In 2020, Amazon’s total sales reached a whopping $490 billion; out of which third-party sellers on the marketplace sold $300 billion worth of goods. (Source: MarketPlace Pulse). With close to 82% of the sales on Amazon happening through the Buy Box, it is vital for sellers to master it for higher conversions and greater market share.
A buy box (also called the “Featured Offer”) facilitates a low-friction shopping journey on Amazon by enabling customers to make their purchases quickly, within two to three steps. Since there is no limit on the number of sellers that can use the marketplace, multiple sellers often sell the same item. Moreover, at times, even if you are the only seller selling a product, you may not get the Buy Box.
A low Buy Box percentage or absence of it means that there are higher chances of other sellers or competitors cutting into your sales. Whilst, Amazon doesn’t have an exact formula for winning the Buy Box, there are a range of factors that influence the Buy Box and in turn the purchase decision.
In this article, we deep-dive into key factors that influence your chances of winning the Buy Box:
Non-competitive pricing can lead to a decline in sales and affect your chances of winning the Buy Box. For an effective pricing strategy to win the Buy Box, you must keep the following points in mind:
The number of players competing for the Buy Box also plays an important role in determining your chance of winning the Buy Box. The more the number of unauthorized sellers on your listing, the lower will be your chance of keeping the Buy Box.
You need to closely monitor the sellers to whom you are losing the Buy Box, and get rid of all unauthorized sellers attached to your products to maximize your chance of winning the Buy Box. With unauthorized sellers, you are not just at the risk of losing your Buy Box, however, your brand reputation is also at stake too. Since these unauthorized sellers might be sourcing through questionable channels, you will have absolutely no control over the quality of products that are being shipped to your customers.
Our AI-based tool Sellos helps identify the sellers that have the Buy Box in an automated manner, thereby helping you maximize your Buy Box percentage.
The amount of time an item takes to reach the customer plays a crucial role for not just customers, but also the Buy Box. This is especially true for time-critical products like gifts, birthday cards and perishable goods. In the case of self-fulfillment methods, it is crucial to establish an efficient shipping and delivery mechanism to ensure that the shipping duration is within the 5-day bracket; even better is if it fulfills the 2-day window to earn the Prime tag.
Along with this, it is also important for sellers to remain truthful to their customers. In case, your actual shipping time is longer than your advertised, it will affect your performance metrics and ultimately hurt your chances of winning the buy box.
Sellers must also maintain a high on-time delivery rate and a low late shipping rate. For instance, for one of our clients on Amazon India, we analyzed their sales-by-geography report and made recommendations on which new locations they should opt for warehouses in. This not only helped them reduce their shipping time, earn the prime tag and win the buy box, but also boost sales even more in these regions.
A combination of these parameters determines the seller’s shipping performance. High shipping performance increases your chances of winning the Buy Box.
Amazon prefers sellers who have enough inventory to deal with the demand which the Buy Box can create. Therefore, sellers with effective inventory planning, consistent sales, and good stock history gain a higher Buy Box share. It is imperative to plan the inventory well in advance, especially in the case of products that are more seasonal in nature. For example, products like sweaters that experience high sales velocity in the winter season must be planned efficiently to meet the rise in demand.
If the product is out of stock, the Buy Box is automatically lost and rotated to the next bestseller. Additionally, sellers that opt for FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) and SFP (Seller Fulfilled Prime) have a much higher chance of winning the Buy Box.
At Growisto, we focus on demand sensing based on a host of factors such past sales, marketing plans, seasonal conversions, Amazon platform traffic behavior, etc.. Demand sensing leads to better inventory estimates thereby reducing the chances of product going out of stock.
For one of our clients in the Beauty & Personal Care category, we created rolling monthly inventory plans – which improved their inventory in-stock rate from 49% to 92% on their top seller products within 5 months.
Delivering well-manufactured products, offering prompt responses, and garnering high ratings can together ensure high customer service performance. Therefore, it is necessary to focus on all the aspects of customer service performance.
In the case of one of our clients, the overall Buy Box percentage rose from 68% to 90% by revisiting the pricing strategy of multiple products and overall account performance. In addition to fixing the product’s price, the shipping cost for seller fulfilled products was also reduced to make the final price competitive.
All in all, getting a Buy Box on Amazon can mean huge gains for your product performance and sales.
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