According to repricerexpress.com, 82% of all Amazon sales happen through the Buy Box, and the % increases even more on mobile.
Having the buy box increases your odds of getting a sale when a customer buys from a product listing that you sell on, so it's of the utmost importance that you do everything in your power to have it.
When multiple sellers are competing with each other on the same listing, different factors come into play when Amazon algorithmically determines who has the buy box.
From Amazon:
The Buy Box is the box on a product detail page where customers can begin the purchasing process by adding items to their shopping carts.
A key feature of the Amazon website is that multiple sellers can offer the same product. If more than one eligible seller offers a product, they may compete for the Buy Box for that product.
To give customers the best possible shopping experience, sellers must meet performance-based requirements to be eligible to compete for Buy Box placement. For many sellers, Buy Box placement can lead to increased sales.
The intent behind this article is to improve our understanding of what the buy box is, and how new sellers can get it (because we were all new sellers at some point!).
What Is The Amazon Buy Box?
The way Amazon structured it's website intended for it to be a catalog of all items that could be sold online, without duplicate product listings. eBay is currently making a push to structure it's catalog of offerings in a similar fashion, to combat the market share they've been losing to Amazon for years.
That said, Amazon had to now solve the problem: what if two sellers want to sell the same product?
You could:
- A) Allow them to create separate listings, resulting in a flooded/oversaturated marketplace (eBay's old approach)
- B) Force them to somehow sell on the same listing, and determine who gets each sale (Amazon's approach)
And boom! the concept of the buy box was born.
When you hear the term "win the buy box", this is referring to when multiple sellers are competing for a sale on the same listing, which can be a cutthroat game that an entire article could be written about, but tackling that issue was not my intention here.
Here is what people see when you have the buy box:
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And here's what they see when you don't have the buy box:
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People can still purchase from you, but it requires them to take an additional step:
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If your listing is Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA) & you're the only seller (as is the case with private label products), you automatically have the buy box.
Sellers in various Facebook groups have reportedly sold merchant fulfilled (FBM) products just fine without the buy box, but it's obviously sub-optimal to require your customers to take an additional step when checking out.
Only Seller On The Listing Without The Buy Box
When multiple sellers compete to sell the same product on the same listing, they compete for the buy box, and whoever has it at the time of the sale will get the order.
But what happens when you're the only seller on a listing?
Depending on your account's sales history & seller feedback, Amazon's algorithms may determine than you still don't have the buy box. Oh yeah, and you need a Professional seller account ($39.99/mo) - but I operate under the assumption that everyone has one.
Showing Amazon that you're able to handle a high volume of orders & ship them out on time, resulting in satisfied customers will garner trust and eventually you are rewarded with the buy box.
What happens if your listing gets hijacked?
Just because you're currently the only seller on a product listing doesn't mean that will always be the case.
"Hijackers" sellers that jump on your product listing and undercut you with a similar product, in hopes of stealing your sale. They tend to do this after you put in the hard work to boost your listing's organic rank in search results and start making good profits.
I'll do a more in-depth writeup in the future, but for now it's worth mentioning that you can protect yourself from hijackers by Trademarking your brand & enrolling in Amazon's Enhanced Brand Content (EBC) program.
How I Got The Buy Box For Print On Demand Products
For original print on demand (POD) products, we can improve our listings conversion rate (which will in turn improve the organic search rank) by owning the buy box.
It's silly that Amazon will grant us a gtin exemption & allow us to create thousands of original listings on their catalog, but not grand us the buy box on those listings.
But it is what it is - Amazon makes the rules.
When I opened my seller account, I did so with the intention of only selling FBA items. This ultimately ended up helping my print on demand business by expediting the process for me to build positive customer feedback & sales history, and helped me get the buy box for my merchant-fulfilled POD items.
If you view FBA & POD business models through this lens, they're complimentary businesses as long as you avoid negative feedback. That is to say, if you're getting positive feedback on your seller account form both FBA & POD, your account with quickly become more valuable and Amazon will trust it more when factoring for search rank & buy box wins.
According to cpcstrategy.com, Amazon weighs the following primary factors in determining who gets the buy box:
- Price
- Fulfillment (favors FBA)
- Seller rating
- Order Defect Rate
- Performance metrics
- Customer service quality
- Length of time on Amazon
One of the recent additions to Seller Central's home screen tells you your buy box win percentage on the home screen in the sub-navigation:
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It's displayed right next to buyer communications unanswered messages, proof that Amazon deems it a metric worthy of staying on top of.
