The Impact of the “Amazon Featured Offer” on Seller Profitability

You may believe you’ve mastered all there is to know about Amazon marketplace, but every time you log in, you learn something new. Amazon’s platform is always evolving as the giant experiments with new features to provide an unparalleled ecommerce experience for sellers and shoppers. While this is generally beneficial for the business and its clients, it means that sellers need to be prompt to adopt and cope up with the platform’s dynamic features.

In June 2023, Amazon changed it’s “Buy Box” to “Featured Offer” on Amazon Seller Central account. Let’s explore how the Amazon Featured Offer will benefit your Amazon store. When compared to Amazon’s Buy Box, how does it compare?

What is an Amazon Featured Offer?

Discounts and special deals (Like “Today’s Deals”) on Amazon products and services are available only through the Amazon Featured Offer program. Customers who join the program gain access to exclusive deals and discounts from Amazon and other vendors. Free delivery is only one example of a discount that may be offered among many others. In addition to regular offerings, customers have access to unique wares and offerings.

Customers who use the Amazon featured offer are eligible for exclusive offers and discounts on a variety of goods and services. Customers are incentivized to make more Amazon purchases through the program because they have access to exclusive offers and discounts.

What Makes Amazon Featured Offer A Must-Have?

With the Buy Box (Featured Offer) accounting for 90% of all sales on Amazon, securing this spot is crucial for every professional Amazon seller. This badge is Amazon’s official endorsement that you provide the finest possible buying experience.

The value of being in the buy box can be the difference between making tens of thousands of sales. You have reached the homepage of a highly sought-after Amazon products class. Besides building your Amazon store, this is one of the quickest ways to boost sales of a single item. When you excel at something, it raises your profile.

For instance, your profile’s order defect rank describes the quality of your offerings rather than the listing. If your sales rank drops in one listing, it will probably drop elsewhere as well.

Who Is Eligible For Amazon Featured Offer?

If you can believe it, not everything qualifies for the Featured Offer. For example, books aren’t eligible for the Amazon featured offer. Not only that, but Featured Offers can only be owned by items sold by sellers on the Professional selling plan.

1. A Professional selling plan
2. Well-stocked inventory history
3. On-time delivery and accurate tracking
4. Products must be brand-new or in mint condition.

Checking the Featured Offer Eligible option in yourSeller Central account account will reveal whether or not you are eligible for Amazon’s featured offers (formerly known as Featured Merchant Status). Your ASINs, buy box eligibility, and featured offers (if any) will be displayed in a column on this page.

Factors That Amazon Considers For Featured Offers

Amazon asserts the criterion for the Featured Offer vary from category to category, thus there isn’t a perfect approach to evaluate whether you should or should not hold the Featured Offer.

Nonetheless, Amazon provides a list of best practices that are taken into account heavily by the featured merchant algorithm. Following are the the eCommerce giant outlines as some of the factors it considers in deciding which Amazon store gets the buy box.

Amazon account: You’ll need an active “Professional selling plan” (not Individual selling plan), with a good performing Seller Central account, with no past misdeeds or penalties.

Competitive prices: This means that the Featured Offer’s price is either less than or about the same as the price of alternatives.

Stocked inventory: Low stock items are automatically removed from Featured Offers by Amazon.

Fast delivery service: Customers appreciate prompt service after placing their orders. It is also important that products come on-time without compromising the product’s integrity.

Product condition: The Featured Offer is for brand-new or practically-new items.

Four Tips That Boost Your Odds of Getting a “Featured Offer”

Securing the coveted Featured Offer position in Amazon’s marketplace is not a luxury, but rather a must, for sustained success. You need to learn SEO fundamentals and maintain a high-quality listing if you want to become the go-to option for discerning consumers. Here are five tactical suggestions for Amazon sellers who want to secure the purchase order.

1. Promise Quick and Free Delivery:

Shipping costs and timeliness are entirely on you if you decide to handle order fulfillment independently through Amazon’s Merchant Fulfilled Network.

The delivery Settings section of your seller controls allows you to modify delivery costs and information. Enrolling in Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) is highly recommended to sellers to provide Prime members with quick and free delivery.

You can take advantage of Amazon’s worldwide fulfillment networks and ship orders to customers in as little as two days with FBA. Find out the fundamentals of using Amazon FBA.

2. Manage Stock Regularly:

If you want your consumers to have a positive shopping experience and your sales to maintain a sustainable growth, you need to master inventory management or hire the experts. Running out of stock can push you away from getting the Featured Offer and reduce any gains from satisfying higher demand.

To avoid costly out-of-stock purchases and unfavorable reviews from customers, Amazon recommends putting your account to inactive if you know you won’t be able to manage your shop.

Sales and the chance of getting the Amazon featured offer can take a hit if either of these things suddenly start happening to your account. Running out of stock can also leave a negative impact on your customer’s satisfaction and high storage fees, and even account suspension.

3. Keep Prices Low & Competitive:

Amazon gives a lot of weight to price when deciding which offer to highlight as a Featured Offer. To convince Amazon’s algorithm that your Amazon products is the best option for its customers, competitive pricing plays a vital role.

The prices of featured offers are usually the same as or lower than the cheapest available alternatives. Amazon’s Pricing Dashboard, Selling Coach Pricing Report, and Automated Pricing are just a few of the resources available to sellers that need assistance setting or modifying prices.

These resources provide Amazon sellers with real-time price data and alerts for altering prices to compete for the Featured Offer.

4. Do Not Neglect Your Seller Metrics:

You might consider this to be excellent service from Amazon if you like. Despite its uniqueness, good customer service always begins with these three indicators:

• Order Defect Rate (ODR): The sum of all orders that were sent back because of defects other than those that were visible to the naked eye.
• Cancellation Rate: Cancellation rate measured either before or after an order has been shipped.
• Late Shipment Rate: Percentage indicating how often your shipment is late past the estimated delivery date.
• Pre-Fulfillment Cancellation Rate (CR): Cancellations made by the vendor prior to fulfilling an order are reflected in the pre-fulfillment cancellation rate.
• Valid Tracking Rate (VTR): Using data gleaned from tracking systems (including the potential disruption caused by inaccurate tracking numbers).

Keeping these metrics for customer service in top form will greatly increase your chances of being featured as an offer, as well as the possibility that customers will return to you in the future.

How To Create an Amazon Featured Offer?

Once you’ve made 100% sure your account checks out the eligibility criteria for creating Amazon Featured Offer, you may proceed applying for the program. Here is what you need to do:

Step#1: Visit the Amazon Featured Offer page and submit an application.

Step#2: Wait for Amazon to review the application and notify you if it’s been accepted into the program.

Step#3: Once your application is accepted, you can select your Amazon products you wish to feature and set a promotional price for them.

Even though the ratio of getting accepted into the program is fairly lower because of high competition, you can always reapply for the program with improved account performance. Sellers can do this by maintaining good customer service, fulfilling orders on time, and adhering to Amazon’s guidelines for the program.

FAQs

How Is The Percentage Of Featured Offers Determined?

The featured offer percentage is calculated by dividing the total page views of the offer by the number of pages views of your Amazon products. It is highly beneficial in assessing the worth of the featured offer in relation to the benefits one is already receiving.

How Long Do I Have To Wait To Get Featured Offer?

Reportedly, some sellers have been able to acquire the Amazon Featured Offer program within five days, while some sellers have been getting their applications rejected by Amazon. In short, the time Amazon takes to approve Featured Offer application remains indefinite. If you’re lucky you can get an affirmative response from Amazon within a week too, after applying for the program.

Does The Cost Of Shipping Impact The Amazon Featured Offer (Buy Box)?

The transportation costs significantly greater than the standard option are generally regarded as irrational and will be removed from the front-end slot by Amazon.

However, when competing with an FBA merchant, the outcome is almost always one in which they prevail. This is because Amazon Prime provides inexpensive one-day shipment. Such a level of skill is beyond the capacity of even the most established businesses to challenge.

Final Words:

We’ve covered almost everything you need to know to realize the influence Featured Offer has over your sales growth. Amazon products in the Featured Offer serve as a calculated approach to enhance their visibility and potential for increased sales.

Assess your overall performance in order to identify potential areas for enhancement, or get in touch with AMZDUDES e-commerce experts. We will handle everything for you, from setting up professional selling account on Seller Central account to obtaining Amazon featured offer on your Amazon products.

To learn more about Amazon’s features to boost your store’s visibility, check out our How to Strategically Leverage Amazon’s Virtual Product Bundles Program, Amazon Lightning Deals: A Powerful Tool for Seller Success, and Amazon Best Sellers Rank (BSR): What It Is and How to Improve It.