What is the Takealot Buybox?

In short

  • Each product being sold on Takealot has a Buybox associated with it.
  • Multiple sellers can compete to sell the same product.
  • Only one seller can win the Buybox at any given point in time.
  • The offer winning the Buybox is the default seller for that product, meaning any customers clicking on 'Add to cart' button will buy from them.

Why should you care?

Over 85% of sales go through the Buybox Winner

If you are not winning the Buybox for one of your products, you're likely making zero or very few sales.

Customers shopping for products on Takealot do not typically concern themselves about who they are buying from - they only care about getting the product.

Thus, if they'd like to purchase the product, they'll click on 'Add to cart' and give no attention to the 'Other offers' box to the side of the page.

How often does the Buybox Winner change?

It depends on how many offers there are for the product. The more offers on a product, the more frequently it changes.

It is common for the Buybox Winner to change multiple times a day, based on our data analysis at Palmetrics.

How is the Buybox Winner chosen?

Takealot's private algorithms decide the fate of the Buybox winner, so there is no 100% guaranteed way to know how to win the Buybox.

However, there are some tried-and-tested methods of ensuring your chances of winning are high, which typically come down to:

  • Making sure your price is competitive (lower) than your competing offers.
  • Ensuring you have sufficient stock available in the Takealot warehouse.
  • Stock-on-hand (in the warehouse) will always take priority over lead-time stock.
  • Receiving positive reviews for your products by ensuring you delivery a quality product.

NEW: Tracking & Auto-Pricing with the Palmetrics Buybox Tracker

With Palmetrics, you can track and even auto-price your offers on Takealot to maximise the time you win the Buybox.

  1. On the Overview page or on the Products page, you can click '+ Buybox' on any of your products.
  2. This will add the product to your Buybox Tracker, where you can always see details such as the current Buybox Winner & Total Buybox Offers, as well as your offer's statuses.
  3. You can enable Auto-Pricing and set a minimum and preferred price for each offer.
  4. Each offer will automatically be adjusted lower until it either wins the Buybox or reaches the minimum price. The price will be set to the preferred price when there is no competition.
  5. You will be notified via email and in-app about any Buybox winner changes, or when a new competitive offer is placed.

Read more about the Buybox Auto-Pricing feature here.

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