Jan 4th 2025
Resources
- Facebook Ads for Amazon [Video Course]
- Drive Traffic To Amazon [Ultimate Guide]
- Get More Amazon Reviews [Ultimate Guide]
If you’re a third-party Amazon seller – especially if you’re a reseller – you need to know how to win the Amazon Buy Box, how it works, and why it’s so important.
The typical Amazon shopper’s journey works much the same every time:
Search for a product -> check out a couple of options from the SERP -> scroll down, skim listing, check reviews -> hit the orange “Buy Now” button on the right side of the listing.
Between 80-85% of sales on Amazon come through this one orange button. You want to make sure your product is the one the customer purchases when they click it. Keep reading to learn how.
Table of Contents
What is the Amazon Buy Box?
Why is the Buy Box Important?
Benefits of Having the Buy Box
How to Win the Buy Box
Requirements for Amazon Buy Box Eligibility
Factors in the Amazon Buy Box Algorithm
5 Tips to Win the Buy Box
How to Make Sales If You Don’t Have the Buy Box
Amazon Buy Box FAQs
Final Thoughts
What is the Amazon Buy Box?
The Amazon Buy Box is the area on the right side of a listing that contains pricing information, shipping info, the seller name, and the big, prominent “Add to Cart” and “Buy Now” buttons.
On mobile, it shows up just below the fold, below the images and variations.
One Amazon listing can have a number of different sellers, all selling the same item. But only one seller can get the sale when a customer clicks one of these two buttons.
This is known as “winning” the Buy Box – the seller who shows up as “sold by ___” in this section, and who gets the sale when a customer buys the product.
Why is the Buy Box Important?
More than 80% of Amazon sales come through the Amazon Buy Box. And if anything, it’s surprising that this number is not higher.
Customers can still purchase from other sellers, even if they don’t have the Buy Box. Below this section, you’ll see a small area that says “Other Sellers on Amazon”.
These are the sellers who don’t have the Buy Box. And as you can imagine, not many shoppers scroll down the page to choose a seller from this list (most Amazon shoppers probably don’t even know that there is more than one option for buying the same product).
Amazon has made it a little easier to buy from other sellers, adding a yellow “Add to Cart” button to this area, directly on the listing. But the lion’s share of sales will still go to the primary seller.
Benefits of Having the Buy Box
Amazon did $469 billion in revenue in 2021. If we take the estimated share of sales that go through the Amazon Buy Box (~83%), this comes to $389 billion in sales facilitated by the Buy Box.
In reality, it’s probably more than that, as the share of sales on mobile is even higher.
Most of this is simply due to being the easiest option for the customer. Amazon leads them along a specific journey when they buy a product, which ends with them clicking the “Buy Now” button.
The customer has to make a detour to buy anything else, which is very uncommon.
Having the Amazon Buy Box is also a sign of social proof and legitimacy for your brand. It makes you look like a real, Amazon-approved brand.
On the other hand, it’s easy to assume the sellers in the “Other Sellers” area are at best resellers, or at worst, selling knockoffs.
So even if you make a sale without having the Buy Box, the chances that someone remembers your brand are lower, and the chances that you get a negative review higher, because the customer comes in with lower trust right from the start.
How to Win the Amazon Buy Box
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Now we get to the important part – how to make sure your product is the one that owns this key piece of real estate on the Amazon listing.
Amazon has an algorithm that decides who owns the Buy Box at any given time. Like all inner workings of Amazon (such as the A10 search algorithm), no one outside of Amazon knows 100% how this works.
We do have some information about the Buy Box algorithm, in terms of which factors it considers in making its decision.
We’ll examine these factors in a moment – but first things first, you need to meet a few basic requirements for the Buy Box.
If you as a seller (or the product you’re selling) don’t meet these requirements, all the rest doesn’t matter. You’re not even in the running.
Requirements for Amazon Buy Box Eligibility
How to ensure you’re eligible to win the Buy Box?
There are four criteria you need to meet.
- You need to have a Professional Seller account (also known as a Pro Merchant account in some marketplaces). This is the account type that comes with a monthly fee, as opposed to only charging you per item you sell.
- Your account has to be “Buy Box Eligible”, which essentially means it’s in good standing. This involves meeting several performance criteria – such as being under a certain threshold for Order Defect Rate, Cancellation Rate and Late Shipment Rate.
- The item you’re selling has to be new. Used items cannot win the main Buy Box.
- Your product has to be in stock.
Meeting these four criteria won’t guarantee you the Buy Box, but it will at least ensure you have a chance of winning it.
Factors in the Amazon Buy Box Algorithm
Now we get to the key factors that decide the Buy Box winner, and who is relegated to the relative Siberia of the “Other Sellers on Amazon”.
These factors all contribute to customer satisfaction – which is what Amazon’s Buy Box algorithm is designed for.
Amazon wants to provide the best experience possible for customers, so they’re more likely to come back and shop on Amazon again.
They want to be able to offer low prices, short shipping times, and no headaches for the customer.
Use that as a baseline for optimizing for the Buy Box, search rankings, or anything on Amazon. How am I providing the best shopping experience for Amazon customers?
Now let’s deconstruct the algorithm.
High Importance Factors
- Fulfillment method
- Landed price
- Shipping time
It’s generally accepted that these three things make the biggest difference in winning or losing the Buy Box.
Fulfillment method and shipping time are vital, to get the product to the customer fast and without hiccups.
“Landed price” is the other big factor. This means the final price the customer pays, including shipping and VAT (if applicable).
Lower prices are better – though it doesn’t guarantee you the Buy Box just because your price is lowest.
Medium Importance Factors
Factors that are less important, but still hold some weight in the algorithm, include:
- Order defect rate
- Valid tracking rate
- Late shipment rate
- On-time delivery rate
- Seller feedback score
- Customer response time
- Seller feedback count
All these factors are important for producing happy customers. Some, like order defect rate and late shipment rate, should be as low as possible (ideally zero). While others should be perfect, or as high as possible.
Feedback score and total feedback count indicates your trust as a seller, and that a lot of customers have had a good experience when buying from you.
Low Importance Factors
The last three factors to consider are:
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- Inventory depth
- Cancellation rate
- Refund rate
Ideally you want to have very low cancellation and refund rates, to make Amazon confident that the sale will go through smoothly.
You also want to have enough depth to cover the increase in sales you’ll get from the Buy Box without running out of stock.
These factors are less important than the others we’ve mentioned, but still come into play when deciding the Buy Box.
Further Reading: How to increase your Amazon sales.
5 Tips to Win the Amazon Buy Box
So now we know a little about how the Buy Box works, how to ensure your Buy Box eligible status, and the factors – of high, medium and lower importance – that go into the Buy Box decision algorithm.
We can use that information to put together a plan to help you win the Buy Box as often as possible.
Here are five tips to do so.
1. Sell With FBA
First, one of the biggest things that makes a difference is selling with FBA.
We said that the fulfillment method is one of the most important factors in the algorithm. Amazon wants to provide a perfect shipping experience to their customers. And they’re most confident that they can do that if you let them do it themselves.
That’s why FBA sellers have a much better chance of winning the Buy Box. If you really can’t, or don’t want to use FBA, at least make sure you offer Seller-Fulfilled Prime via FBM.
These options will also help keep your shipping time and landed time low, which are also hugely important factors in winning the Buy Box.
2. Price Your Product Competitively
Pricing is not the only thing, but it is extremely important. If you can’t offer a competitive price, you’ll be at a huge disadvantage.
This is another thing that Amazon wants to be known for. They want to be the place you go for all the best products at the lowest prices.
That’s why the Buy Box often goes to the seller who can provide the customer with the lowest price, which will be most likely to lead to a sale.
You need to satisfy all the other factors as well, but if all else is equal, it’s probably going to come down to price.
Related: how to optimize your Amazon Pricing Strategy.
3. Manage Your Inventory Well
Inventory is another key area to get right
Amazon wants the seller who has the Buy Box to be able to handle all orders – and the more the better.
If you don’t have any inventory in stock, you’re not going to win the Buy Box. It will go to someone who actually has product on hand to ship to the customer.
4. Maintain Perfect Performance Metrics
All these small seller metrics – order defect rate, late shipment rate, cancellation rate – are not just for show. They’re indications that you’re providing a perfect customer experience.
This is not just important because Amazon says so. You want to offer a great customer experience to reduce refunds and cancellations, get positive reviews and customer feedback, and increase the chance that people seek out your brand and buy again.
And for the Buy Box, these performance metrics are everything. Amazon’s not going to put an unreliable seller in the Buy Box – you need to be exemplary.
5. Reach Out for Seller Feedback
Finally, make it a priority to get seller feedback as often as you can.
We usually reach out to ask for reviews. But customers can also leave seller feedback after an order, which is essentially a review of how their experience with the seller went, rather than the product.
Reviews are generally more important than seller feedback, but that doesn’t mean seller feedback is not also valuable. As we can see above, it makes a difference in winning the Buy Box. And if it proves to be the tiebreaker between you and another seller, this feedback becomes vital.
Further Reading: How to Get Reviews on Amazon (the right way).
