Are you thinking of getting the coveted Amazon Best Seller badge on your listing? If the answer is yes, we have an informative article explaining a few tips to help you acquire the badge.
Sellers and buyers worldwide are highly familiar with the famous Amazon Best Seller badge, but what makes this orange ribbon unique? Our article delves into understanding this Best Seller badge and its importance from a seller’s point of view. It mostly has to deal with becoming a successful Amazon seller and brand recognition involved in the process.
Often, it is more than providing what the customer searches for. Instead, to maintain the best seller status, you have to do a lot of things, including the analysis of historical sales data and total sales history. While these may seem strange at first, the primary step is understanding the sellers’ rank (BSR) for the product you are working on.
What is the best seller badge on Amazon?
The Amazon Best Seller badge is a bright orange icon that appears on the listing of the most popular product. The primary purpose of the badge is to guide the buyers into understanding the product’s popularity. Any item listing containing this badge has a high chance of getting in the buyer’s cart. Online shoppers even give special attention to the product by viewing the entire listing. The #1 Best Seller badge denotes that the item has the highest sales in an individual category. Earning the Amazon Best Seller badge mainly focuses on sales. To get a badge, you need to maintain high sales over time.
Initially, Amazon kept a single Best Seller from each category, but with the vast competition and immense amount of products, they now display several badges from the same category. Currently, there are 100 Best Sellers in any given category. Therefore, the broader your listing category is, the more competition a seller will face.
For example, ‘Arts and craft’ can be a general category, but ‘Scrapbooking’ is a narrow sub-category with comparatively lesser competition and high chances of securing the badge. However, sellers need to understand that all types and sub-categories have unique competition. For example, getting a badge in ‘Electronics’ can be way more challenging than getting a badge in ‘Home decor.’
How exactly does the Best Seller rank work?
Amazon calculates the sales of each listing and proceeds to rank a product that has the most sales in a short period. This Best Seller badge is constantly updated every hour; therefore, you will never find a product with this badge for an extended period. This constant fluctuation is necessary to locate the real-time buying patterns and popularity of each product. Any new listing with an overall good launch strategy has a high chance of getting this transient badge. Amazon has not published its exact metrics behind the badge. However, with expert knowledge of their algorithm, it is safe to say that sales velocity and history play a huge role in achieving these badges.
What are the advantages of the Best Seller badge to a seller?
If you think that an Amazon Best Seller badge is just a shiny trophy for your product listing, then you are highly mistaken. On the contrary, the badge brings many advantages that sellers can further convert into successful sales.
- Your Best Seller product will automatically appear on the customer’s search results even if they use irreverent search terms in your category.
- Shoppers tend to purchase more products that have a badge as compared to a product without one. This Amazon Best Seller badge adds a touch of trust and credibility to the listing. On the other hand, shoppers feel that Amazon has personally vouched for the product, making them more inclined to buy it.
- These products have a separate section where shoppers can browse all the Best Seller products from all categories and sub-categories. Even a shopper who visits this particular page for a different product can end up buying yours. Many Amazon shoppers go on a splurging spree and purchase products from various categories because they see that item on the same page.
- When people search for a product in your sub or main category, your item will usually be at the top of the search results. The top position will highly increase your sales because nearly 70% of customers never click past the first page of their search results.
How many products do you need to sell to have a Best Seller badge?
The exact total number of items highly varies from one category to another. These Best Seller ranks are relatively different for every class. A good number of sales volume in a particular category can be a total losing spot for another product of a completely different type. For example, clothing and Backpacks can have a separate sales volume to get the same Best Seller badge. The time of the sales is equally important when you are chasing the Amazon Best Seller badge.
Here we are explaining the Best Seller badge requirements for a standard non-fiction or self-help book:
If you wish to hit your listing with a Best Seller badge, you need to sell approximately 4000-5000 copies in 24 hours. These copy formats can be bifurcated in any way, for example- 2000 copies of ebook and 3000 of print. But to get the badge, all the sales should happen from a single listing.
What is Amazon’s A9 algorithm?
Amazon A9 algorithm is a system used to display the results of the products based on keywords. This algorithm helps Amazon to decide which products should be ranked where. The algorithm is highly similar to Google’s algorithm for search results. However, Amazon’s A9 algorithm puts importance and heavy emphasis on sales conversion. Since Amazon is an eCommerce site, its primary goal is to promote products and listings for users to buy. Therefore, Amazon will always push listings with a relatively strong sales history to gain more sales. Therefore, to maximize their profit, they tend to update their Best Seller product hourly.
The exact A9 criteria for all badges are highly confidential, but according to many seasoned sellers, it boils down to the following points:
- Price comparison between you and your competitors’ product.
- Relevance of keywords and products.
- Past preferences of customers.
- Text relevance in terms of proper optimized description and title.
- Stock supply plays an important part too. A listing featuring ‘out of stock’ can lower the rank of the product.
- Lastly, the most crucial element is the sales velocity. The higher your sales velocity in a small amount of time, the greater your chances of securing the Best Seller plaque.
Related article: How to get started a beginners guide to selling on Amazon.
Amazon Best Seller badge vs Amazon’s Choice badge
Buyers might see both these badges as interchangeable plaques, but in reality, these badges are labeled by calculating a different set of data. The Amazon Best Seller badge is mainly based on the sales data of a particular listing. In contrast, the Amazon’s Choice badge is designated by studying various factors like product availability, pricing, product review, keyword ranking, sales velocity, after-sale service, seller’s involvement, etc. Both the badges might mean an equal sign of trust and credibility for buyers, but for sellers, it translates to sales per hour Vs. SEO. Sellers have a high chance of getting the Best Seller badge as compared to Amazon’s Choice. Getting the latter badge can be quite trickier.
Like all ornamental Amazon badges, these plaques don’t stay on your listing profile for a long time. But in comparison, the Amazon’s Choice badge sticks a lot longer than the Best Seller badge, which changes hourly. The primary difference boils down to the way Amazon perceives the product. The Best Seller badge is settled by total sales velocity, while the Amazon’s Choice plaque is given because of SEO.
How much does the Best Seller badge translate into a real % of sales?
Since the badge gets updated every hour, it is pretty tricky to calculate the percentage of the total sales. However, sellers in very niched categories enjoy the badge for more hours because of lesser competition and high popularity. As each node has different requirements, it is not possible to give a fixed percentage of sales. The unclear rates should not demotivate sellers since the badge purely depends on sales. Listings with the Best Seller badge usually make more sales than their competitors. Sellers even have a higher chance of purchase orders if their product falls in a niche category.
A few essential tips to get closer to the badge
While most Amazon sellers dream of getting sales, intelligent sellers utilize all the resources to make their list completely SEO-friendly. Below are a few crucial tips that will come in handy for sellers in achieving various badges on their listings.
1. Optimizing the listing
Sellers from all the categories should do extensive research on various beneficial Amazon keywords before listing the product. Optimizing is one of the most basic yet crucial steps to achieve multiple necessary badges on the product profile and become one of the best sellers. We highly recommend relying on tools that identify keywords. These keywords then help you write SEO-friendly descriptions and titles on all of the products. Apart from descriptions and titles, images play an equally important role. You will never see a badged listing with blur or sketchy picture details. Thus, try to get as many high-resolution pictures as you can. The better your listing looks, the greater your chances of getting an Amazon Best Seller badge.
2. Choosing perfect categories
Category plays an extensive role to weed out the competition. Sometimes, sellers make the silly mistake of listing a particular product in a completely different category; kindly pay attention to such errors. Always ensure that you are using a thorough category path. For example, suppose your listing consists of socks. In that case, you have two category options to choose from:
First category: Women’s Fashion > Clothing > Socks
Second category: Women’s Fashion > Clothing > Winter Wear > Fuzzy Socks
In this example, both the category nodes are correct. Still, you are more likely to earn a Best Seller badge with the second category route. The product is well detailed, and the competition level will automatically decrease compared to plain ‘socks.’
3. Increasing overall sales velocity with discounts and promotions
Our third tip is one of the most tried and tested ways to increase sales. Buyers love the idea of buying something at a reduced price by using coupons. If you can afford to give out various promotions and discounts, it will surely help you gain a good string of sales velocity. Amazon’s lightning deals, coupons, and sales are some of the best ways to push your product for increased sales. With massive sales, your product will automatically have the Best Seller badge on the listing.
4. Advertisement strategy
If you are a seasoned seller, we highly recommend diving into the Amazon pay-per-click ad campaigns. Even newbie sellers with a bit of budget can employ this advertisement strategy. You can easily automate Amazon pay-per-click campaigns to target specific keywords. We highly recommend keeping a long-term advertisement strategy to help with your listing. Ad results are challenging to track when you run the campaign for a short period. However, long-term campaigns will open new doors and a fresh set of target audiences. With a proper advertisement strategy, you can earn quick sales within a few hours.
5. Competitive prices
Competitive prices have a direct correlation with the sales of your product. If you offer your product at a lower rate than your competitor, chances are you will automatically become someone’s preferred seller. However, it’s not wise to keep the lowest price, especially if your product doesn’t have a high profit margin. On the contrary, you can state a few benefits that come with your price point. This tactic will imbue trust, which will convert into sales. Thus, competitive prices will boost your sales, further increasing your product ranking and giving you the chance to become an Amazon Best Seller product.
What are other types of Amazon badges that sellers should concentrate on?
Apart from the Best Seller badge, Amazon sellers should strive to look out for the following badges.
- New Release badge
- Climate Pledge Friendly badge
- Top Brand badge
- Amazon’s Choice badge
- Editorial Recommendations
- Limited Time Deals badge
- Deal Of The Day badge
- Coupons badge
Conclusion
We hope our article helped you in thoroughly understanding the Best Seller badge and the concept of best sellers on Amazon. With constant efforts and an intelligent set-up of your listings, your product can also showcase this badge for the longest time. However, remember to pick the correct sub-nodes for a better chance of keeping the plaque intact. We are sure that our tips will indeed increase your chances of earning your next badge. So, which shiny badge are you eyeing?
