What is the Buy Box? Buy Box Review

The Buy Box is the golden shopping cart on Amazon. It is located in the upper right corner of each product page and is the place where every buyer who shops on Amazon habitually buys. As long as the buyer clicks Add to Cart, the page will automatically jump to the seller's store that owns this Buy Box.

importance

Amazon statistics show that $56 billion of the total $62 billion in sales was generated through direct orders placed through the Buy Box, which means that more than 80% of Amazon orders are completed through the Buy Box. In short, grabbing the Buy Box means grabbing orders.

Location

The carrier of Buy Box on the Amazon platform is actually add to cart. As long as the buyer clicks Add to Cart, the page will automatically jump to the seller's store that owns this shopping cart.

Necessary conditions for obtaining the Buy Box

1. Sellers need to have a professional seller account.

2. The seller needs to be a featured seller. The requirement for a featured seller is that the seller needs to have 2 to 6 months of sales records on Amazon, have a relatively high seller rating, delivery rating, and ODR less than 1%.

3. The product needs to be new. If it is a refurbished or second-hand product, the Buy Box has another set of standards.

4. The product must be in stock. If the product is out of stock, the Buy Box will automatically transfer to other sellers who meet the requirements.

Influencing factors

1. Seller account: The account that obtains BUY BOX must be a professional seller account. Personal seller accounts cannot obtain it. This is the fundamental premise.

Impact: 100%

Minimum Standard: Professional Seller Account

2. Product status: The seller’s product status must be new. Refurbished or second-hand products cannot obtain the BUY BOX.

Impact: 100%

Minimum standard: New

3. Delivery method: The delivery method is a factor that Amazon's algorithm attaches great importance to. Amazon believes that the entire order fulfillment process of FBA is the most complete. Sellers can use Amazon FBA to increase the probability of obtaining the Buy Box.

Impact: Very high

Minimum Standards: FBA/FBM

4. Product price: Product price (price + shipping cost) will have a certain percentage impact on the seller's probability of obtaining the Buy Box, especially when the seller's overall performance is lower than that of competitors. Price reduction can give the seller extra points, but sellers must not think that price reduction is enough. Obtaining the Buy Box is not linked to price. In low-end products, the product price may be more closely related to the Buy Box, while in mid-to-high-end products, this connection is not obvious.

Impact: High

Minimum standard: The lower the better

5. Product Inventory: Sellers must ensure that they have sufficient inventory. If your product is out of stock, Amazon will automatically rotate the Buy Box to the next seller. (Except for products marked "backordered", which means that the seller currently has no product inventory. Customers can place orders as usual, and the seller will ship within the specified date.)

Impact: High

Minimum Standard: Avoid Stockouts

6. Delivery time: The length of delivery time will affect the seller's ability to obtain the Buy Box, especially for products and categories such as birthday gifts and food. Buyers will ask sellers to ship as soon as possible. If sellers want to increase the probability of obtaining the Buy Box, it is best to deliver within 2 days.

Impact: High

Minimum standard: less than 14 days

7. ODR (Order Defect Rate): ODR (Order Defect Rate) is composed of three different indicators: negative review rate, A-to-Z claim rate, and credit card rejection rate. Ideally, sellers should keep this number below 1%, and the ODR of the past 90 days will have an impact on the seller's acquisition of the Buy Box.

Impact: Medium

Minimum standard: 1%

8. Delivery delay rate: The delivery delay rate is the percentage of orders with delayed delivery within a period of time divided by the total number of orders. After receiving the order, the seller should ship the goods immediately to reduce the delivery delay rate and try to make this value 0. The delivery delay rate in the past 30 days will have an impact on obtaining the Buy Box.

Impact: Medium

Minimum standard: less than 4%

9. Effective tracking rate: Amazon requires sellers to provide valid order tracking numbers for 95% of orders delivered in the United States. Sellers must pay attention to the logistics delivery after delivery and improve the effective tracking rate of goods. The effective tracking rate in the past 30 days will have an impact on the seller's acquisition of the Buy Box.

Impact: Medium

Minimum standard: above 95%

10. On-time delivery rate: The on-time delivery rate consists of two parts: one is the rate of orders delivered on time within a specific time period, and the other is the percentage of orders with tracking numbers within this time period. Amazon's requirements for these two parts are greater than 97% and greater than 98%, respectively. The on-time delivery rate in the past 30 days will have an impact on the seller's ability to obtain the Buy Box.

Impact: Medium

Minimum standards: The rate of timely delivery of orders within a specific time period is greater than 97%, and the percentage of orders with tracking numbers within a specific time period is greater than 98%.

11. Seller feedback rating: Seller feedback rating can be divided into 30-day rating, 90-day rating, 365-day rating and lifetime rating. The rating within 30 days has the greatest impact on the Buy Box algorithm. Seller feedback ratings in the past 90 days will have an impact on the seller's acquisition of the Buy Box.

Impact: Medium

Minimum standard: The higher the better

12. Customer contact response time: Amazon attaches great importance to customer buying experience. This indicator requires sellers to reply or respond to in-site messages sent by buyers within 24 hours. Note that the 24 hours here applies to any time, whether it is New Year’s Day, weekends, or holidays. Only by replying to more than 90% of buyers’ questions within 24 hours can you have a chance to get the Buy Box, and this indicator has a lasting influence.

Impact: Medium

Minimum standard: less than 24 hours

13. Order cancellation rate: The order cancellation rate refers to the frequency at which buyers request to cancel an order after placing it. Canceling an order will not only cause trouble for the seller, reduce sales and revenue, but also affect the seller's ability to obtain the Buy Box, especially the seller's order cancellation rate in the past 30 days.

Impact: Low

Minimum standard: less than 2.5%

14. Refund rate: The refund rate refers to the frequency with which buyers request returns and refunds. Returns and refunds are more troublesome and costly than canceling orders. The refund rate in the past 30 days will have a certain impact on the seller's acquisition of the Buy Box.

Impact: Low

Minimum standard: The lower the better

How to Get the Buy Box

1. Sell only new products

To win the Buy Box, the items you sell must be new, not used or refurbished, so that when Amazon is trying to help you with your promotional efforts, the condition or quality of the items won’t be questioned by consumers.

2. Provide consumers with a lower price

There are two types of prices on Amazon: one is the listing price of the product, and the other is the actual price of the product. The actual price includes not only the listing price of the product, but also the shipping cost.

The net purchase price is a key factor in Amazon’s algorithm determining which seller wins the Buy Box, so sellers need to make sure their products are priced competitively and that shipping costs are not too high.

Since Amazon also takes many other factors into consideration, the seller's pricing strategy does not need to be based on the absolute lowest price, but should choose a more moderate price. To achieve this, sellers should also conduct corresponding competitiveness research on product prices.

Additionally, retailers need to keep a close eye on their competitors and repricer their items as needed. To properly monitor, sellers can consider using a repricing tool like RePRICEr Express.

3. Ensure sufficient inventory

For sellers to increase their chances of winning the Buy Box, they should have enough inventory of a specific product to effectively handle the increased shopping demand that comes with increased visibility.

Since Amazon knows how much inventory a seller has of a particular product, it’s more likely to award the Buy Box to sellers who don’t declare their products sold out too quickly after winning the badge.

4. Have a "five-star" rating

In short, Amazon will not help sellers who have a lot of bad reviews. For Amazon, which pursues customer-first principles, they will only consider sellers who have a good record of providing first-class service.

For sellers, they can reduce negative reviews through review management tools such as AMZFinder, which can help sellers collect contact information of customers who are dissatisfied with their shopping experience. Sellers can contact customers through such tools and proactively correct the situation that makes them unhappy. After timely remediation, you can tactfully and sincerely ask them if they are willing to delete or modify the negative review.

5. Take advantage of Amazon FBA service

Adopting the Amazon FBA service is a highly influential factor for sellers in winning the Buy Box. When sellers hand over the responsibility of delivery and customer service to Amazon, they are ensuring that customers can get the exact shopping experience that Amazon wants to achieve. Therefore, if sellers hope to win the Buy Box, the use of the Amazon FBA service will undoubtedly play a pivotal role in it.

While using Amazon FBA does not guarantee that you will win the Buy Box, it does increase your chances of winning.

6. Delivery time

On Amazon, the faster a seller can fulfill an order, the more likely the company is to treat them favorably (which again underscores the importance of using Amazon FBA).

Delivery time largely determines whether a seller can win the Buy Box. Therefore, sellers who complete orders in two days or less have a huge advantage over other sellers.

If such stringent time requirements cannot be met, sellers can consider using Amazon's delivery service.

Amazon buy box, you need to know these things:

1. Affects 70%~80% of sales on Amazon platform

When consumers buy products on the Amazon platform, nearly 70% to 80% or even more customers will choose Amazon sellers with gold shopping carts, that is, they will directly click the Add to Cart button. Few customers will click the "11 more new and used Offers" at the bottom of the page to learn more about sellers and prices. Through the buy box, Amazon sellers can get more display opportunities, and sales will naturally increase.

2. It is impossible for sellers to always own the buy box

According to the rules of the Amazon platform, as long as the seller meets the Amazon buy box conditions, he or she has the opportunity to win the gold shopping cart from other sellers. Of course, if there is only one seller for a certain product, it is possible that this seller always has the gold shopping cart. Since you will not always have the buy box, there will be competition for the buy box, the most obvious of which is the price war. Because the buy box is usually more easily obtained by sellers with competitive prices, and the rotation of the buy box is also controlled within a certain percentage.

3. The lowest price does not necessarily mean there is a buybox

Some sellers may think that only when the product price is the lowest can they have a chance to get the buy box. Therefore, you will often find that many Amazon sellers will adjust their product prices to the lowest in order to get the Amazon buy box, regardless of whether the product is profitable or not. However, in the end, these sellers may not necessarily get the buy box. Sometimes, it is possible to get the buy box by controlling the price to 1 penny or 5 cents lower than the lowest price.

4. Inventory location may affect the buybox

The buybox algorithm is not static. Sometimes, Amazon will determine the owner of the gold shopping cart based on the geographical location of the seller's FBA warehouse. It is possible that the geographical location of the warehouse can provide better service to most of the target audience of the product, so the seller will get the gold shopping cart.

5. Products that win the buybox are usually new products

Sellers who can get the buybox usually have brand new products. Since they are brand new, they are not second-hand or recycled products, except for some media. Brand new products have a higher chance of winning the buybox.

6. Third-party sellers occasionally share the buybox with Amazon’s own products

In most cases, third-party sellers cannot get the buybox for Amazon's own products, but this is not absolute. A few high-quality Amazon sellers can get the buybox from Amazon's own products. The difficulty is imaginable, but it is still possible.

How to see if the seller has a shopping cart

1. If the listing does not have "available from these sellers" and it shows sold by, the seller following it is the seller who occupies the shopping cart.

2. Check the proportion of shopping carts in the business report. If it is 100%, the shopping cart is yours. If it is less than 100%, it is possible that others may follow you.

The reason why the Amazon shopping cart buybox disappears

1. Unreasonable price adjustment Many sellers have grabbed the shopping cart and want to get higher profits, so they raise the price of the product. In this way, on the one hand, Amazon may not recognize your price, and on the other hand, the shopping cart is likely to be snatched away by sellers with lower prices than you. So everyone should pay attention to the price adjustment range not being too large. If you need to adjust the price, you can try to increase the price by one dollar to reduce the impact on the shopping cart.

2. Randomly changing listing information. Random changes to Amazon listings will directly affect the ranking and weight of the entire listing. For example, merging listings or splitting variants, changing listing categories, are all important factors that cause shopping carts to disappear and be snatched away by other sellers.

3. Many negative reviews lead to poor listing performance

If a seller receives a negative review, it will affect the listing's rating, resulting in poor listing performance, which may cause the shopping cart to be lost.

4. Reported or complained by Amazon buyers If the seller is complained or reported by Amazon sellers about product problems, resulting in a high return and exchange rate and an increase in negative reviews, these will also become the focus of Amazon's investigation, and it is very likely that the shopping cart function will be temporarily restricted.

5. FBA is out of stock (insufficient inventory) If FBA is out of stock or insufficient inventory, it will also affect the ranking, causing product sales to begin to decline, and thus causing the shopping cart to disappear.

How to retrieve the BUY BOX in Amazon shopping cart

1. Check if the product is being copied

If a seller encounters a shopping cart that suddenly disappears, the first step is to check for sellers who ship their own products or other products that replace their own listings. If any of them exist, it may lead to a situation where they compete with each other to steal the shopping cart. The seller must first deal with the situation of being copied. If no such situation exists, the seller can wait a few days to observe. There is also a chance of restoring the shopping cart, but it is not recommended to wait too long. You should still try other ways to get the shopping cart back.

2. Open a case and consult customer service

If the seller does not know the reason, it is best to contact seller support first. One seller contacted customer service and received the following answer: It is recommended that the seller take the initiative to lower the price and wait for the system to reallocate the shopping cart.

3. Adjust reasonable prices

Sellers must optimize product prices and try to lower prices. Amazon will check your prices to ensure that the product prices are not higher than similar products and that the prices are reasonable. Some sellers said that they can get their shopping carts back by lowering prices.

4. Optimize your listings

Sellers must provide good customer feedback. For buyers’ comments, especially negative ones, they must contact buyers in a targeted manner to inquire about problems and make improvements to eliminate buyers’ bad impressions of the products, thereby avoiding negative reviews and ensuring the listing is in good condition.

5. Ensure sufficient FBA inventory

Insufficient inventory directly affects the seller’s order missing rate, return rate, late shipment rate, etc., which will lead to poor performance of the seller’s account. Therefore, sellers must ensure that there is sufficient inventory to effectively prevent the disappearance of the shopping cart.

Summarize

When a product is blessed with the Buy Box, the high exposure it receives will directly bring sellers a significant increase in sales and product rankings. However, sellers should not take it for granted that winning the Buy Box is a one-time thing, as it is not a permanent mark. If you successfully win this mark, you must work harder to hold it in your hands and not let up. And by improving the indicators related to winning the Buy Box, they can continuously increase their exposure and profits. Since winning the Buy Box has such huge sales potential, why not do it?