Winning the Buy Box is one of the primary goals of most sellers on Amazon.
Why? Because it can give you a huge boost in sales.
By getting the Buy Box, your product becomes the one that stands out to customers, and the one most people will click on to make their purchase.
But while all Amazon sellers know about the importance of winning the Buy Box, what about taking action to increase your sales once you have actually won it?
There are a few steps you can take to maximize your profits after you have won the Buy Box, and these deserve some attention.
In this guide, we’ll look at the Buy Box, strategies to win it, and what you can do to boost your profit margins while you have the Buy Box.
TL;DR
- Winning the Amazon Buy Box is something that nearly all sellers try to do because it can lead to a huge increase in sales.
- There are several strategies you can use to increase your chances of winning the Buy Box.
- Once you have won it, your attention should switch to keeping the Buy Box and optimizing your pricing strategy to boost sales and profits.
- Repricer is the tool that will help you to not only win the Buy Box but retain it and increase your profit margin at the same time.
What Is the Buy Box?
First, let’s take a look at the Amazon Buy Box and what it actually is.
When a customer shops on Amazon, they search for a product and click on one of the results. On the product page, they’ll find a white box in the top-right of the page.
In it, you’ll see the image of the product and two buttons: “Add to Cart” and “Buy Now.”
If it’s your product, there’s a great chance that the buyer will choose to buy yours.
There’s often very little to differentiate between the products, so it makes sense that the shopper chooses the option with the least amount of friction.
When you’re selling on Amazon, you’ll probably want to win the Buy Box because of the benefits it brings. But to get into this position, you have to compete with other sellers who are selling the same product.
Buy Box Eligibility
First, you need to be eligible to win the Buy Box. That means you must meet certain requirements.
These include retaining good performance metrics, having a Professional Seller Account, and having a few months of experience among others.
You can find out whether your product is Buy Box eligible in your Amazon Seller Central account.
But this is just the start. Being eligible does not mean you’ll actually win it: it just means you have a chance of winning it.
How to Win the Buy Box
By winning the Buy Box, you will normally make more sales automatically. That’s just how it works.
Your product is the one that’s featured in the box, getting it more visibility, and there’s more chance that someone will click on it and purchase your product rather than one of your competitors’ products.
But first, you have to actually win the Buy Box. Let’s take a quick look at a few strategies you can use to do this.
Be an FBA Seller
Firstly, you should be an FBA seller. This means “Fulfilled by Amazon,” and it has many benefits, including being a huge help for your Buy Box aspirations.
With this, Amazon takes care of the fulfillment for you. Amazon knows it does a great job of this, providing its customers with a better experience.
It also means you’re eligible for Prime shipping. Again, Amazon wants its Prime members to enjoy the best experience, so it will naturally want Prime-eligible products in the Buy Box.
You don’t need to use FBA, but it certainly gives you a boost and increases your chances of winning the Buy Box faster.
Offer Fast Shipping
If you handle your own shipping, make sure you offer it fast. You can’t slip up by offering slow shipping on orders. Your deliveries should also be on time.
You’ll make your product a lot more competitive if you meet the strict standards Amazon expects.
Related: Creating an Amazon FBA Shipping Plan to Easily Manage Shipments
Take Care of Your Customers
One of the most important things to focus on is the happiness of your customers. Amazon wants them to have a great experience, so it will help those sellers that do this.
That means going above and beyond offering fast shipping. You should also ensure that your products are in great condition.
You want to do everything you can to reduce the number of returns you get and boost positive reviews. That means providing excellent customer service and making sure your listing is accurate.
Your customer response time should also be as quick as possible.
Choose the Right Products
Some products are more likely to win the Buy Box than others. When you’re choosing your next product to sell on Amazon, use a tool like the “Amazon Buy Box predictor” provided by Repricer.
This can help to identify products that have a high probability of winning the Buy Box, so you can take action and potentially make your job easier.
Make Your Pricing Competitive
Finally, one of the most important factors is your pricing. This is one of the factors that go into the Amazon Buy Box algorithm. All else being equal, a more competitive price makes a product more attractive to buyers.
This is where repricing comes into the picture. Your competitors also want to offer a competitive price, and they will change their prices regularly, reducing the landed price of their product to make it more appealing.
You must react to this and make your product more competitive, rather than allow them to get more sales for a slightly lower landed price.
You could do this yourself or use automated repricing software to do it much faster. This will change your pricing multiple times a day in response to your competitors’ repricing.
It doesn’t have to be a race to the bottom because you can set a minimum price that you don’t want to go below. Then let your software take care of it for you as you win the Buy Box more frequently.
Won the Buy Box? Here’s how to Increase your Sales
Once you win the Buy Box, it’s easy to think you can sit back and enjoy the flood of sales. That may happen for a while, but it’s not going to last forever.
Remember, all those other sellers are competing with you for the Buy Box. They’re already doing everything they can to win it back, and you’ve got a battle on your hands.
You want to do everything you can to maximize Amazon sales while you hold this lucrative position. That means focusing on keeping the Buy Box for as long as possible and optimizing your pricing to increase profits.
1. Keep the Buy Box
The first thing to do is keep the Buy Box as long as possible and increase your Buy Box percentage.
This makes perfect sense. After all, the longer you’re in it, the more sales you’ll make. If you hold it for a few days, you’ll make more sales than if you only hold it for a few hours.
What do you have to do in order to keep the Buy Box?
Essentially, you’ll need to carry on doing everything in the previous steps that you did to win it in the first place.
Don’t get too relaxed. Keep up the excellent customer service, watch your account metrics, and make sure you don’t go out of stock.
If possible, do even more to provide an amazing experience to your customers. Basically, work extra hard to keep it.
2. Optimize Your Pricing
This is the real secret to boosting profits when you have won the Buy Box.
Winning the Buy Box is all well and good, and keeping it is even better. But there are other things to consider if you want to maximize your position.
This all comes down to maximizing your repricing strategy while you have the Buy Box.
Let’s say you’ve done everything you have to do in order to win the Buy Box. Now, you’re in a great position and you want to make the most of this to get more money from your sales.
One way to do this is to increase the price of your listing while you’re in the Buy Box.
You already know that price is an important factor in winning the Buy Box in the first place. Having a competitive price is good, but that price may be a bit too low for your liking.
Now that you have the Buy Box, you might want to consider increasing the price incrementally to see how much you can charge without losing the Buy Box.
Customers are likely to buy your product rather than go looking for others. Even if your product is more expensive, if you have the Buy Box, you could still charge a higher price.
You’re in the prime position, after all, and you want to make the most of this and take advantage of the opportunity.
Of course, you can’t keep on increasing the price. You’ll get to the stage where another product wins the Buy Box because price is a factor, but you’ll have made some sales at a higher price, boosting your profits.
You’ll also have a good idea about what your maximum price is if you want to keep the Buy Box.
How to Increase Profits With Repricer When You’re Buy Box Winner
Repricer makes this process incredibly easy with its Buy Box Optimizer tool.
This helps you to boost your profit margins instead of simply sitting back and letting the sales come in.
Open a repricing rule, click on “Repricing Rules,” then click on the “Advanced Options” tab.
Next, go to the “Scenarios” section. At the top, you’ll see a header saying “If Buy Box Winner.”
Here, you’ll have four options to choose from.
The first is “Normal: reprice up and down.” Select this if you just want to keep repricing as normal.
The second is “Upward: If a price change is required, only reprice up.” If you select this option, you won’t reprice down when you win the Buy Box. If it reprices, it will only go up in price.
The third option is “Stop: do not reprice.” This means there will be no repricing at all when you hold the Buy Box.
It’s the fourth option that’s really interesting.
This is called “Optimize Profit: Proactively price upward, to optimize profit,” and it’s available in the Ultimate plan or higher.
This works by increasing the price over time, but only when you have the Buy Box. So you can incrementally increase your profits without a sudden increase in price.
You can choose how much to increase it by (choose a value or a percentage), as well as how often the price increases. You have complete control, and it could be from once every 15 minutes to every hour.
This is a very powerful automated feature to help you increase your revenue without having to keep on reviewing the price.
What If the Buy Box Is Suppressed?
This is a good time to mention Buy Box listing suppression.
In this case, shoppers land on a listing and go to buy the product, but they don’t see a Buy Box.
There are no “Add to Cart” or “Buy Now” buttons. In their place, they see a “See All Buying Options” link instead.
They click this link and see a list of all the offers, with the least expensive being at the top, and they then take their pick.
This is clearly not the best situation for you because the shopper will often click on the cheapest offer.
So, why does it happen?
Essentially, none of the sellers, including you, are Buy Box eligible. This could be for several reasons. For example, you may all be new sellers or have bad metrics.
It could also be because the product is too expensive compared to what Amazon thinks it should be.
Remember, Amazon wants to ensure its customers find the best prices, and that’s what its Marketplace Fair Pricing Policy is all about. If the product can be found elsewhere for less, that won’t make Amazon happy.
Other possible reasons include:
- Your listing is not optimized properly
- You’re not Prime-eligible
- Your sales history is lacking
- Sales are too low
- Your account health is not looking good
If all the sellers are in the same situation, Buy Box suppression occurs.
In this case, you should do everything you can to become Buy Box eligible.
This is a good opportunity for you because your competition is clearly not in great shape. If you can win the Buy Box, you have a much better chance of keeping it if the other sellers are not capable of winning it.
You can then set up your repricing strategy to keep increasing the price incrementally, without facing too much competition from other sellers.
And this could help you to boost your profit margins even further.
Related: What Is Amazon Buy Box Listing Suppression?
Conclusion
The Buy Box plays such an important role on Amazon for sellers. Every seller wants to win it, and there are many strategies you can use to improve your chances.
As long as you’re Buy Box eligible, you should be doing everything you can to win this spot.
But don’t relax and assume the battle is won once you have the Buy Box. That’s just the start, and you should be doing everything you can to keep the Buy Box to increase the amount of time you spend in it.
At the same time, consider implementing a repricing strategy that allows you to maximize sales and boost profit margins when you have the Buy Box.
Repricer makes this very easy.
With just a few simple settings, you can set up your repricing strategy to make more money from your sales while you have the Buy Box.
Once you’ve set up your strategy, everything is taken care of automatically by the software. So you can focus on other areas of your Amazon business while knowing that Repricer has got your back.
Try it today. Don’t just make winning the Buy Box your only focus. Go beyond this to make the most of your position when you have the Buy Box, and increase your sales and profits.
Sign up for a 14-day free trial and see how Repricer can boost your profits once you win the Buy Box.
