What is the Amazon Buy Box, how do sellers “win” it, what is Buy Box suppression, and how does the Buy Box algorithm work?

The Amazon Buy Box is an elegant way for Amazon to keep things simple for buyers, when multiple merchants are competing to sell the same product. Just one seller is highlighted, even when a product is being offered by dozens of different vendors.

Sellers need to know how to win the Buy Box, if they want to significantly boost their sales. Although the Buy Box seems simple on the surface, it hides a complex algorithm. This is what allows Amazon to run a marketplace with millions of sellers, but have one detail page for each particular product rather than a different page for every seller offering that product.

This article answers your questions on how the Buy Box works, the impact it has, what you can do to win it, and much more. You’ll learn to optimize your strategy to boost your share of the Buy Box, get into the rotation more often, and increase your revenue.

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We focus on online marketplaces such as Amazon and eBay.

There are also dedicated categories for the leading marketplaces Amazon and eBay, and we cover all online marketplaces worldwide including Etsy, Jet.com, Walmart, Mercado Libre, Tesco, Cdiscount and many more.

Try our Advanced Search to find software compatible with a specific marketplace or shopping cart, or that are integrated with tools you already use.

Browse our Buying Guides for detailed information, in plain English, about all our categories and how to choose the right software or services for your needs.

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When you’ve outgrown Alibaba, what are the alternatives for sourcing high-quality products from the best manufacturers in China?

This post is by Gary Huang, an expert in sourcing products from China and creator of 80/20 Sourcing.

When you think of sourcing from China, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Hopping on a plane and flying to Guangzhou to find a factory? No, you go on Alibaba!

Alibaba is very popular and accessible, but that doesn’t mean it’s always the best option. Why not? Well, it attracts a lot of middlemen and trading companies, and some of them aren’t upfront about that.

Alibaba is also where your competitors are likely to buy from, so you all might end up selling exactly the same products as them. Perhaps most importantly, some of the best suppliers avoid Alibaba – because they want to find a better class of customer!

So, what are the alternatives to Alibaba? I’ll explore them all here.

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The need for product identifiers on eBay has left sellers confused. What do they mean and how do they benefit sellers, buyers, and eBay?

MPNs, UPCs, EANs, GTINs, ePIDs… selling on eBay is starting to feel like swimming through alphabet soup!

Over the past few years, the platform has introduced a number of different initiatives to make shopping easier and more efficient for its customers.

To do this, eBay has been asking sellers in many categories to add “product identifiers” to their listings. That’s where all the acronyms come in, including MPNs, UPCs and several others. These codes help eBay display relevant products to shoppers and encourage search engines like Google to place eBay listings higher in the results.

But sellers are confused by all the different product identifiers. Which ones are required and which ones are optional? Is it beneficial for sellers to play ball with the new rules, or is it better to try and work around them? And, perhaps most pressingly, what is the purpose of all this anyway?

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