For Amazon sellers and vendors, the aim is to push products to the front of the queue and increase the chances of sales. However, the competition on this platform goes beyond having great merchandise or low prices. Standing out to shoppers often requires an appearance in the Amazon Buy Box, which forms a rare battle between merchants.
What is the Amazon Buy Box?
Every customer approaching an Amazon product listing meets with a few information, including the product’s images, ratings, product description, and the Buy Box on the far right.
The Amazon Buy Box refers to the box with the “Add to cart” button as a call to action for shoppers to purchase products quickly. From the Amazon Buy Box, customers can see the delivery details and adjust the number of items they buy. After adding to the cart and clicking the “proceed to checkout” button, the Buy Box leads the shopper to the checkout page. The feature eases the purchase process on Amazon to enable customers to buy products from a specific seller within two or three steps.
Many visitors consider the widget holding the Buy Box as a part of the listing – but it’s not! The Buy Box facilitates most Amazon sales, and only one seller is eligible to own it. This breeds the competition among merchants. To succeed, you must understand Amazon’s algorithms and identify the relevant variable contributing to increasing your performance. Knowing this helps to get a higher chance of beating the competition and winning the Buy Box.
Why is the Buy Box important?
Even though multiple businesses on Amazon offer the same product, only the one in the Buy Box gains more visibility for increased sales – especially on mobile.
In a nutshell, there are two important reasons to own the Buy Box:
- Boosts your chances of making sales
- You can only create Amazon PPC ads if you own the Buy Box
The Buy Box gives customers information about the business selling the product. When customers scroll down the product listing page, they find the other sellers in a separate list as you can see on the image below. 
Already, over 80% of Amazon sales come through the Buy Box. In most cases, the customers are unlikely to go far from the ‘Buy Now’ button or product image. Therefore, their decision to purchase from the Buy Box owner remains unaffected.
Implementing market channels like Amazon PPC Campaigns and other promotions is only viable when you win the Buy Box. With our PPC tool, you can optimize your ads and get the most out of them. You can intelligently filter out irrelevant keywords and improve the performance of your product. But creating ads for products even on your listing depends on your ownership of the Buy Box.
Amazon Buy Box requirements and how to become eligible for it
Amazon prioritizes the importance of offering the best possible experience to customers. Hence, the Buy Box's development promotes trusted sellers to shoppers and rewards them with more sales.
That’s why the competition for the Buy Box isn’t going to seize anytime soon. Only sellers with professional accounts qualify to compete. Therefore, your first move towards eligibility is to get a professional account.
How to check your eligibility for the Buy Box
If you want to check your eligibility, you can easily do that in Seller Central. To do this, go to "Pricing" > “Pricing Health” and click "Featured Offer". Here you will see the percentage of your products that are eligible for the Buy Box. If you have products that are not eligible, they will be listed below with reason.
How to win the Amazon Buy Box?
Being eligible for Amazon Buy Box may not guarantee your win immediately, especially with other sellers on the same listing. Amazon doesn’t fully disclose the factors that control the Buy Box algorithm. Although there are suspected criteria to win the Buy Box, the performance requirements can vary based on the products and categories.
If you are an eligible seller, here are the metrics to improve your possibility of winning the Buy Box:
Product condition
It’s typical for Amazon’s Buy Box algorithm to exclude products in “used condition” and award the seller offering a newer version of the product ownership of the Buy Box. Although in rare cases, used products win, and there’s a contest on this requirement.
Landed price
Amazon’s aim to offer the best experience and increase sales also points to their algorithm reviewing the cost of your product. Offering competitive pricing increases your chances of winning the Amazon Buy Box. With high metrics, you can win with high prices, but the Buy Box often displays the seller with the lowest possible price for the product.
Fulfillment Method
Even if it’s possible to qualify for winning the Buy Box as non-prime sellers, Amazon gives the advantage to prime sellers. In addition to the selling fees, any seller can use the FBA (Fulfilment by Amazon) and qualify for prime to upgrade their chances.
Stock availability
Usually, you can’t acquire the Buy Box without the product in stock. Sellers with larger inventory are more viable to win, since low stock may delay the delivery time to certain customers. Therefore, proper inventory management to solve fluctuations in inventory puts you in a better position.
Feedback rating
The way Amazon's algorithm incorporates reviews into the Buy Box allocation is not entirely clear. But certainly, the metrics review the number of feedbacks relative to your selling history and ratings received from the past 30, 90, and 365 days.
Reasons for losing the Buy Box
Even after understanding the requirements to qualify to secure the Amazon Buy Box, sellers can win and still lose the Buy Box. Here are a few ways that can happen.
New seller on your listing
If your listing is a product of your own brand, it is very likely that you will win the Buy Box. If other sellers join your listing, they may try to win the Buy Box by offering the product you sell at a lower price. The term, in this case, is ‘hijacking,’ but Amazon’s algorithm can reward another seller’s lower prices with ownership of the Buy Box.
Too high or too low prices
Even as the only seller on the listing, going too high or too low beyond the average price can cause you to lose the Buy Box. When sellers aim to acquire, regain, or retain the Buy Box, their first move is to adjust product pricing. Although this is a valid strategy, it can also be unfavorable. Amazon aims to ensure sellers are not offering products at significantly reduced starting prices to get early sales and reviews, just to raise the price when the product is getting enough attention. Instead of manually adjusting prices, you can use Amazon’s coupons or run short-term promotions to avoid losing the Buy Box.
Declining account health
You can lose your Buy Box privileges if your account health is failing. Factors affecting your account’s health are insufficient inventory to fulfill orders, consistent negative feedback, suppressed ASINs, or suspended seller privileges. To hold on to the Buy Box, you should plan for seasonal fluctuations in demand.
Does every product on Amazon have a Buy Box?
Not all Amazon listings have a Buy Box. Of course, it’s rare, but some products don’t have the widget. For instance, if all the sellers or the only seller offering a product do not qualify for the Amazon Buy Box, it will be missing on the page listing. Another reason the Buy Box is not on the listing is if all the sellers list their versions of the product at a much higher or lower price than the product’s average sales price.
In either case, the shopper meets a ‘See All Buying Options’ message. Clicking this redirects them to the ‘Additional sellers’ option, the same way they would scroll down to find other sellers on a listing page with the Buy Box.
When sellers who can determine the market price for a listing increase the prices extraordinarily, Amazon can remove the Buy Box to protect the shoppers and leave them to make better-informed decisions.
Conclusion
Beating the Amazon Buy Box requires consistent monitoring and improving every metric concerning marketing your product. While becoming an FBA seller is an excellent start to winning the Buy Box, the basis of Amazon’s strategy is to improve customer experiences and reward the most efficient seller.
Your best line of attack is to covet this same approach and focus on the essential variables, such as delivering products in optimum condition and ensuring stock is available and at a competitive price.
Winning the Buy Box is an important step to successfully selling your products on Amazon. However, if you want to increase your sales and scale your business, you cannot get around running ads. To successfully display, optimize, and monitor ads, you need a PPC management tool like BidX.
