What is Amazon Buy Box? Do you know these 5 tips to win the golden shopping cart?

If you are a seller who wins the Buy Box, the product will be added to the buyer’s shopping cart, or purchased directly. Sellers can think of the Buy Box as the bottom of the e-commerce sales funnel.

There are two kinds of sellers on Amazon: Amazon itself and third-party sellers. When multiple third-party sellers offer the same product, they are actually listing the product on the same product detail page. When a consumer clicks "Add to Cart" or "Buy Now", if the seller wants his product to be the selected product, then he must compete for the Buy Box.

It is understood that 80% of Amazon PC shoppers complete product purchases through the Buy Box. Due to the smaller screen size, Amazon mobile buyers will use the Buy Box more frequently.

Put yourself in the shoes of a buyer. If you were a buyer, would you click on a hyperlink to see other sellers’ offers? Would you read the text above? Probably not. Many Amazon users don’t either. Most of them just click “Add to Cart” or buy directly.

When creating an Amazon seller account, sellers can choose between the Individual Seller Plan and the Professional Seller Plan. Although the former does not require monthly rent, the latter is $39.99/month, but the latter has more privileges, that is, it can obtain Buy Box qualifications, which individual sellers do not meet.

In addition, the products sold by the seller must be new and in stock. Amazon uses an algorithm to determine which seller in a specific product can get the Buy Box. Because the Buy Bux value is very large, only a few sellers with high reputation and good reviews have the opportunity to get it.

Amazon will assign Buy Box permissions to provide sellers with the best purchasing experience.

Amazon can only get the most benefit if buyers buy products from high-quality Amazon sellers with reasonable prices. If Amazon gives the Buy Box to sellers who offer low prices and are below the average level of the same category, it will receive many complaints and return applications.

Amazon is doing everything it can to put best-selling products in the Buy Box. So how do sellers win the Buy Box?

Tip 1: Create a Professional Seller Account

As we said before, choosing the Professional Seller Plan is a basic prerequisite for Buy Box eligibility. And if your content cannot be indexed, then your products will naturally not be able to show up in the search results.

Tip 2: Use FBA to ship your products

There are two shipping methods on Amazon, FBA and FBM (Fulfillment by Customer). FBM sellers have to pick, pack and deliver orders by themselves, while FBA sellers hand over the responsibility of order delivery to Amazon.

Amazon gives priority to FBA sellers to win the Buy Box because Amazon knows they can deliver orders on time and the products are not defective. If a self-fulfilled seller gets the Buy Box, Amazon is gambling, and if the seller messes up, then they may lose customers.

Moreover, FBA sellers are eligible for the Prime badge, and Amazon values ​​Prime members very much.

Tip 3: Make product prices more competitive

While Amazon doesn’t necessarily give the Buy Box to the seller offering the lowest price, it’s important to list your products at prices comparable to your competitors’ prices. The price here is the total price, which is the sales price plus shipping costs, etc. Sellers should keep a close eye on their competitors and try to stay ahead of them.

Of course, competitor prices are not the only factor that affects your pricing. Sellers also need to consider production costs, employee wages, FBA fees, etc. If you keep your price lower than your main competitor, you may lose money, so don't do that. Needless to say, maintaining a certain profit is more important than winning the Buy Box.

Tip 4: Reduce logistics transportation time

This technique is mainly for self-shipping sellers. The faster you can get the product to the user, the better. Amazon pays great attention to user experience, so only those self-shipping sellers who promise fast delivery are more likely to win the Buy Box.

Tip 5: Provide the best possible user experience for buyers

The golden rule of SEO optimization is to create great content for people, not search engines. In the end, no matter how well you optimize your meta tags and image names, the most important thing is that the content is valuable to the user. If you don’t help the user, then don’t expect to get good organic search rankings. Amazon sellers should think along the same lines.

Again, Amazon prefers to give the Buy Box to high-quality sellers, so sellers need to create a seamless and satisfying shopping experience.

Amazon is a great channel for expanding your e-commerce business. For every $10 spent online by U.S. consumers, $4 goes to Amazon, and nearly two-thirds of U.S. households subscribe to Amazon Prime. During last year’s year-end shopping season, CNBC reported that 45% of U.S. shoppers planned to buy gifts online, of which 76% planned to buy them on Amazon. Therefore, if you want to make the most of Amazon, you need to optimize the Buy Box.

Text✎ Fang Xiaoling/