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Originally published on December 4, 2019, updated April 16, 2024
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Just when you think you’ve got all the Amazon features and lingo down, you come across something new. The Amazon platform is in a constant state of transition as the company tests out new ideas and parses its data to better understand what customers respond to. While that’s often good for the company and its customers, for sellers it means your work learning the platform is never done.
One of the recent changes you may have noticed in your research on Amazon Seller Central is references to the Featured Offer. What is the Featured Offer and what does it mean for your business? How does it compare to the Amazon Buy Box?
If you read through the articles in Seller Central about the Featured Offer, something becomes clear pretty quickly: it’s essentially the same thing as the Buy Box. Amazon describes the Featured Offer as “offers for new products that we display on a product detail page with an Add to Cart button that customers can use to add items to their shopping carts.”
Sound familiar?
When a customer clicks on a product in the Amazon marketplace, the page that comes up has a box in the top right that includes:
In smaller font, where most customers won’t even look, it includes the name of a seller. Whatever seller gets that featured spot will win the sale in the vast majority of cases, since customers are concerned about getting the product and not particularly focused on who it’s coming from.
If you know all about the Buy Box already, none of this is news to you. But why would Amazon use a different term in some places? They may merely be testing out their labeling options. Featured Offer is a more straightforward description of what it describes than the term Buy Box, which is confusing to anyone who isn’t already well versed in selling on Amazon.
If all of this is news to you—you don’t know anything about how to be the Amazon Featured Offer or win the Buy Box—here’s what you need to know.
To even be considered as the Amazon Featured Offer for a product, you have to be eligible. To be eligible as a vendor, you need:
Amazon wants to be confident that the vendors it highlights in the Featured Offer box will deliver a level of customer experience that keeps its reputation as a brand intact. If they feature a vendor that fails to deliver, it hurts Amazon’s reputation. So it’s the vendors with a proven record of consistently delivering quality that have the best chance of snagging that spot.
Featured Offer Percentage = total page views in which you are the Featured Offer / total page views received by all of the active products you list
Amazon cares about what customers care about—which obviously includes pricing. People come to Amazon looking for the best deal and if you’re pricing a product higher than someone else on the platform, it will hurt your chances of being the Featured Offer.
Luckily, there are now repricing software products that automate pricing to help you win the Featured Offer slot as often as possible. You don’t have to monitor competitor prices manually. Instead, you can let technology do it to ensure you get the highest profit, while still being the Featured Offer as often as possible.
Now that we’ve all been spoiled by Prime’s free two-day shipping, this is another expectation customers have. Because customers are more likely to prefer an option that offers fast shipping (two days or less) for free, those are the products Amazon features the most often.
In most cases, products that are fulfilled by Amazon (FBA) have the best chance of winning the Featured Offer since they’re Prime-eligible by default. Even if your products aren’t FBA, you can increase your chances of being featured by offering free, fast shipping as often as possible.
Another factor Amazon considers when deciding what seller to feature is how much of an item you have in stock. This is related to fast shipping—they want any items ordered to go out fast. If an item has to be stocked before it can be shipped, that increases customer wait time. If you want to be the Featured Offer for an item, make sure the items you sell stay well-stocked. If your products are FBA, you can stay on top of inventory levels and increase your odds of always staying in stock with a smart inventory management tool.
Amazon wants customers to be happy. Any order that fails to satisfy buyers makes them look bad too. Some of the specific metrics they use to determine how well you’re doing on the customer service front are:
Make sure you’re providing customers with quality products and meeting their expectations every time to keep your Account Health high and earn the Featured Offer spot more often.
Related reading: How to Avoid Losing the Buy Box on Amazon
Amazon has a lot of sellers and they’re all competing for that spot. You can outsource a lot of the work of winning the Featured Offer and increase your earnings on Amazon by using the right Amazon seller software tools. For example, eComEngine's Buy Box tracker is an invaluable asset for effortlessly monitoring and managing your Buy Box activity. Gain real-time insights into changes in the Buy Box for your ASINs, such as when your product has won a Buy Box that it was previously losing or you've lost a Buy Box that you were once winning to Amazon or another seller.
And that's not all - we go the extra mile by notifying you when a Buy Box you've won gets suppressed by Amazon. Considering that this immediately damages your visibility on the marketplace, you're going to want to take action right away! The alert also includes recommended next steps so you can act quickly.
Stay informed and ahead of the competition with our Buy Box alert. Try it today!
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