Amazon’s Buy Box is located on an Amazon product listing page; it is the box on the right-hand side of the product page containing the ‘Buy now’ and ‘Add to Basket’ button. As an FBA seller it is important to ‘win’ the Buy Box as it is the most frequent place buyers will purchase an item. This is due to the fact that winning the Buy Box means customers are automatically shown your product first, increasing your sales.
When one of your items appears as the default price on the product page you have therefore ‘won’ the Buy box. Although, to win you must first be an eligible seller.
How do you become eligible?
If you are an FBA seller you are eligible to win the Buy Box. However, you must also meet an Amazon’s conditions. These include,
- Your Account Type. You must have a professional selling account to be eligible. We explain this type of account in more detail in our previous blog post about Amazon Seller fees.
- Your order Defect Rate, Cancellation Rate and Late Shipment Rate. These all effect your eligibility; the better you perform the higher the likelihood of you being the main seller of an item. You can check how you are doing on the Account Health page within your account.
- Sufficient order volume. For Amazon to accurately judge your performance you must have a varied order volume across different categories.
Amazon decides who wins the Buy Box in relation to a seller’s price, availability, and the customer’s delivery address.
How do you win?
So now you are eligible, what can you do to win?
- Price your items competitively – the more competitive your prices the higher the likelihood a customer will buy your item.
- Offer Prime and free shipping – sellers who offer faster shipping options are more attractive to potential customers.
- Provide great customer service – this includes having a low Order Defect Rate, Cancellation Rate and Late Dispatch Rate.
- Keep stock available – update your inventory and plan accordingly for things that sell quickly.
How do you know you’ve won?
Firstly you will need to go to the Product Detail Page for the asin. When your item appears in the Buy Box on the product page you are the Featured Offer. If you have variations for the same product, you may be the Featured Offer for some items and not others. This is because each variation is a separate asin.
Having won the Buy Box we would strongly advise not undercutting. The best method to retain the BuyBox we suggest would be to match a competitor’s pricing. This is because if two sellers are selling a listing for the same price Amazon can allow both sellers to share the Buy Box so they will alternate and consequently continue to both generate sales.
‘Undercutting‘ – this refers to when the price of an item is lower than a competitor.
What is a suppressed Buy Box?
This is when the ‘Buy it Now’ and ‘Add to Basket’ button is removed from a listing. Amazon can decide to do this if the selling price of an item is too high or you are not eligible to sell the item. The listing consequently no longer has a main seller. This can have a knock on effect on your sales as there is an increased likelihood of your listing being overlooked by sellers, causing you to miss out on sales.
Amazon could suppress the Buy Box if:
- You are not an eligible prime seller.
- You have not built up a credible account history.
- The pricing for the item is too high.
- You do not sell a large enough quantity of items each month.
- Your listing is incomplete.
- Your seller metrics have dropped too low this can also cause the BuyBox to be suppressed.
In Conclusion
We know the world of Amazon FBA can seem confusing at first, but do not worry! Within our blogs we breakdown the different terms and important steps to help you on your Amazon FBA journey. This is also why we have developed Profitl to help you to analyse deals easier so you can grow your FBA business! Check out our website here for more information on Profitl and here for our Youtube channel.