How to quickly reorder items on Amazon

It used to be that Amazon only sold books, and when it comes to book selling, there’s not much of a market for people buying the same book twice. Today, on the other hand, Amazon is the king of online shopping and there’s not much that they don’t sell. Due to the economies of scale, Amazon can offer some things for a lower cost than its brick-and-mortar competitors. Things like paper towels, laundry detergent, and Hershey’s Kisses. And when you need to re-up on the necessities of life, Amazon has a few ways to make it easier to repurchase something you’ve bought before.

Reorder using Buy Again

The most straightforward way to quickly reorder something from Amazon’s website is with its Buy Again feature. It’s essentially a curated collection of past purchases from your order history with product images, links to the product pages, and a button to add the item to your cart. To get there, just click on Buy Again at the top of the page.

If you want to see a full list of your past orders you can click on Returns & Orders in the top right corner of the page. If the item you purchased is still available from Amazon, a yellow Buy it again button will appear next to the image of your order. For some reason, that doesn’t add the item to your cart, but it will take you to the Buy Again page with that item in the top-left position.

Hovering over the Account & Lists button at the top right also displays a mini selection of items you can buy again and a convenient Add to Cart button. Clicking View All & Manage will take you to the full Buy Again page.

If you’re on mobile, getting to the Buy Again page takes a few more steps:

1. Touch the profile icon at the bottom of the screen.
2. Select Buy Again.

One area where the mobile app is superior to the webpage is in managing what items are shown to you on the Buy Again page. Clicking on the three-dot menu opens up a dialogue at the bottom of the screen that gives you the option to remove the item from your Buy Again page.

To achieve the same thing on the web, there are additional steps involved:

1. Hover over the Account & Lists button at the top right.
2. Select Recommendations.
3. Click Improve Your Recommendations.

From here you can select or unselect the toggle button next to the item. Unselecting an item will remove it from your Buy Again page.

Reorder using Your Essentials

What if you don’t want Amazon to populate the list of items it thinks you want to buy again? You could, of course, go through your recommendations removing items that you don’t want to show up. But, if you want to curate your own list of items that you buy on the regular, you’ll want to look into Your Essentials.

Your Essentials is the grandchild of the Dash Buttons that used to be available from Amazon. These were small fobs that would let you reorder an item with the push of a button. Those were phased out in favor of Virtual Dash Buttons which have in turn been replaced with Your Essentials.

Putting an item in Your Essentials is relatively simple whether you’re on mobile or a browser:

1. Navigate to the page of the product you want to add to Your Essentials (not all products are eligible to be in Your Essentials).
2. Select the Add to essentials button between Buy Now and Add to List.

If you’ve already purchased the item before, there will be an additional link at the top of the product page. Your Essentials is only available for Prime members and for an item to be eligible, it must be a product that ships with Amazon Prime.

Where things get tricky is actually finding the items you’ve added to Your Essentials since there’s no direct link to the page on either the webpage or the mobile app.

To access it via the web page

1. Hover over the Account & Lists button.
2. Select Account.
3. Scroll down and click Your Essentials in the Memberships and subscriptions section.

To get there on mobile

1. Tap the navigation menu at the bottom right.
2. Scroll down and tap Your Stuff.
3. Select Your Essentials from the drop-down menu.

Or

1. Select the profile menu at the bottom of the screen.
2. Touch Your Account at the top.
3. Scroll down to Personalized content and tap Your Essentials.

To remove an item from Your Essentials

1. Navigate to the Your Essentials page.
2. Hover over or touch the three-dot menu at the top right of the card.
3. Click or tap Delete.

Reorder using Subscribe & Save

In many ways, Amazon makes life easier. You don’t have to leave your house to resupply your basic necessities and you can do it from the convenience of your home with the press of a button. But what if you don’t want to press any buttons? What if you just want the stuff you need to show up when you think you’ll need it? That’s what Amazon’s Subscribe & Save service is for.

Subscribe & Save lets you set up a recurring order on select goods. You can choose a delivery interval of anywhere from two weeks to six months and you can pick the day of the week you want your orders to arrive. You can pore over the fine print here, but if you want to jump right in, the process is very similar to making a regular Amazon order.

1. Navigate to the Subscribe & Save page.
2. Find an item you’d like to receive regularly.
3. Select your delivery interval.
4. Click Subscribe now.

From here it’s just like purchasing a regular item. If you want to change anything about your subscription, hop over to the Manage Your Subscriptions page where you can change your delivery schedule or cancel it all together.

There’s no simple way to get to the Subscribe & Save page on the mobile app; you’ll have to make a few taps first.

1. Tap the navigation menu at the lower right.
2. Select either Deals & Savings, Groceries & Stores, or Drugstore & Personal Care.
3. From the drop-down menu, touch Subscribe & Save.

This will take you to the Subscribe & Save base page where you can select a category of items to peruse. On both the website and the mobile app, eligible products will have the option to choose either One-time purchase or Subscribe & Save. Both website and mobile also let you filter your searches to show only Subscribe & Save eligible items.

The easiest way to shop (for now)

Maybe in the future you’ll be able to do your Amazon shopping with just a thought using your Neuralink chip. Until then, these are the fastest ways to reorder your Amazon products. If you buy everything on Amazon, you can take advantage of Alexa-only deals if you’re an Echo owner.