How Amazon's Buy Box Works
Although Amazon doesn’t provide sellers with a checklist on how to earn the buy box, they have provided some best practices that can impact buy box eligibility. To maintain a product listing buy box, Amazon recommends the following:
Competitive Pricing
The product price must be less than or equal to the competitive price. Amazon defines competitive prices as the lowest prices for an item from other retailers outside of Amazon, including Walmart, manufacturer websites, and more.
Fast and Free Shipping
Whether or not sellers use FBA, listings are more likely to receive the buy box if they offer free shipping and maintain consistent delivery times.
Maintain Account Health
Amazon will review Order Defect Rates, Late Shipment Rates, Cancellation Rates, Valid Tracking Rates, and more to see how well sellers are managing account health and positive customer service.
Keep Inventory in Stock
When a product goes out of stock, the seller will lose the buy box. Maintain inventory levels and restock consistently to avoid stockouts.
Consistent Orders
Growing a sales history with consistent orders proves to Amazon that your product sells well and would make a positive impact on the customer by selling through the Buy Box.
Optimize Product Listings
Amazon rewards products that are able to be found through search making it imperative that product listings are optimized with keyword-focused titles, descriptions, and bullet points.
Why Seller May Need to Raise Prices
How to raise prices while maintaining the buy box
To increase pricing on Amazon, we recommend gradually raising prices rather than making a large price increase at once. Amazon keeps historical data on all past sales and pricing. If sellers make a drastic price increase, Amazon will provide proof of average selling price, typical price, or pricing from other third-party sources to justify why products are no longer eligible to be the Featured Offer.
By raising prices in small increments ($.50, $1.00, $5.00, etc.) sellers can track sales and Buy Box eligibility while still increasing prices to meet their needs. Amazon may still flag even small price increases, but there are other strategies to convince Amazon to accept the new pricing.
Add additional value to existing listings
Highlight unique product features, bundle items, and offer better shipping to justify price updates.
Increase prices on other channels
Whether you sell products on other retailers or a manufacturer’s website, make sure pricing is consistent to prove to Amazon that the price increase is valid
Continue to Monitor Pricing
After making price adjustments, regularly check listings for Buy Box eligibility. Sellers can monitor Buy Box ownership through Amazon Seller Central in a couple of ways:
Manage Inventory
On the Manage All Inventory page in Amazon Seller Central, products will display a green check mark and “Featured offer” if the listing has won the Buy Box under the Price and shipping cost column.
