The Mysterious Case of the Missing Buy Box
More than 80% of all Amazon sales come from the Buy Box—the section on the right side of a product page with the Add to Cart button.
The Buy Box is the main source of sales on both desktop and mobile devices.
That’s why making sure that your offer is the one featured in the Buy Box is more important than ever.
But what do you do when the Buy Box is missing altogether? Why does this happen, and how do you get it to reappear on your listing?
Why Is a Missing Buy Box Such a Big Deal?
A missing Buy Box simply makes it less likely that a sale will happen on that listing.
Here’s a listing where the Buy Box has not been suppressed:
When a customer clicks “Add to Cart,” the seller with the best price and performance will usually be the one to have their product added to the customer’s cart.
The “Buy Now” button below “Add to Cart” is the most direct path to a purchase on Amazon, requiring the fewest clicks to make a sale.
When a customer clicks on the “Add to Cart” button, only one seller can win the Buy Box at any given time. The result is often fierce competition to land your listing in this lucrative position.
So, what does it look like when… there is no Buy Box at all?
Amazon removes the “Add to Cart” button from your listing, and displays “See All Buying Options” instead:
Notice the lack of an “Add to Cart” button. The customer must click on “Available from these Sellers” or “See All Buying Options” first.
Only after clicking one of those buttons will Amazon show you the buying options (listed by lowest price + shipping) and allow a customer to Add to Cart. This extra step generally reduces customer conversion, and leads customers to explore different competing products that offer a Buy Box.
Additionally, listings without a Buy Box do not get shown in Sponsored Products ads. Meaning, in addition to a lower conversion rate, you also get less traffic to your listing if the Buy Box is missing!
The good news is this: the common issues that lead to a missing Buy Box are relatively fixable.
But first need to know why Amazon is suppressing the Buy Box.
Why Is Amazon Suppressing the Buy Box?
Although it might seem counterintuitive that Amazon would make it harder for customers to buy an item, there is usually a rational explanation.
Typically, it has to do with the price of the item. Remember, Amazon wants to make its customers happy by providing low prices.
If a product isn’t priced where Amazon thinks it should be, Amazon will often choose to disincentive a purchase and drive the customer to another product that’s priced more appropriately in the company's eyes.
But pricing isn’t the only factor. Concerns about a product’s authenticity or a seller’s ratings, or simply an error on Amazon’s part, can cause a missing Buy Box.
Here are the most common reasons for a missing buy box on your Amazon listing.
Causes of a Missing Buy Box on Your Amazon Listing
There are a number of potential causes of a missing Buy Box on Amazon.
1. You’re a new third-party (3P) seller and/or are not Prime Eligible
Many sellers experience a missing Buy Box during the first 30 days after becoming a seller on Amazon.
Amazon uses those first 30 days as a testing period to verify your ability to consistently handle Amazon’s shipping requirements (which means no issues with order cancellations, late shipments, or confirming shipments).
Additionally, Amazon directs more traffic to Prime-eligible products. If your product is not Prime eligible and you are the only one offering the item, you may not get enough traffic to your product page to create enough order experience data that shows you can meet Amazon’s performance requirements. As a result, your listing doesn’t “evolve” to have the Buy Box.
2. Your product’s sales volume is too low
In addition to lack of performance data, as in the above scenario, Amazon may also remove the Buy Box from a product listing with a low sales volume.
We weren’t sure why this Movado watch listing had no Buy Box because:
- It is not new
- It has prime offers available
- It is not priced lower on other sites (it’s actually priced higher on other sites)
- It is priced lower than list price on Amazon
When we inquired with Amazon Seller Support, they told us that because units have been slow to sell, this listing has no Buy Box. Their response:
“ASIN: B077PF85L7 is not eligible as of this time for the Buy Box for the reason that this listings has shipped only 6 orders in the past 365 days. ”
So there are sales volume thresholds in place for products to receive the Buy Box.
3. Your product is less expensive on a third-party site
Amazon has an army of servers that scrape competitive websites in search of lower prices. If those servers find an identical product on another site for a lower price, Amazon is then likely to suppress the Buy Box for that item on Amazon.
This makes it less likely a customer will purchase the product on Amazon; Amazon is trying to protect the customer (and Amazon’s brand) from a negative experience where Amazon isn’t home to the lowest price.
Sponsored Products ads also stop and organic search rankings drop quickly when a product has a missing Buy Box. As a result, Amazon features competing products more prominently.
If Amazon has 1P (first-party) inventory of the item, it may lower the price on it to match the competitive website. Sometimes, Amazon won’t lower prices on their own inventory, resulting in a missing Buy Box.
4. A product similar to yours on or off Amazon is less expensive
Companies selling on Amazon are confounded when they offer a unique product there at the lowest price, yet it still has no Buy Box.
Sometimes, Amazon compares prices of a product to another site’s prices on similar but not identical items. That “sometimes” is almost always an arbitrary decision made by an individual Amazon Vendor Manager or a calculation by Amazon’s bots.
For example: if one brand’s camping tent is selling well on a different site, and Amazon or a 3P seller carries a very similar camping tent by another brand, Amazon may decide the two products are similar enough that the higher-priced tent on Amazon is uncompetitive. If the Amazon offer is controlled by 1P or 3P, Amazon may choose to remove the Buy Box.
Another version of this problem happens when a unique multipack is sold on another site and Amazon 1P decides to apply unit pricing to its multipack. For instance, Costco.com sells an exclusive 10-pack of a SKU, while Amazon has a 6-pack. If the price per one pack on Amazon is higher than the price per pack on Costco.com, a Vendor Manager may see the pricing difference for one pack outside of the context of a multi-pack and suppress the Buy Box.
5. Your product’s Amazon price is higher than the MSRP
When a third-party seller offers a product at a higher price, typically more than 5% higher than the list price that Amazon has in its catalog, Amazon will suppress the Buy Box for that individual seller.
List price is also known as the manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP), recommended retail price (RRP), or suggested retail price (SRP).
If multiple sellers are selling a product above list price, then the Buy Box will be suppressed for everyone.
Basically, this is a mechanism that Amazon has put in place to prevent price gouging. Think of what happens in December for popular children’s toys: Amazon doesn’t want to reward sellers for selling hot products well above list price. So, Amazon suppresses the Buy Box as a bottleneck to slow down customers’ interest in buying the product.
When there is no Buy Box, customers may wonder what's wrong with the offers available (and possibly move on to other products that don’t have suppressed Buy Box conditions).
6. Amazon is reviewing your product's authenticity
Rather than pull a product, Amazon will sometimes suppress the Buy Box while it's reviewing authenticity complaints received from customers, such as complaints about falsely labeled fashion apparel.
If there is a sudden rush of complaints, Amazon will want to validate that there isn’t a problem with the available inventory from all sellers, so it may slow down sales of the item during this inspection period.
7. Amazon 1P isn’t able to procure selection from the brand
On top-selling items that Amazon 1P has been selling recently, we have seen situations where Amazon will remove the Buy Box for all sellers until Amazon 1P is able to get the product back in stock.
Unlike situations where 1P may be temporarily out of stock, in this situation the brand has usually told Amazon 1P that it no longer wants to wholesale the product to them. In response, Amazon 1P basically retaliates, and hurts the brand’s ability to generate sales on Amazon by removing the Buy Box.
8. Your seller rating has dropped
When a seller on a listing has performance issues, and its trailing 30-day seller ratings drops below ~90%, that seller may lose its Buy Box eligibility.
If that seller has the only offer on the listing (such as a brand selling its own product), then the listing will also lose its Buy Box.
9. Your listing is broken, and Amazon needs to fix it
Even after all of these above scenarios, there may be situations where none of them apply, and the issue is simply that Amazon's listing software isn’t working the way it’s supposed to.
In this case, you’ll need to get in touch with Seller Central to get them to fix the listing for you.
10. Your newly listed product hasn't been activated for Buy Box eligibility due to a mistake or glitch
For whatever reason, sometimes new listings never get activated with a Buy Box, even though the seller and offer both should be eligible for a Buy Box.
We have worked with brands that have launched a product on Amazon that’s being offered for sale by other sellers who are otherwise eligible to win the Buy Box, and yet the product never gets the Buy Box (and none of the earlier explanations apply).
11. Your product’s price is being undercut by a previous promotional price
If your product was priced lower for a temporary sale or promotion, and then goes back to its normal price, Amazon’s automated algorithm may look at that pricing history and mistakenly determine that the current price is uncompetitive.
This is likely to occur if you’re the only seller (e.g. the brand seller) for an item. If you run a sale on your item for a little while, then set it back to the original price, the sale price sets a precedent that causes you to lose the Buy Box.
We’ve worked with sellers who have run a promotion that’s caused Amazon to assign that promotional price to the product’s list price. They were then forced to lower their normal price or lose the Buy Box.
12. Multiple factors may be at play
When it comes to physical goods, a combination of factors can sometimes cause a missing buy box, as with this mini fridge:
Notice the higher price for this product on Amazon and missing buy box, compared to the lower price on Home Depot:
Is it a case of an identical product cheaper elsewhere, or Amazon deeming them to be similar products with a cheaper option off Amazon?
Another possibility is a broken listing as a result of the discrepancy in the listing’s brand name and model number between the two sites. “RCA-Igloo” is the correct brand, but only half the name appears on each listing on each site as “RCA” or “Igloo.”
Either way, Amazon doesn’t see its own listing for this product as legitimate or competitive, and rightly so.
When It Comes to the Buy Box, You Have More Control Than You Realize
Buy Box Eligibility is crucial to your success on Amazon, so review your products on a regular basis to check that the “Add to Cart” button is available on each listing.
While some of the forces preventing Buy Box Eligibility are outside your control, you’re not powerless.
The minimum of what you should do to maintain an active Buy Box is:
- Sign up for FBA or Seller-Fulfilled Prime to make sure your products are Prime eligible
- Maintain price parity between Amazon and your other vendors, and/or make Amazon the lowest price
- Review your seller performance and take steps to improve it
- Review your listings for mistakes or errors
Most of the issues that can lead your listing to lose the Buy Box are much easier addressed before they happen, so be proactive in fighting for your right to win the sale. And don’t be shy about contacting Amazon to take action for you on a listing.
You can learn more about why your listing has a missing buy box, as well as how to resolve each of the 12 issues above—by reading the original version of this article at https://www.buyboxexperts.com/12-reasons-amazon-listing-missing-buy-box-how-get-back/.
As a brand operating on Amazon, it’s easy to spend too much time and effort navigating Amazon’s platform and policies.
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