If you are a seller on Amazon, you are probably familiar with Buy Box. But for a newbie, you might wonder what Buy Box is and how it works? What benefits can this Buy Box bring you? Let’s find out the answer to these questions in this post.
What is a Buy Box?
Buy Box is the white box placed at the topmost on the right side of the product page. This box includes a yellow button named “Add to Cart”. By clicking this box, buyers can proceed to buy this product.
The function of this Buy Box is very simple and straightforward but why does it become so important and the target of desire? We will explain why this Buy Box is so important to sellers on Amazon.
Why is Buy Box important?
Buy Box is the holy grail to sellers on Amazon. When you win this Buy Box, or to be exact, get this Buy Box on your product, your products are likely to increase visibility and gain more sales.
Over 80% of the daily transactions on Amazon are made through Buy Box. This number is even higher on mobile. When you are browsing on mobile, this Buy Box is placed right under the product image section. The importance of Buy Box is even escalated as the “Other Sellers on Amazon” box completely disappeared on the mobile version. Only the winner of Buy Box is shown on the product page.
Besides, when you win the Buy Box, you are more likely to win the trust of customers.
Thanks to the ease of purchase, the sales volume of products with Buy Box is 4 times higher than products without Buy Box.
How does Buy Box work?
With a goal to provide the best experience to shoppers, Amazon’s priority is to deliver products with the highest quality to customers.
Amazon’s Buy Box is a reward for products with superior quality and the best value for money. Buy Box algorithm evaluates similar products based on the price and seller’s reliability to decide which product is the best for buyers. Even when you have the lowest price, it doesn’t guarantee the win of Buy Box.
Amazon will balance the pricing and seller’s reliability. First, Amazon will pick the products that get the best prices and meet some basic standards. After filtering out all products that do not meet the requirements, Amazon will evaluate the products based on different variables.
Rotation of Buy Box
For similar products with the same Asin, Amazon doesn’t give Buy Box to just one single seller. Instead, they rotate the Buy Box for various sellers depending on the different metrics.
Take this for example, if there are 10 sellers with perfect scores according to Amazon’s evaluation, and selling products at the same price, each of them will get a share of a 10% chance of getting the Buy Box. Amazon will rotate the Buy Box among these ten sellers and make sure that each seller will get Buy Box in 2.4 hours(10% of 24 hours) per day.
With a similarly priced product, a high-performance seller can get 75% of the Buy Box while a seller with medium performance can get Buy Box 25% of the time. And the low-performance seller will only get 5%.
Buy Box rotation doesn’t always happen. It really depends on the nature of a product, the competition, and the hours of the day.
Customers won’t easily notice how they rotate Buy Box for different sellers as Amazon makes sure that customers will only see one seller with Buy Box in an hour.
However, in case there are changes in the winner’s Buy Box metrics, for example, pricing, or stock numbers. Amazon might rotate the Buy Box to another seller prematurely. Of course, this change won’t happen immediately yet it will take at least 15 minutes to update.
How to win Buy Box?
“Why does Amazon always get the Buy Box and how can I beat Amazon to get Buy Box” is a constant question for many sellers on this platform.
Buy Box algorithm considers Amazon as a seller with high performance who brings a high level of satisfaction for buyers. If you want to win over Amazon or at least share Buy Box with Amazon, you must have similarly high performance and competitive prices. However, this is only possible for particular categories. For book or downloadable products, it’s always Amazon who wins the Buy Box. At first, Amazon is the book distributor on their platform. Starting from 2017, other sellers can sell books on this platform and gain opportunities to win Amazon and get the Buy Box.
What if no one gets the Buy Box?
There are two cases in which there is no winner who gets the Buy Box.
- No seller meets the basic standard
- No seller offers an acceptable price (Amazon only accepts prices that are lower than the listed price)
In these cases, you will see “See All Buying Options” instead of “Add to Cart” button. This option will lead the shoppers to the list of available listings for the same product.
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