How Does Amazon's Choice Work? (Hint: Reviews Matter)

Have you ever noticed the Amazon’s Choice badge when shopping on Amazon? It’s certainly caught my eye.

If you’ve been selling on Amazon for any length of time, you might be wondering how to get an Amazon’s Choice badge for yourself. And how does Amazon’s Choice work, anyway?

While Amazon hasn’t shared much information about how products get Amazon’s Choice badges, there are a few things we know for sure. Keep reading to discover how Amazon reviews, pricing, product availability, and other factors impact this keyword-driven feature.

What is Amazon’s Choice?

Back in 2015, Amazon introduced Amazon’s Choice products to streamline shopping for voice search through Amazon Alexa. It’s tough to browse products through voice search, which has become increasingly common. In addition to being used for recommending products via voice search, the Amazon’s Choice badge is displayed on both desktop and mobile.

It’s worth noting that the placement of items selected as Amazon’s Choice varies. These products are displayed below Sponsored Ads. In some cases, Amazon’s Choice is shown as the first item in the product ranking, but this isn’t always true.

Amazon’s Choice simply matches specific keyword searches with the most relevant products which meet Amazon’s criteria. If you hover over the badge on a product listing, you’ll see the following message: “Amazon’s Choice highlights highly rated, well-priced products available to ship immediately.”

No surprise there! As you know, Amazon aims to surprise and delight customers. To that end, it makes sense to highlight products that will ship quickly and are likely to be well-received. Amazon’s Choice is also a stamp of approval from Amazon, so it stands to reason that reviews, price, and availability are major considerations.

How Does a Product Get to be Amazon’s Choice?

Unfortunately, sellers have little control over whether their items will be selected as Amazon’s Choice. There is no program to enroll in and there’s no way to ask for your product to be selected. However, one of the best things you can do is to ensure your listings are in good shape.

You’ll notice that Amazon doesn’t always choose the cheapest item or the one with the highest ratings. However, Amazon’s Choice products typically have at least a 4-star average rating and are available with Prime delivery. Amazon also seems to be more likely to favor products with a high conversion rate for a specific keyword as well as a low return rate.

How specific is the keyword? Very. Here's a quick example for "dishwasher pods." You can see that the Amazon's Choice product appears in the first row of organic search results.

Now let's see what happens when the term is changed very slightly to "dishwasher pod."

The Amazon's Choice product is displayed much lower in the product rankings. It's clear that the exact keyword used to search for a product is important to Amazon.

While you can’t control whether your product will be selected as Amazon’s Choice, taking steps to ensure retail readiness will also benefit your overall sales conversion and growth on Amazon. Your listings should be optimized and include enhanced content to help educate customers about your products. Continue asking for customer reviews, keep your prices competitive, and make sure you have plenty of inventory so orders can be fulfilled quickly.

If you need help getting reviews, you’re in the right place! Our FeedbackFive software is designed to do just that and a whole lot more. You can send Amazon compliant automated review requests, identify review trends, and even get alerts for new reviews.

Amazon’s Choice vs. Best Seller

You might be wondering how Amazon’s Choice compares to the Best Seller badge. Amazon’s Choice is determined by several factors, including reviews, price, shipping availability, and return rate. But ultimately it is driven by the keyword a shopper uses to search for the product.

Amazon Best Seller rankings are determined by the number of items sold in a recent time frame as well as historical sales data. The Best Seller is the product that sells at the highest level in its category on Amazon compared to other products in the same category.

It’s hard to say how much being Amazon’s Choice impacts a product’s sales, but we know that being the Best Seller in a category has a huge impact. However, products with the Amazon’s Choice badge often perform well in organic search, which can absolutely impact sales. Let’s look at an example.

Amazon’s Choice and Search Results

As a simple case study, I decided to test a few search terms on the Amazon marketplace. At the time of publication, the following keyword searches returned Amazon's Choice badge items (I've linked to the search results).

To avoid boring you, I've only listed three search terms above. However, I searched for more than a dozen other similar household terms, and, sure enough, each one had an Amazon's Choice product. With the list above, it's interesting to note that one displays AmazonBasics branded items. I encountered multiple situations where AmazonBasics items held the Amazon’s Choice badge.

Having studied more than a dozen different search terms, the following is apparent: If your product owns the Amazon's Choice badge, there's a good likelihood you'll be number one in the organic Amazon search results.

Take, for example, the "batteries" search term. As you can see from the screenshot below, the AmazonBasics product owns the choice badge and appears first in the organic results, just below Sponsored Products ads.

As if seeing the badge in the search results wasn't enough to make you click the Buy Box, Amazon also wisely includes the black Amazon’s Choice label on the item's product detail page.

Take note of how Amazon also includes my original search term of "batteries" just to the right of the Amazon's Choice badge. Pretty nifty. It's just one more affirmation, albeit subtle, to the shopper that this is probably a smart buying decision that won't be regretted.

Reviews Are an Important Factor

As with anything else relating to organic visibility on the Amazon marketplace, there seems to be a strong correlation between reviews and the Amazon's Choice badge. Think about it - Amazon wouldn't lend its name to a product that falls short of customer expectations.

Don't believe me? Let's go back to the three searches I cited above. Here are the ratings for the Amazon’s Choice badge winners (again, at the time of publication):

Batteries: 388,817 ratings, 4.7 out of 5.0 stars

Light Bulbs: 4,720 ratings, 4.7 out of 5.0 stars

Dishwasher Pods: 19,320 ratings, 4.5 out of 5.0 stars

Notice any trends here? Having well over 1,000 reviews and an average rating of 4.5 (or above) stands out to me.

If you're not already using FeedbackFive to send Amazon review requests, you're missing out on a serious opportunity to boost your ratings and increase your chance of getting an Amazon's Choice badge! Watch this short demo to see how it works or schedule a call to get a personalized tour today.