The Buy Box is one of the most important features on Amazon. Winning the Buy Box is an integral part of most sellers’ strategies — but it’s easier said than done. It’s not just about having the lowest price for an ASIN; it’s also about your overall account health, customer service, and shipping times.
Historically, it’s been very hard to track the Buy Box because Amazon hasn’t offered real-time notifications. Monitoring the Buy Box was a manual process that required a lot of time and energy.
That changes now.
Kapoq has integrated with Amazon’s Notifications API, allowing for real-time notifications when you lose the Buy Box.
This new feature is going to transform the way your brand handles your Buy Box strategy.
Real-Time Buy Box Notifications and Alerts
Kapoq’s integration with the Notifications API gives you near-real time alerts if you lose the Buy Box — within minutes.
This new feature shows you the last 24-hour history of Buy Box changes, and who the current winner is, giving you unprecedented access to this information.
We also calculate your share of Buy Box over the past 30 days, giving you an average of your share.
Why This Feature Matters
The Buy Box is the key to selling on Amazon, especially if you compete with other sellers or have your products in distribution (and therefore have many sellers).
Sponsored Product ads will pause automatically if you lose the Buy Box, but Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display, and DSP will not — so when you lose the Buy Box, you need to manually pause those products in ads to avoid driving traffic to another seller.
But because there hasn’t been an easy way to find out if you lost the Buy Box in real-time, you could be wasting spend on certain ad types that aren’t even driving sales for your brand.
Now, in Kapoq, you can get near-real time notifications when you lose the Buy Box, allowing you to instantly turn off Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display, and DSP ads for that ASIN until you win back the Buy Box.
Buy Box Data in Kapoq vs. Seller Central Data
You might notice that the Buy Box data in Seller Central is different than what you see in Kapoq. The Buy Box Win Rate metric that Kapoq calculates is different from Amazon’s Featured Offer percentage in business reports in Seller Central.
Amazon calculates this based on the percentage of page views where your offer was in the Buy Box. Kapoq, on the other hand, calculates it as the amount of time you spend winning the Buy Box, compared to the amount of time other sellers were winning. In other words, Amazon Featured Offer % is based on share of page views, while Kapoq Buy Box Win Rate % is based on share of time.
Our developers had to structure the data this way because Amadon doesn’t provide the data on the share of Buy Box based on page views. At the end of the day, Kapoq’s data source is just as accurate as Amazon’s — it’s just a different source.
How Kapoq Integrated This API
It’s previously been very hard to track the Buy Box in real-time because Amazon does not offer real-time notifications in the UI, and they do not let you download Buy Box change history anywhere except through the Notifications API.
The Notifications API is a real-time Stream-type API, similar to Amazon Marketing Stream. This means it’s way more complex to actually hook into; unless you have an API integration expert on your team, you’re likely not going to be able to access this data on your own.
However, the incredible developers at Kapoq have a deep experience with Amazon and their APIs, which require a unique understanding of Amazon-specific terms and data-structures. They’ve been able to integrate this API into Kapoq, which then filters into Kapoq’s Alerts/Opportunities dashboard, giving you instant insight into the actions you need to take — whether that’s pausing ad types, or taking steps to win back the Buy Box.
Monitor your Amazon Buy Box win-rate with Kapoq. Sign up for your free demo today.
