The white box to the right is known as the buy box.

How To Win The Buy Box To Sell On Amazon

Everyone has heard of the company Amazon, the e-commerce behemoth that racks up billions of dollars in sales every year. Through its vast network of dealers, storage infrastructure, and delivery teams the company ensures that the items are properly sent to their destinations. Giving customers a high value-for-money experience, it also secures the product manufacturer or sellers earnings and encourages them to sell on Amazon. However, it is a well-known fact that, of the huge sum of money collected from its operations, a vast majority of it is owed to Amazon’s “Buy Box” section.

The buy box is located on the right-hand side of a product’s page, adjacent to the product details section. Customers looking to make a purchase usually employ the buy box options, which is where the buy box winner comes into play. To put it simply, there is a multitude of sellers sometimes listing the exact same product to sell on Amazon but with various different pricing on the site. In this scenario, an algorithm is employed that tracks and detects various metrics from the sellers and then determines which one wins the privilege of featuring on the buy box next to the product.

Qualifications Required 

To be eligible to qualify for buy box privileges and be able to sell on Amazon, a seller must meet certain prerequisites. This is because winning the buy box for a particular product ensures that you as a seller have increased visibility with the customer as well as an increase in the number of orders placed. With some products having multiple sellers, there is quite obviously a cut-throat competition for this space. However, to even be considered to be a part of the competition, sellers must have fulfilled certain requirements:

  • The seller must have a subscription-based Professional seller account with Amazon ($39.99 a month).

  • Product to be sold must be available and in stock.

  • Have Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) option selected for delivery of the product.

  • Generally, sellers with a good reputation and high customer ratings are given priority for the buy box.

Factors To Consider

Once all the above conditions are fulfilled, you are now in the race for that precious buy box spot. However, so is every other seller who has managed to fulfill the same conditions as you have. At this point, there are other factors that come into play and are then fed into an algorithm that decides the winner of the buy box. Some of them are listed below:

  • Defect rate of the orders plays a crucial role. Keeping this rate down as much as possible can greatly improve your chances of winning the buy box. 

  • The duration of time you have spent as a bona fide seller on the Amazon website. This point may not play that big of a role since it does not necessarily impede new sellers to compete for the buy box. 

  • The quality of services offered to the customer in case of any queries or complication with the product order. 

  • Competitive price listings, though these are again not a confirmed parameter. 

At the end of the day, it is important to note that the algorithm is not perfect and is constantly changing based on ever-changing variables. It is important, however, to keenly consider these factors to increase your chances of winning the buy box.

Solution

Keeping all these factors in mind and creating a strategy to win the buy box may seem a daunting task. But there are a number of different tools at your disposal that can make your job infinitely easier. As an Amazon seller, you yourself have direct access to the performance metrics of your marketplace and your product listings. This can help ease your burden and provide real-time statistics to help formulate future strategies. You can also employ third-party online marketplaces to help you keep a track of everything from your product inventory to reconciling revenue streams. 

For example, Shopify is one online e-commerce platform among a few that provide those services. With an external retail point-of-sale system, it becomes easier for sellers to integrate and manage their product inventories and listings across different marketplaces. You can integrate your Shopify store with your Amazon seller account as well as any other online e-commerce accounts, this way you can keep track of all managerial tasks from one single platform. Now you can manage your product listings, item pricing, and discounts as well as streamline revenue collection on all marketplaces through your Shopify store.

You can effortlessly add Amazon Sales Channel to your Shopify store. 

Having such a tool can greatly increase your chances of raising your overall seller reputation. It can also enable your seller account to be given priority when a customer places an order for a product, or in other words, help you “win the buy box”.

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Head Honcho, Editor in Chief and writer here on VENTS. I don't like walking on the beach, but I love playing the guitar and geeking out about music. I am also a movie maniac and 6 hours sleeper.

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