Amazon Integration Tips - How to win a Buy Box on Amazon Marketplace?

Amazon deals with a large number of sellers on Amazon integration service on the marketplace. It is not possible to feature each seller on top on a product page. For this, Amazon utilizes the feature of Buy Box that sets a formula with plenty of other factors to feature a particular seller on the top on a product page. Once you are recognized as eligible for Buy Box on Amazon Marketplace Web Service, your products featured on the product pages are given an “Add to cart “ button for direct selling, something like the image given below.

Buy Box allows a seller to get emphasized on a product page for some particular product on AMWS.

Winning tips to achieve a Buy box for your products:

1. Check if you are eligible for Buy Box -

Eligibility to utilize a Buy Box feature by a seller could be seen as affected by the multidimensional criteria. Earlier featured merchant status was taken into consideration, but Amazon decided to drop this criterion to provide each seller to equal opportunity on the AMWS platform. Here are some essential criteria you must fulfill to be eligible:

You should have a Professional seller account on Amazon Marketplace Web Service
Have been trading for at least 2-6 months.
Or you can win Buy Box directly by opting Fulfillment By Amazon service.
You should have enough stock to let Amazon fulfill your delivery or delivery by yourself. 

2. Research your performance factors-

Some performance determinants which affect your eligibility are as follows:

You must be a successful seller on Amazon Marketplace- Amazon takes into consideration your history of successful selling on the marketplace. If you have already fulfilled a significant number of orders successfully then your chances to win the Buy Box increases respectively.

Your ability to provide a satisfying customer service- your ability depends on the factors such as

Response efficiency to the customers.
The speed of delivery of products.
Product delivery without an error.
Least number of canceled orders.
The condition of products that are finally delivered.

3. Total Price of products-

Many people would say the price is the only factor which Amazon sees as a leading criterion, but the truth is not the same. The price of a product is an essential part of the factors which affects your eligibility but not is the only factor. The total price of a product is the price taken by the seller to sell a product finally and get it delivered to the specified address.

Make your price of products competitive enough

It does not mean you ask for the cheapest price, but it should be one of the lowest prices among the other sellers.

Always be updated with the latest pricing of products by your competitors.

4. Amazon gives Buy Box to New products only-

The feature of Buy Box applies to the new products only, although there is another buy box for used products that uses some other criteria to be satisfied. To secure your chances to win, you must sell new products as it will make Amazon confident about the condition and quality of your products.

5. Positive customer reviews-

A seller winning the Buy Box has a perfect combination of all the points mentioned above in the article.

Reviews play a paramount role in encouraging Amazon to grant you a Buy Box feature. The number of positive reviews increases your chances by making Amazon confident about the products you are promoting on the Amazon Marketplace web services. Conversely, negative reviews diminish your chances to win a Buy Box. So, manage your products and services quality so as to get the maximum possible positive comments and reviews.

So, these are some important factors and tips that can adversely affect your eligibility to win a Buy Box feature on Amazon Marketplace Web Services. Refer to the screen shot above to see a perfect example of a winning seller on the Amazon Marketplace. You should remember these tips while you plan to win the same for your online store on the Amazon Marketplace.

Points to remember while writing a sales oriented blog

Blogs have become a paramount tool for promotion of products and services these days. Companies are utilizing this amazing platform to encourage more and more visitors to their websites, where they are actually ready with appealing contents to guide them with a bulk of information and lot more. For example, An eCommerce website trying to sell an LED Television publishes a blog about, How LED TVs are saving a huge amount of electricity. In it’s blog it may present some information about the televisions on their eCommerce site which do not consume much electricity. In this way, they can promote their products in a much agreeable manner by encouraging readers to at least have a look at them on the website.

I have used the above example to emphasize the fact that, sales oriented blogs are not just about views, is but a set of information which ultimately links a customer with someone who is selling something. Informative contents accompanied by some suggestions make blogs these days. Blogs are playing the role of a magnet which attracts the traffic of seekers to a particular website. Blogging gives better search engine optimization opportunities, increased traffic, and more inbound links to our websites.

Here, I have tried to put forward some vital considerations one should make while writing a sales oriented blog.  

1. Identify the target audience

In order to accomplish an effective blog/ content it is very imperative that you know your audience properly. Writing without a motive doesn't bring out an effective content, and motive comes out when you are aware of the people for whom you are writing. Knowing your audience helps you to decide the type and level of details you should provide in a blog post.

For example, you don't have to fill your content with technical vocabularies when you are writing for some general audience who don't understand technical terms well. We try to put forward simple words and sentence structures which can be easily understood by a techie or non-techie.  

2. Identify the key issues of the target audience

When you know your audience, your next job is to identify the critical issues faced by your target audience. The issues faced by an audience varies from place to place, time to time, and audience to audience. A proper blog is one which identifies the issue and provide some solution for it.

Identification of issues faced by your target audience help you to plan your contents in right way so that it provides an appropriate solution where you can also mention the products or services that you can provide to sort the issue. In this way you ensure the path for conversion optimization for various products on your site.

For example, a company selling laptops will try to discover the issues faced by a customer in deciding which laptop should he should buy. Here, in this case, we try to find out the needs of the customers seeking new laptops. We discover the needs and plan a content which would solve the issue by suggesting them laptops according to their need. Please note that the needs of customers could be different from person to person. Say a person might want a laptop for his professional usage while other person might want the same for his personal use.  

3. Build your competitive advantage by proving your point

When we include our business in the solutions that we provide in a blog, we should make sure that we build a trust among the readers by providing a complete detail of the product which could also be followed by enlisting the benefits of the product for the user. This detailed information we provide to the readers helps in building a trust in the customer regarding the quality of the product or service we can provide to them.

Considering the same example of the laptop, I have mentioned in the former point, we can provide readers with a detailed information about the features and specifications of the laptop. We can add positive reviews and appreciation our product has got from general and certified users. In this way, we can present our business in the blogs as such it develops a trust factor in the readers.

4. Present your blog as an interaction rather than a one-sided lecture of suggestions

Present your ideas as if, you are talking to the reader, and your approach should be more and more interactive yet informative. When you know your audience and discover their issues, you come up with proper suggestions which fits their need. This imparts a sense personal touch in the readers.

For example, if you identify the key issues of a new laptop seeker and present the suggestions specific to this group of readers in their understandable language, then this content will have a much positive impact rather than a dry product specification full of technical words which cannot be even understood by a general audience. Let consider a situation when a reader from non- technical background wants us to suggest a laptop which needs lesser charging time. We cannot say him that you should choose this laptop because it comes with a10.000Ah lithium ion battery . Its better if we say like “ this particular laptop comes with a 12 cell lithium ion battery with 10,000 Ah power which makes it store more power than other laptops, that’s why the battery of this laptop lasts longer”.  

5. Use of decent multimedia contents

Blog accompanied by a video post proves to be more effective.

Try to provide appropriate images or videos where ever necessary. It will increase the interactivity of the post and build confidence in readers. Images and videos make the posts interesting and also clears a significant proportion of doubts instantly. Here is an example of a blog post accompanied by an amazing video. The post explains how a post accompanied by a video can have impact on your audience. The point is, text alone is not sufficient for an impactful conveyance of a message. You need to make it more infographic to serve its purpose properly and also impress the Google panda algorithm which emphasizes on the quality of contents rather than keywords for ranking the sites.

6. Allow discussions on your posts

You should allow the readers to discuss your contents by using comments and replies. You can utilize this feature to gain support for your post from readers. Also, we should remember that replying to comments and queries made by reader make them more and more interested, and also encourage them to follow your future posts. So, always reply to the questions raised by the readers. A more discussed post gains more popularity among the readers resulting in increased curiosity and engagement of the readers to the post. This automatically helps in the SMO of your content over the internet which is cheaper than the paid services of Pay Per Clicks.

7. Keep the positive reviewers and potential customers in the limelight

A blog can be utilized to identify the potential customers by analyzing various comments and reviews it gets from the readers. Identify the positive reviewers and, encourage them for discussions by replying them with their queries. This encourages other readers to take part in the positive discussion. We can identify the positive reviewers and reach them with our products and offers. These positive reviewers have much chances of getting converted into buyer. In this way, a blog can also act as an effective tool for lead generation and search engine optimization.  

8. Use memorable and precise headings

A catchy Headline can grab the attention of several interested readers.

You must always find the right words to define your purpose of writing. Use accurate and self-explanatory headlines. Try to bind your whole idea of writing in a catchy yet accurate heading.

Here is an example of a blog with a very catchy headline which is explaining the ways to sell those products which don’t sell easily. I think, this headline catches the attention of several sellers who are facing problems similar to the headline of this post.

9. Care about grammar and punctuation

A blog is a reflection of what your company does; there isn't any hard and fast rule for writing blogs but caring about correct grammar and proper use of punctuation could bring out an effective blog content for your business and prevent any misconception as explained in this Example.

A wrong placement of comma(,) can change the meaning of the whole sentence

Version one: Stop, don’t go. - meaning: saying to stay. 

Version two: Stop don’t, go. - meaning: saying to leave.

We saw how a comma could result in two exactly opposite statements. Thusly, it's vital that we take special care of punctuation while writing anything.

Blogs are the supplement tool for guiding our customers toward our website, provided that we care about some very basic approaches in writing and perform a proper utilization of keywords and other aspects of search engine optimization. I hope, the implementation of the strategies as mentioned above would bring out desired results for all those who are seeking a solution for writing an effective blog for the SEO of their sites without violating the terms and conditions of latest algorithms like Google penguin and hummingbird update.