Is Your E-Commerce Site Conducive For Impulse Buying?

Is your webstore spontaneous shopping friendly? The internet is a utopia for impulse buyers. It makes it so easy to browse for items and make spur of the moment shopping sprees. As an online business owner, are you aware how much of your online sales resulted from customer impulse buying? More importantly, does your e-commerce site possess the subtle, highly suggestive factors that impulse buyers can hardly resist? Do you have a direct, open channel of communication for online help through chat? Realize that these factors are the baseline for spontaneous conversions on your website whether you are selling a tangible product, a service or your expertise.

How do you make your site conducive for spontaneous or impulse shopping?

1. Do a little check up

Start with what you have. Study your e-commerce site’s analytics to zero to understand the behavior of impulse buyers on your site. Where do most conversions occur? Do they occur with the first visit or does your analytics imply the bulk of purchases happen after multiple visits? You can also find out trends and patterns on how online shoppers progress to the product pages on your site. Did they get there through search or through navigation? By getting these sets of information or insights, you can estimate the ratio or impulse buying compared to more methodical buying wherein site visitors research before making a purchase (a sign of this is multiple visits before the actual purchase). Ideally, your site should convert between 50%-70% on the first visit. If this isn’t happening on your site, then you might have to make some changes fast! Take cues from our suggestions below.

2. Combine Time Sensitive and Urgent Marketing

Sales that complement the season or the occasion are examples as well as the “deal-of-the-day” technique. That said you might want to mark your calendars on all pertinent popular events and holidays of the year and hold promotional discounts, buy 1 take 1 and other attractive deals. Think Black Friday and Cyber Monday. By leveraging these events, you can rake in more sales compared to regular days where everything’s pretty much SSDD - same stuff, different day - which is booo-ring plateau of sales rates. Time sensitive marketing evoke a sense of urgency for the buyers because the fever and excitement for these events don’t last forever, they are limited for a time only. It pretty much lays the ground for impulse buying which translates to spontaneous conversions on your site. They key is a clear and conspicuous message on your site - headlines and creatives - that gets shoppers on a one-way ride to the purchase button.

3. Limited Stocks

Another way to play the “urgency” game is to show how many stocks are left in store for a particular item. This increases the “want” factor for what you’re selling while giving the impression that it is popular and a great buy because many people have already purchased it.

4. Give a Free Shipping Perk

<If possible, give the free shipping perk. Free shipping is one of the most attractive offers online businesses do for a more effectual conversion rate optimization. Multiple studies have shown that shipping is one of the primary hurdles online shoppers undergo when making online purchases. After enough canvassing, competition boils down to who can provide the lowest shipping rate. The winner, of course, is the business who offers free shipping! For the customer it’s a perk but shipping bills have to be paid when all is said and done so it’s you who’ll likely shoulder them. Do a thorough study if offering the free shipping perk is possible for your business and if it is, how. Some offer it when a certain amount of purchase has been made, while some do it for a limited time only. Decide on which best suits you.

5. Have a Live Chat Widget

Having a working online live chat widget on your e-commerce store makes hesitant first-time visitors feel confident and reinforces the trust of your previous customers. It also gives you the chance to impress a site visitor into making a purchase by attending to them in real time. Often, it only takes a single question hovering around a person’s mind to be answered, for them to feel assured, before they make the purchase. If nobody’s there to assist them, they hyperjump to another site and you lose the sale. An online live chat enables you to receive customer chats anywhere no matter what device you’re using so that you keep spontaneous conversions happening. It also eliminates the occurrence of cart abandonment since you’ll be able to conveniently help anybody encountering a checkout error the moment it happens.

These small tweaks on your e-commerce site on how you position your marketing encourage impulse buying that supports spontaneous conversions. If your e-commerce site is your bread and butter, then it should be converting at a higher rate. Consumers have their way when browsing for what they want - it’s just a matter of leading them straight to these wants and needs so that conversions happen right away on the first visit.

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