strategies may leave various questions in the sellers’ minds. Here are some common questions you may be asking as a seller right now:
- Does one win the B.B only if he is competing against other third-party sellers?
- Can any seller compete with Amazon itself?
- What are the perfection metrics that Amazon has fixed for sellers to win the B.B?
Well, it’s tough to win the competition against Amazon but it is not impossible. With perfect seller metrics and relatively low prices, you can compete against Amazon also. It’s important to know how to win Buy Box on Amazon and how it works to have a fighting chance.
What are the Eligibility criteria to compete for the Amazon Buy Box?
So now you know strategies on how to win Buy Box on Amazon, right? But you have to remember that there is no one-size-fits-all way to get it. There is no sure-shot formula for winning it. But if you can follow the conditions for being in the competition or winning it, you can surely compete. Four performance criteria increase to boost competition amongst the booksellers and others to increase your chances to win the B.B. You must consider these criteria before going to the race of winning the B.B:
- Professional Sellers Account: You must have a paid professional seller Amazon account. The individual sellers with a Basic seller account are not eligible for Buy Box.
- Brand New Items: To compete, you must sell brand new items. Those sellers who are selling used items are not eligible. Rather, they will have options to compete for Buy Used Box which is another section just like it, but specifically for the used items.
- Inventory Availability: You must have enough inventory of the items that can fulfill all the demands of the customer with you to be eligible for B.B. If you are not able to hold sufficient inventory you are not eligible for B.B, it will simply fall into the hands of your competitor.
- Eligibility Status: You can check your eligibility status on your Seller Central Account.
What are the other best alternatives for the Buy Box?
So you don’t want to know how to win Buy Box on Amazon anymore? It’s fine. While the B.B is considered the best policy for conversion, it is not the only hope. And, not being on it does not mean that you cannot sell and earn. While the sales may be lesser, you still can earn from outside this feature on Amazon. Here are the best possible alternatives for it:
- Other sellers’ section.
If you have keen eyes and look just below the B.B option, you can see at most three other sellers selling a similar product. These sellers are close competitors to the seller on the B.B and have to meet all the criteria above to appear in this section.
They are not visible as the Buy Box items but still, it is great to be on the same page as those sellers that are not seen anywhere. They still have a high chance of click-through and conversion.
- Offer listing page.
The offer listing page is a page showing details of all the offers that are available for a particular product. It shows different sellers irrespective of their Buy Back eligibility. That means, all the sellers selling that particular page are displayed here. In addition, you can also see the landing offer that the sellers have made. The landing offer consists of the price of the product and the shipping charge.
Other variables like discount offers and customers ratings are also displayed here. This page is a great page to see different offerings at a time. This allows costumes to pick products comparing them from a larger database.
The importance of Mobile Buy Box
If we are discussing Buy Box and selling, we cannot leave behind the aspects related to mobile phones. With 150.6 million mobile users accessing the Amazon app, Amazon is on the top of the list of the most popular shopping apps in the United States.
The importance of mobile Buy Box is increasing because it appears right under the product image covering the maximum part of the screen. This is another reason to compete for it. Because if you win it, the customers have all the attention to your product. In the mobile B.B, customers do not have sight of either the “other seller” section or the “offer listing” page.
The Amazon Buy Box Algorithm: Key Metrics to Look for.
Several factors have a direct impact on winning the Buy Box. Amazon’s algorithms favor those sellers that can adhere to these conditions:
- Shipping Time.
One of the recently added matrics for winning the B.B is the shipping time. It is the
time that the seller provides to the customers for the shipment of their products.
The importance of certain goods requires shipping time to be quick and fast because of the nature of these products. These critical products like birthday cards, and perishable goods require swift delivery as required by the customers.
- Seller-Fulfilled Prime
It is an offer to the sellers that are conducting their fulfillment by themselves to enjoy the services offered by Prime. It is only available to top-performing sellers.
So, this is one method by which sellers can enjoy the best services from both the world.
FBA is a famous platform especially for sellers with heavy products where sellers perform all the tasks related to fulfillment like shipping and storing. This can save them from the extra fees they have to pay for FBA.
This method helps you to have access to the Prime membership and increases your chances to win the B.B.
The only disadvantage of this method is all the FBM sellers are not eligible for this method. If you want to qualify for this method you have to fulfill a lot of terms and conditions.
- Using Amazon FBA
Using FBA is one of the easiest ways to win the Amazon Buy Box. considers that Amazon FBA has perfect metrics across all the variables for any seller to enter the competition to win the Buy Box.
We cannot say that FBM sellers cannot beat FBA sellers in this race. But, Amazon gives preferences to all the sellers that are under FBA. To beat FBA, the FBM sellers have to perform extremely well across all the variables and set their prices low.
Amazon FBA is surely the best option and maximum sellers are into it for the facilities that Amazon provides them. But, you need to see the bigger picture and find out what method can save your time and money.
- Landed Price.
In addition to the shipping time, landed cost is also an important factor in deciding whether the products win the Buy Box or not. The landed price is the total of the price paid for the product and the shipping charge.
The thing to consider is the lower the landed cost, the greater the share of the Buy Box.
You can retain your share of the Buy Box by performing higher than your competitors. If you perform higher than your competitors, you can also price higher and still win the Buy Box.
But, if your metrics are not better, you have to price lower to maintain the same Buy Box share.
Buy Box Amazon Pricing Strategies
The main target of pricing is to lower your price so that your price can beat the prices of other competitors to increase your chances of winning the Buy Box.
However, you cannot take pricing to be an absolute factor based on which you can generate higher profit.
Check out these three methods of repricing used on Amazon:
- Rule-based.
Rule-based repricing is an automated pricing model that automates your price based on the set of instructions you give as input. It evaluates and sets the price as per the predefined rules.
For instance, you can set instructions for setting the price that is lower than the competitors by a certain percentage or you can choose to stay amongst the lowest price bracket within the range of available prices.
The method is certainly easier than the manual method but there are disadvantages that you must look into.
- To reprice your products, only looking into the competitors’ prices won’t give you complete metrics. There are other variables that you should consider along with the competitors’ prices.
- It can take more time for setting the rules than repricing them manually. Further, it is not guaranteed that the set rules comply with the other prevalent rules
To conclude, this is a good repricing model but it may be possible that the sellers with rule-based repricing may earn a lesser amount of money than sellers with other models that could have higher repricing and still have a share in the Buy Box.
Always tending to reprice lesser than competitors may also lead all the sellers like you to continuously reduce their price which eventually may lead to a price war.
- Manual.
The manual repricing method as the name suggests requires the inputs to be made manually. Again, this method also requires good investigation before repricing. By the nature of the method, it is efficient only for homemade and unique items.
This method is not suitable for products with massive competition as you have to frequently change your price as per the competition level on the market. Also, it is hard to keep up with this method once your business grows.
- Algorithmic.
This repricing strategy is considered the best amongst the three models. But, there are advantages and disadvantages to all the models and we’ll see about it here.
It is considered sophisticated because it takes into account other variables along with the competitors’ price for the repricing. This will have a positive impact on the increasing possibilities of winning the Amazon Buy Box. There is a direct correlation between profitability, algorithmic repricing, and the increasing share of Buy Box.
It considers the various factors and reprices at the exact amount that will help to win the Buy Box and does not underprice your products in the name of competitive pricing to bear a loss.
But, you need to spend a huge amount of money to follow this model. So, it is not appropriate for small and medium scale businesses.
Finally, we can categorize these repricing models according to the nature of your Amazon business.
Go for the manual repricing model if you have a small business with unique and handmade products, the rule-based model if you feel inconvenient to mark manual pricing, and the algorithmic model if you have a large-scale business with many competitors.
Conclusion
As we come to the end of the article, we can conclude that there is no one sure shot formula to win the Amazon Buy Box. There are so many complex conditions and metrics that are to be fulfilled to win it. And to know how to win Buy Box on Amazon is important if you want to improve your store sales.
Amongst many variables, the most important variables for winning a Buy Box are becoming an FBA seller, customer services, trading Prime-eligible products, and taking into account the various pricing strategies.
In the end, if you want to be amongst the sellers with high sales and high profitability you must incorporate the habit of winning the Amazon Buy Box along with all the hard work you do.
