For a seller, the journey to get a buy box is an arduous one. Even if they get the buy box, it’s a daunting task to keep others off from grabbing it. A seller has to exert every effort to stay “on-side” with Amazon’s algorithm that rates the seller’s performance.
I can clearly identify two specific types of sellers in trouble. Those who haven’t won the buy box, and those who have lost it.
The blog space is swamped with articles for those who haven’t won. I’m not diving into that red sea. I’d like to get into the depth of the issue the second type of sellers face i.e. the one who loses it. As I mentioned earlier, the algorithm is the one that judges the seller’s product. So, when a product loses a buy box, it is basically losing it to another seller. This seller has a better price or offer, which favors the algorithm.
When did Sellers’ Buy Box Disappear?
It’s an unalloyed truth that Amazon is a fan of sellers who maintain their stock. The one who does not do the same loses their buy box. A simple equation for Amazon is that you’ll not qualify for a buy box if you keep your inventory low or even empty. This is because Amazon chooses sellers who are prepared for a spike in demand during festive seasons or trending offers. Such a seller with optimum inventory will be able to meet the demand. If a seller doesn’t have enough stock, then there are 100% chances of a customer shifting to another e-commerce platform. There’s no way Amazon will prefer it.
Many times, Amazon often rejects a product because of its nature. If the marketplace finds your product incapable of giving any profit margin or the product is too heavy, Amazon will not find it worth the effort.
Buy Box Suppression and Pricing
Buy box suppression is seen when the CTA on product listing changes from “add to cart” to “see buying options.” This is a big no-no in a seller’s journey. One of the biggest reasons for this suppression is pricing. Price plays an extremely important and competitive part. Here, Amazon prefers the pricing of a product neither high nor low, and when the pricing is not too high and not too low, then customers get attracted very easily. If a seller does not align to the pricing tactic followed by Amazon then the marketplace does not award the buy box to that seller. In this case, the box will go to a seller whose prices are low and competitive than any other marketplace.
Price is the real culprit here, and it demands maintenance even if you have the buy box. There are several times when a seller prefers to gain margins by increasing the price due to high demand. In such cases, the chances of the buy box getting pulled are relatively high.
Competition
Let’s deal with this fragile topic separately. Till now, you are aware of how inventory and pricing can push down the seller from winning the buy box. However, one common element among pricing and inventory is competitors. Due to this element, every marketplace draws a comparison of one seller to another and handovers the box accordingly. Not only pricing, but every specification of a product has multiple substitutes in the market. These substitutes compete on the basis of inventory level, product quality and ratings, units sold, and attributes.
Every day thousands of sellers enter the Amazon market. They all enter with a competitive product which is a most essential part of business strategy. Such breathless competition to stand out often throws the buy box owner out of the marketplace too.
How to Win it Back?
The road to winning the buy box is foggy. You may not know what challenge appears suddenly. However, the seller that knows how to prevent the complications and above challenges such as pricing, suppression, and so forth earns a sure shot chance to win the buy box back. For this, a seller needs to know what’s going on behind the scenes. The plan includes preventive measures to all the challenges. Here are some key variables that Amazon’s buy box algorithm adores blindly.
FBA Fulfillment by Amazon
It’s not that Amazon favors its in-house creation – FBA. But FBA these days is termed as a certification for a seamless delivery system. The entire fulfillment process is managed flawlessly by Amazon, which reinforces consumer confidence. These customers get impressed by the service of Amazon in comparison to any other delivery mechanism. The prime badge indicates quality, and thus Amazon automatically views prime badge owners as smart choices.
FBA directly impacts the price of products too. A seller fixes the price of the product incorporating in mind the shipping plus storage cost. But in this case, the price of the product gets low as half of the shipment stress is waved off by the FBA. This total price calculated and displayed in Amazon is referred to commonly as the landed price. The price includes shipping and handling, which should be kept as low as possible (without sacrificing margins). By doing this, a seller can deliver inventory more efficiently as well as offer competitive pricing.
Ratings
Agree or not, ratings affect the competition. The one with good ratings has the upper hand on purchase and getting preferred. A seller’s Amazon feedback rating is constantly updated on the basis of average reviews from the customer. Here, the average rating is the mean of the 365-day feedback comments. Later on, these statistics are used by Amazon to make a decision about the buy box handover. Evidently, these reviews have a considerable impact on buy box, competition, and sales. Supporting this statement, Bazaarvoice recently came up with some data defining the weightaged reviews held on orders.
- 1 review = 10% lift in orders
- 50 reviews = 30% lift in orders
- 100 reviews = 37% lift in orders
- 150 reviews = 41% lift in orders
- 200 reviews = 44% lift in orders
This means that more reviews increase conversions and help sellers beat the competition. For this, a seller can act quickly and perform certain steps. They can request Amazon to remove the negative reviews in order to start afresh. Second, a seller can improve their customer support services to provide 24×7 automated and manual assistance to their customers. Third, implementing quality checks. Many sellers focus on quality control measures to identify defects and product loopholes. Finally, the last step is to keep a record of the entire process. Amazon may keep track of the entire performance of its sellers, but they should also maintain a proper record and measure all the variables, such as stock-ins and past three-month ratings. Ultimately, this will boost the ratings and increase the chances of winning the buy box.
Being Visible
I strongly encourage new and existing sellers to familiarize themselves with Amazon’s guidelines. Sometimes, sellers become overconfident. They make mistakes during the process that cost them the buy box. For this reason, it is important that a seller pays attention and studies the market trends closely. Carrying a handy guide on how to get a box is the best solution here.
However, when the challenge takes the form of a “disappeared buy box” then the sellers need to widen the net to zero down on the issue. It’s a daunting task, particularly because the sellers then have to check for ratings, inventory, and price, even beyond the Amazon marketplace.
Like all industry leaders, I too would like to reiterate on the preventive measures rather than the corrective ones. The corrective ones reside on the other side of nothingness, for the preventive ones, you can always come back to this blog and take a second read.
Cloverbites By Rupesh Sanghavi 
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