If you are a seller on Amazon or looking to become one, the Amazon Buy Box is a special feature that is critical to understand and leverage into your business model. In fact, over 82% of the sales on Amazon are initiated through the Buy Box, and it’s even more prevalent for sales completed on mobile devices.
So, what is the Amazon Buy Box?
The Buy Box refers to the box on the right side of a product detail page that says “Buy Now” on Amazon. This button facilitates an expedited checkout process, where a customer can simply click the button and have that product placed directly into their cart for checkout. Additionally, the Buy Box separates the featured offer from the others, mitigating an overwhelm of options for the customer and incentivizing them to choose the featured Buy Box product.
What does “Winning the Buy Box” mean?
Winning the Buy Box means that your product is performing excellently (according to Amazon standards) and therefore it is awarded a great real estate space on the search results page and is displayed as a featured product. This attracts more attention from shoppers and leads to higher rates of sales. Buy Box-winning products out perform products that do not have a share of the Buy Box. Prioritizing the Buy Box is important, but it is also equally as challenging to attain. In order to win the Buy Box, you carefully consider the way that Amazon’s algorithms function so that you can build up your product listing and increase your performance on relevant variables.
What are the major variables and key elements that determine the Amazon Buy Box?
Amazon sticks to its well renowned customer-obsessed approach in the ways that it calculates the Buy Box winner. At the end of the day, Amazon is seeking to showcase the offer that is not only most profitable, but is also most likely to be chosen by a customer. The key elements that ultimately determine who wins the Buy Box include (but are not limited to):
- A Competitive Price Point / Excellent Repricing Strategies
- Using FBA (Fulfillment By Amazon)
- Having Prime eligibility
- Very low ODR (Order Defect Rate) and Cancelation Rate
- Excellent Inventory Management (Don’t run out of stock)
- Positive Customer Reviews/Feedback
While the variables above highlight the most crucial determinants of the Buy Box, there are other things that can minorly effect it as well. If you leverage your listing with consideration to the factors listed above, your chances of winning the Buy Box will ultimately increase and you may in fact beat the competition.
Some Pro Tips…
While every seller has their own unique business strategy and model, there are several Buy Box pro tips that are beneficial across all aspects of business endeavors on Amazon. Here are a few tips to keep in mind while pursuing the Buy Box:
- Pro Tip #1: It is very likely that your competition is utilizing automated pricing to keep their product listings up to date and increase their odds of winning the Buy Box. In order to stay in the Buy Box rotation, make sure your goods are competitively priced and considered an excellent purchase choice from a customer’s perspective.
- Pro Tip #2: The “Landed Price” refers to the total price of an Amazon product, including shipping. The lower the landing price, the larger the Buy Box share. Higher performance metrics than the competition can also permit you to raise your product’s price without losing the Buy Box.
- Pro Tip #3: Out of all the variables we discussed in this blog, the one that impacts the Buy Box most is the product’s fulfillment method.
