Turning website visitors into paying customers is one of the most important things an e-commerce business needs to do very well. No matter how many people are looking at your website, unless they decide to part with their money and make a purchase, you might struggle to sustain your business long-term.
Having a professional-looking website, showcasing high-quality products, providing good customer service, and offering competitive pricing are all great ways of encouraging people to buy from your business. Those things aren’t always enough though and more subtle persuasion might be needed.
What a lot of people may not know is that 95% of purchasing decisions are made subconsciously. If you’ve ever been shopping in the real world and wondered why stores are laid out in certain ways, or why prices are displayed in the way that they are – it’s highly likely it’s to stimulate the subconscious parts of customer’s minds that will encourage them to make a purchase.
Similar psychology tricks can be used for e-commerce websites. Knowing how to influence the subconscious decision to buy or not can make a big impact on your sales figures.
Make it Easy to Decide
The paradox of choice is an interesting concept that e-commerce business owners need to be aware of. While most of us probably think that having no choice in something is the worst possible situation, it appears that having too much choice results in similar feelings to having no choice at all.
If customers are presented with too many choices to make, it could very well result in them not making a decision at all. A great example of this is your Netflix account. How many times have you wanted to sit down and watch a movie only to not be able to pick from the masses available on the streaming service? With thousands of movies to choose from, you end up not picking any and you feel bad about it.
This is the paradox of choice causing choice paralysis. A lot of people think giving customers as much choice as possible will help encourage them to buy from your business. In fact, it can result in customers leaving your site without buying anything at all, as they simply can’t decide what option is best for them.
Even if a customer does still make a purchase when presented with a lot of variants of each product, having too much choice can lead to lower satisfaction levels with their purchase. Let’s say your e-commerce website sells t-shirts. Each t-shirt is available in more than 20 design options for customers to choose from. A customer finally decides to buy one of the designs and goes through the checkout process. While they are initially happy with their purchase, there is some level of doubt in their mind about whether they made the right choice. Could a different version of the t-shirt be better than the one they chose? Does this t-shirt suit them better than all the others?
This type of thought process can easily lead to dissatisfaction with a product. If too many customers feel this way, they may not return to your website as they start to think your products aren’t good enough. In reality, they probably are, it’s just that your business is offering too many choices to your customers.
Show That Others Are Buying
As humans, we are very sociable creatures. Most of us don’t like feeling left out and we want to fit in with other humans around us. This is easily seen in real-world shopping. Imagine you are shopping in your local area. As you’re walking down the street, you see several people carrying a bag with a local store’s logo on it. You keep seeing more and more of these branded bags and wonder why so many people have them. This wonder encourages you to go to the store in question to see what the fuss is about.
Not wanting to miss out or be the odd one out is a powerful feeling and can cause customers to spend money to help them be part of the crowd. This can be used on e-commerce websites to help customers make the decision to purchase from your business.
Some e-commerce websites show little notifications saying how many people are currently looking at the same item as you. Others show how many people have purchased the product you are looking at in the last 24 hours. These small details can actually go a long way in persuading someone to buy the product in front of them.
Another way to show other people are buying your products is by having customer reviews displayed on your website. Studies have found that 91% of people who buy online read reviews before making a purchase. A lot of people who read reviews put a lot of trust in them, so if there are several positive reviews from people who have already got the product being looked at, there is a greater chance of making a sale.
We are all influenced by the people around us and the people we look up to. If your business can show customers that other people are making certain decisions, it’s likely this will encourage them to make the same decision too.
Build Loyalty With Free Stuff
Obviously, the main goal of an e-commerce business is to make sales. Sometimes though, giving stuff away for free can be the exact thing that will lead to increased sales in the long term.
This comes down to the human trait of not wanting to feel like you owe something to someone else. Think about the last time someone did something nice for you – most of us start to think about how we can pay them back or reciprocate the nice thing ourselves. The same principle works with online shopping.
Simply offering free shipping can be enough in some situations. One study even found that 90% of consumers would shop online more often if free shipping was offered. Think about what that could mean for your business. If you could offer your customers free shipping on their orders, sales figures could quickly grow to a whole new level.
If you want to actually give things away for free though, you could offer potential customers a free gift with every purchase, you could give them the opportunity to get a product for free to try it out, or you could give away samples of your products on your website. While you need to be careful that your business can afford to do this, it can be an incredible way of making customers seriously consider buying from your business.
At worst, it’s a marketing strategy that can get your brand in front of a lot of people in a very positive way. At best, it creates loyalty between the recipient of the gift and your business. In a lot of cases, the feeling of owing your business something in return for a free gift can be enough to persuade someone to buy from you.
Make Everything Easy
We all want things to be easy. Deep down, the majority of people want their life to be simple, organized, and stress-free. The same could be said for online shopping. If a customer has to go through a long, drawn-out process to make a purchase, the chances are they are not going to bother.
If your e-commerce website is easy to navigate and simply and clearly laid out, this can encourage more people to go through the buying process with you. This can partly be because of the speed at which someone can make a purchase. Some customers are spontaneous buyers – they haven’t planned to buy anything but they see a product they like and immediately want to buy it.
If your checkout process is too long, or it’s a long process of adding the item to the cart and actually buying it, the rational part of the brain can kick in and persuade them against going through with the purchase. However, if a customer can buy what they want in just a few clicks, they don’t have time to think rationally about it and the product has already been ordered and will soon be on the way to them.
Another thing to think about in this situation is the speed of shipping. If a customer can order from your website quickly and easily but then has to wait a long time for delivery, they could change their mind and cancel the order. A study actually found that slow shipping is one of the main reasons for cart abandonment. Slow shipping can actually cause a customer to abandon their purchase mid-way through the buying process.
If everything about shopping with your business is easy, more people are likely going to want to do it. Buying from your business, shipping, repeat ordering – if everything about your business is simple, you might be surprised how much this can impact your sales.
Give Customers a Good Deal
The biggest factor in whether someone decides to make a purchase or not is probably the price. Most of us have a monthly budget to stick to and there may not be much room for additional purchases outside the necessities. That’s why price is such an important factor for e-commerce businesses.
People want to feel like they are getting a good deal. They want to feel savvy and feel like they got the best possible deal they could on their purchase. That’s why showing a discounted price can have such a powerful impact on customers’ buying decisions.
The anchoring effect is where our initial perception of something stays in our mind and influences our later decisions. This is why more customers could be persuaded to buy something simply by showing the product they are looking at is worth more than they are actually paying for it.
A lot of e-commerce websites do this simply by showing a higher price with a line crossing it out next to the price the product is being sold for. This gives the impression that it’s worth more than its sale price. An example of this could be a garden furniture set. The set is being sold on your website for $150 but next to the sale price is a crossed-out price of $250. Customers looking at the garden furniture now have in their mind that the set is actually worth $250 but they can get it for $100 less than that. This can encourage them to go through with their purchase.
Offering customers other “deals” can also help generate more sales. Things like free gifts for orders over a specific value can be enough to persuade people to buy. Let’s say your website selling garden furniture is offering customers a free furniture cover on all orders over $100. The set they are looking at is being sold for $150 so they feel like they are getting an additional item with their order without having to spend any more money.
Using anchor pricing and the additional free gift deal can give the impression of a fantastic bargain being given to the customer. Not only are they getting a garden furniture set for $100 less than its original price, but they are also getting a cover for it for free. A lot of customers won’t be able to resist an offer like that and will purchase the garden furniture.
