How do you win the buy box on bol?

What do you notice when you lose the buy box?

If you lose the buy box, you suddenly sell far less while your price and stock stay the same, and your ads stop.

A made-up example to make it concrete. Imagine you sell hair dryers from a well-known brand. Three other sellers offer exactly the same hair dryer, with the same EAN code. On Monday you sell twelve, on Tuesday only two. Your price has not changed and you have plenty of stock.

Most likely another seller has taken over the buy box. For an item with several sellers, bol picks one seller for the order button. A customer who presses that button buys from that seller. The other sellers are listed further down the page, among the item’s other sellers. According to bol, if you have the buy box, the chance that the item in the shopping cart comes from you is "considerably greater".

Your ads stop too. Bol never serves a Sponsored Products ad if you do not have the buy box, and checks this in real time. How advertising works in general is explained in Advertising on bol.com: how Sponsored Products works.

What does bol look at for the buy box?

Bol gives the buy box to the seller with the best offer at that moment. According to the partner platform, bol decides what "the best" means on the basis of five factors.

1. Orderability

You must be able to deliver the item. Without stock you do not take part, however sharp your price. In Sales insight you see an estimate of when your stock runs out, so you can restock in time.

2. Condition

Bol looks at whether an item is new, refurbished, second-hand or returned. According to bol’s pricing policy, a second-hand item may never cost more than the new price.

3. Price

Bol compares your price including shipping costs and VAT. Small differences, such as €0.01, have no effect according to bol. Undercutting your competitor by a cent does not help you.

4. Delivery

The faster, the better. Bol looks at your delivery time and at a promise such as "ordered before 23:00, delivered tomorrow". Extra delivery options count too, such as a later delivery moment the customer chooses.

5. Quality score

This is the score from 0 to 100 with which bol measures how well you have delivered and served customers over the past 22 weeks. The higher your score, the greater your chance of the buy box.

Back to the hair dryer. All four sellers have stock and sell it new, so orderability and condition do not make the difference. The difference lies in price, delivery and quality score.

Why doesn’t the cheapest always win?

The cheapest seller does not always win, because bol weighs the factors differently per category. For everyday items fast delivery counts heavily, for furniture price often does.

Suppose you sell the hair dryer for €23.95 and deliver in three working days. A competitor asks €24.95 but promises "ordered before 23:00, delivered tomorrow". They are a euro more expensive and still have the buy box, because for a hair dryer fast delivery can weigh more than a euro.

In MarktMentor’s Product Overview you see for each product which sellers had the buy box, with their price and delivery time. For the hair dryer it looks like this:

Bol adjusts that weighting continuously based on what customers do, and publishes no exact breakdown. Bol itself writes that a seller with the lowest price or the fastest delivery can miss the buy box because another seller scores better on one of the other factors.

Sometimes there is no competitor behind it at all. Bol occasionally tests a different offer with part of the visitors. Your seller account then says you have the buy box while the website shows another seller, or the other way round.

When are you not competing at all?

Before the five factors count, your offer has to be shown on the website. According to the explanation of Sales insight, three conditions apply:

• you have stock
• the minimum product information is filled in
• your price is below the maximum permitted price

For that maximum price, bol looks at what the same item costs elsewhere, on bol and in other webshops, including shipping costs. Bol adds a buffer on top. That is the maximum permitted price from the pricing policy. If you are above it, bol takes your offer offline. If there are no other sellers, bol looks at the recommended retail price and the price the item previously had on bol.

How do shipping costs count?

On bol, shipping is always included in your selling price. You cannot charge shipping costs separately, not even afterwards. Bol gives the example of a kettle of €30 with a shipping label of €4.50: you list it for €34.50.

If you use Logistics via bol, the customer pays €2.99 shipping costs for an order under €25. According to bol, that amount does not count for the buy box. Bol looks at the selling price you set. Which shipping option suits you is explained in Shipping via bol: which shipping option suits you?

How sharp your price is, you see from your price stars in your seller account. They show how your price compares with the market; they do not count as a factor for the buy box. According to bol, four stars is generally good enough.

How do you check who has the buy box?

You do a buy box check in your own seller account. Open the item and choose the Aanbieders (sellers) tab. It lists all sellers of the item with their price, delivery time and rating. The seller that has the buy box right now has a medal.

In the item details you also find Price comparison. It shows how many euros you are away from the price in the buy box, and what the item costs outside bol. In Sales insight you see what share of the time you had the buy box. That tells you whether it is one bad day or a trend.

You cannot see the quality score of other sellers. The number next to their name is their rating by customers, and that is a different number.

How do you get the buy box back?

If you have lost the buy box, go through five steps, from quick to slow.

1. Check whether you are still competing

Do you have stock, and is your offer still online? A price above the maximum permitted price takes your offer off the site.

2. Compare your total price

Check in Price comparison how far you are from the buy box price, including shipping costs. According to bol a difference of one cent does not matter, so do not go lower than you need to.

3. Look at your delivery

Does the winner have a faster promise? If you can deliver faster yourself, that counts. Only promise what you can keep, because late deliveries pull down your quality score.

With the hair dryer, this is exactly where the difference was. If you cannot deliver faster yourself, check whether another shipping option can. That is a trade-off between cost and speed.

4. Find the weak standard in your quality score

If one of the five standards shows yellow or red, start there. Bol recalculates the score every Wednesday.

5. Give it an hour

According to bol, a new buy box position is processed within an hour, usually within twenty minutes. In your advertising account it comes through later than on the website.

Does the buy box count for a private label?

If you sell a private label with its own EAN, you are usually the only seller. You then have the buy box as long as you meet the three conditions: stock, the minimum product information and a price below the maximum permitted price. If your stock runs out, you lose the buy box, even without a competitor. Your ads stop then too.

If another seller starts offering your item, that seller competes and the five factors count. Which rules apply to buy box products and private label products is explained in Which conditions and selling rules do you need to meet on bol?

How do you track the buy box over time?

In your seller account you can only follow the buy box for items you offer yourself. If you want to know how the buy box develops for a product you do not sell yet, you need an external tool. That is especially useful before you buy stock: you then know which price and delivery time others win the buy box with, and how often it changes hands.

In MarktMentor, the platform we make, you see this in two places. In Product Overview you see for one product which sellers had the buy box, with their price, delivery time and rating, over a period of three months to two years. In the buy box analysis of Product Radar you see this for a whole selection of products: per week which seller had the buy box, at what price and with what delivery time, and which combination of characteristics usually wins the buy box. For your own products you set an alert, so you get an email or push notification when someone takes over the buy box.