This is a question that comes up from time to time, so if you’ve decided to sell your wares on Amazon.com, and wonder just why your products not the one to pop-up when you do a search. Then keep reading…
Amazon can be a great sales channel, for many types of products, because Amazon has Great Visibility, a loyal customer base and a perception of high security behind their website. And they have a highly defined technical platform to support third party retailers.
However, there are many things that you will need to learn if you are going to sell on Amazon. One of the most important things you need to do as a retailer on Amazon is referred to as “winning the Buy Box“.
Wrapping your head around this might take a bit, Let’s say you have a product such as a “Cat Perch” I know, if your like me you just found out, there’s such a thing, but for cat lovers it’s the cat’s meow, pardon the pun.
If your the only seller on Amazon with a cat perch, great! When people search for “Cat Perch” you will show up in the all powerful “Buy Box Position”. But for most this is not the case, there may be several retailers that sell cat perch’s, even the one you sell, that’s right the exact one UPC code and all. In fact now when you list your products, Amazon ask you enter the UPC code, which helps them keep track and instead of having an individual product page for the same item for each individual retailer, Amazon combines them into a single “Amazon product page“.
So, when a customer visits a product page, the most obvious thing about making the purchase is the “Buy Box” on the right side of the product page near the top. It comes with a powerful “Add to Shopping Cart” button. And people being people will click this button, most of the time, being it’s the simplest choice. When they do, the sale is given to the retailer who is the “winner” of the buy box. In this case, using this example product, that retailer is Amazon itself (as seen in the middle of the screen under the green “In Stock” status).
I bet at this point your asking yourself, how do you win the Buy Box?
According to Amazon:
Customers can add products to their shopping cart through multiple paths. One of those paths is by using the Add to Shopping Cart button, (in the Ready to Buy box, or the Buy Box). Only one merchant can “win” the Buy Box. There are multiple factors Amazon takes into account when they select the winner of the Buy Box, these can include:
- Price (Low total price, includes shipping)
- Availability (Quick and consistent fulfillment)
- Volume (Consistency)
- Refunds (Low refund rate)
- Customer Feedback (Low negative feedback)
- A to Z Guarantee Claims (Low A to Z claims)
Also, it seems that the Buy Box for a particular product rotates among different retailers who have the item in-stock, so unless you’re the only one selling the item, you’re shooting to win a percentage – the number of times you win the Buy Box divided by the number of page views for this product. There are some key things you should do as a retailer to increase your percentage of times you win the Buy Box:
- Focus on your price. Your ability to win the Buy Box is based on the combination of the product price and the shipping price combined. Simply lowering your price for your product and raising shipping cost to cover the difference will not help you win the Buy Box.
- Always make sure to keep the item in stock. If you are out of stock, you will not win the Buy Box.
- Keep your customers happy, so they give you good feedback. Ship quickly, keep your customers informed of the status, make sure you always ship the correct item, and don’t show a product in-stock if it’s not!
Some categories have lots of retailers, so if that’s the case, you may need to keep an eye on your competition daily. When you manage your inventory and look at listings, you can see the lowest price being offered by your competition. Amazon also provides tips on encouraging feedback. With practice and diligence you can increase your percentage of buy-box wins. Of course so far, I have not seen anyone win the Buy Box over Amazon, when they are the retailer of the product. (Note the example above, is one of these, and the 3 new for a lower price).
Until next time,
PS. Please post a comment, if you have seen a winner over Amazon itself, as the merchant of the product.
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Another aspect of the buy box is LOOSING IT! Recently I have been experiencing new vendors hijacking the buy box from me by lowering either their price or shipping to offers so low that there is no profit left in the sale. I have done all the math and considering amazon’s commission, the COGS, and the cost of shipping the new vendors are losing money on every sale. Not sure what the game is but it only serves to create a flea market type environment where it becomes negligible to sell the products that others start competing over.
This is not only the way people think on Amazon, it’s also how they think when selling at a brick-and-mortar store. They think the only way to get customers is to cut prices, below all the others selling similar products. Wither online or offline, you need to differentiate yourself, from all the others. Amazon considers many factors, along with price, but price is a big one.
I really enjoyed this post. I have read over a few other post you have up and I will say you do a great job of blogging. I will be looking for new post daily..Keep up the good work!
I think this is a great post. One thing that I find the most helpful is number five. Sometimes when I write, I just let the flow of the words and information come out so much that I loose the purpose. It’s only after editing when I realize what I’ve done. There’s defiantly a lot of great tips here I’m going to try to be more aware of.
I have a small CD reissue label which specializes in soul and R&B titles from the 60s / 70s and 80s.
A week or so I started seeing by FBA business on Amazon go from selling one or two units a day to as high as nine on one day. As I’m always checking the site, I noticed that one of the titles had “won” the coveted buy box, even though we supply the same title to Amazon via our national distributor/s. I checked some of my other titles today and found another 4 or 5. I’ve now idea why Reel Music suddenly got these buy boxes, although we do score very highly on the items mentioned in Mike’s article.
Ironically enough, many of these titles have sold more than 50 or 60 copies just through regular Amazon, so I’ve now idea how after being in the FBA program for over two years, we suddenly struck lucky.
If you haven’t had any changed to end up in the coveted buy box, maybe the former occupant did something to get evicted, which was good for you.
thanks admin for posting and link back to our site.