Can you remember the excitement of your last purchase for something you really wanted? Almost like a kid at Christmas waiting for Santa Claus, there is nothing like finding a great deal and making a purchase online.
Appealing to Savvy Online Shoppers
When emotion is the driving force, time disappears and the addictive side of shopping can overwhelm logic and encourage us to make impulsive purchasing decisions. It doesn’t matter if its jewelry, electronic gadgets, video games or a new pair of shoes, emotion is the driving-force behind commerce.
Creating emotional crescendos with your landing pages and delivering a clear value-proposition to an eager audience is the perfect recipe for conversion. Don’t be clever; just tell them what’s in the box.
Most consumers are driven by the fear of losing the deal of the moment – don’t believe me, “think Woot.com and Groupon” for example. There is nothing new about the scarcity / reward model (to facilitate sales).
The objective is to produce the highest yield of conversion based on your traffic source through generating interest and then presenting a value that exceeds what the consumer “thinks the value of the money that they will spend is worth”.
In other words, if they win, you win, so don’t forget to use incentives, offers such as Free shipping with orders over a certain benchmark, bundles, bonuses and discounts to get browsers off the fence and turn them into buyers.
Once your offer exceeds their sub conscious / sliding scale incentive and facilitates a function that exceeds their perceived value, a conversion is the result.
The ideal offer incorporates relevance blended with emotion fused by curiosity of using the product wrapped in reward; the three critical stages of the search, evaluate, purchase modality is a compelling force for savvy consumers which tempts them to find their release (ranging from ringtones, laptops, watches, apparel or whatever appeals to them at that time).
The objective of consumers searching for products or services is to alleviate the tension of searching and experience the burst of dopamine (as a reward of the pursuit) after they make a purchase.
As an SEO, our objective is to make sure that when a consumer is ready to take action and search, shop and purchase that our carefully crafted editorial or landing pages are there to greet them when they’re in need.
When you are ready to shop online; the typical stages of the purchasing cycle often progress from impulse, to research (which could take hours or days, depending on the price point of the product or service), followed by a period of refinement (the comparison, sorting and elimination phase), reinforcement through social proof (reading countless reviews to validate your purchase) and then finally, you proceed to checkout.
More expensive products typically equate to longer evaluation cycles, while products under a perceived price threshold (a purely subjective and relative number) are susceptible to impulse. For me, anything $67 or less is fair game for the latest gadget, software or digital product, but for others it could be $500 or less.
We all have our tipping point, but if you know what that is for others and can convey it quickly (within 10 seconds from hitting the page), don’t make the user have to try and find Waldo to figure out that you are offering.
Savvy shoppers are impatient, so create continuity with your offer and simply give visitors what lured them to your page initially, quickly, to increase conversions and minimize high bounce rates or reader attrition.
To summarize, curiosity (the initial search engine query), pursuit (sifting through websites to eliminate the weaker offers) and fulfillment (settling on a value/reward/price modality) is the fundamental mechanism of search.
As long as your offer fulfills the function consumer are seeking and exceeds the mental perceived-value of their pain point or need, conversions are a natural reaction once exposed.
Me, too, I like discounts as much as the next guy. I get more value for my money. The seller with the best deal will have my money.
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