Winning Amazon Buy Box (now Featured Offer) has already become one of the main selling strategies for most of Amazon sellers. Reason is simple! The average daily sales revenue on Amazon is $1.29 billion. And, it’s the Amazon Buy Box winners who get over 80% of these sales. Each Amazon seller wants to stay in this treasured spot to get the best profits.
In this article, we’ll see what Amazon Buy Box is and why winning it must be an essential strategy for you as a seller.
What is Amazon Buy Box (Featured Offer)?
In a nutshell, Buy Box is an Amazon feature allowing buyers to make purchases in a few clicks. All they need to do is to click Buy Now button on the product page which is really hard to miss due to the prominent design.
When a buyer clicks on the Buy Now button, Amazon chooses the best offer among sellers and promotes the one that suits the most. For desktop users, the offer will be displayed as the first option. As for mobile users, it will be the only displayed option.
So, how does Amazon make their choice? The answer lies in the Amazon Buy Box algorithm.
How the Amazon Buy Box algorithm works
Amazon is known for their buyer-centered approach. Their goal is to provide the best customer experience possible. That’s why to determine the Buy Box winner, Amazon uses a sophisticated machine-learning algorithm.
Some resources say that only price matters for winning the Buy Box but it’s nothing more than a myth. The algorithm considers millions of various data points to find the “perfect offer” for a buyer.
Amazon’s Buy Box algorithm is multifaceted. No one can tell the exact formula of its behavior. Still, there are several known facts:
- The algorithm evaluates each eligible seller offering the same product. It analyzes their performance based on certain variables. By comparing the indexes of each seller, the algorithm finds the best offer to a customer.
- The most valuable index varies depending on a product or category. For example, if products require short-term shipping such as party decorations, then shipping time will be one of the most important variables. A seller with a 1-day shipping time will have a great advantage over a seller who ships in 2–3 days.
Overall, one seller can be winning among competitors on one product, but at the same time can be losing with another unrelated product. That’s why it’s important to focus on beefing up all variables at once including:
- price;
- shipping time and cost;
- seller’s rate;
- FBA products type;
- customer response time.
Keeping these variables always in the best condition is the first step to winning Buy Box.
What’s next? Here is a list of 5 easy steps which will help you to be a Buy Box winner.
How to win the Buy Box Amazon in 5 simple steps
Step 1. Make sure you’re Buy Box-eligible (Featured Merchant)
Not every seller is eligible to compete for Buy Box. For that, you need to make sure to:
- Subscribe to a Professional plan. Only sellers with a Professional account (also known as a Pro-Merchant account) can be a part of Amazon Buy Box.
- Show good seller performance. There are some indicators that are important for becoming a Buy Box member. For example, an order defect rate must be below 1%, a late shipment rate below 4%, and a cancellation rate under 2.5%. Also, it’s important to have a certain volume of orders. The required volume may vary depending on the category.
- Ensure product availability. Amazon Buy Box won’t consider your offer if a product is out of stock.
Amazon allows you easily check if you’re Buy Box eligible in Seller Central. In the inventory management section, go to your preferences settings and select Buy Box eligibility.
Then you’ll see all the needed data about the Buy Box feature – eligible products and the items which need improvements.
Step 2. Find service for automatic repricing on Amazon
Sometimes sellers choose to set up the lowest prices and stick to them. However, in the long run, such a strategy may damage your revenue rates. Even more, as we said before, marking down your products won’t give you a 100% guarantee of winning the Buy Box.
The most effective strategy is to monitor competitors’ best offers and adjust prices accordingly. This might become time-consuming and tedious work if it’s done manually, especially if you sell thousands of products across various marketplaces.
To save your time and effort, you can automate this process using Amazon repricing tool . Having your products efficiently priced by an automatic real-time repricing tool will let you stay among the most competitive sellers.
The tool will provide ongoing management of your product prices by analyzing your competitors’ activity. M2E Amazon Repricer can automatically determine the highest possible price for your offers while still keeping the Buy Box. Ultimately, a fully automated repricing process guarantees constant price optimization and adaptation to the quickly-changing market.
Step 3. Establish a positive post-checkout experience for buyers
One of the factors that Amazon takes into account when determining Buy Box eligibility is customer satisfaction with the post-checkout experience.
Always ensure that shipping cost, delivery time, and courier choices leave your customers happy. Work with regional and worldwide shipping companies that have already proven their reliability. This way you’ll be able to offer quick and affordable shipping and your customer will give you the best feedback on Amazon.
Step 4. Provide quality customer support
To win the Amazon Buy Box, all your metrics visible in Seller Central must have the best statistics. Amazon requires sellers to have:
- response time of fewer than 24 hours;
- delayed-response rate of less than 10%;
- high feedback score and count.
- a pre-fulfillment cancellation rate of less than 2.5%
Create custom templates for FAQs to speed up your replies. Provide clear product information such as condition, status, shipping method, and costs to reduce the chances of a product being returned.
Step 5. Optimize your inventory management
Products with the status Out of stock will automatically be excluded from the Buy Box. Also, in case of overselling, customers are likely to give you negative feedback.
To avoid overselling and to control your warehouse, you should consider automating inventory management services. Such tools will automatically update your stock and synchronize the rest of the product-related changes in real time. Get full control over inventory updates, no matter how many products you have for sale.
Conclusion
All in all, winning the Amazon Buy Box is not rocket science. Meet the minimum requirements we’ve described in the article to become eligible for the Buy Box. Apply smart repricing strategies and constantly improve your customer service. That’s a formula for high chances of winning the Buy Box.
