People are Insecure; Give Them Confidence
It’s easy to buy from a brick and mortar store where you see real faces involved. Even if it’s some 16-year old kid, with numerous body-piercings standing behind the counter, you have confidence that when he takes your credit card he won’t be stealing the numbers. This kind of confidence in the buying process is lost online. My biggest issue with buying products online is the return process if, for whatever reason, something goes wrong. It’s easy to drive back to Target and return something you don’t want. But online, once the purchase is made, the return process is more cumbersome and often results in extra shipping fees.
You need to give your visitors confidence, not only in the security of the purchase process, but also in the quality of your products, their expectations and your policies and procedures in case something doesn’t go as expected. This is most easily accomplished through making sure you have pages on your site that address each of these issues, and clear and obvious links in the places where the customer will be most looking for them. For example, your product pages might need an obvious link to your return policies page–even if that link is already available through the main navigation.
People Want to Feel Special; Compliment Them
Who doesn’t want to feel special? A compliment goes a long, long way in helping to establish that mental relationship. How do you compliment someone you don’t know? Some simply ways are to write these compliments into your content, “You’re obviously looking for quality baby clothing, you’ve made a wise decision visiting our store.” It might sound a bit cheesy, but it works, as long as you don’t go overboard. These types of compliments can also be worked into your email and phone communications.
People Desire a Better Tomorrow; Show Them Hope
Will your products or services make their lives better or easier? You must already believe that otherwise you wouldn’t be selling what you do. So use this opportunity to explain how your products are going to be good for them. Explain how life will be better once your customer purchases what you are selling. Illustrate to them the benefits, not just the features. If you can give your customers hope–convince them–that your product or service will improve their lives; you’ve got a sale in hand without the cost being a significant factor.
People Need to be Understood; Listen to Them
Even before you have a chance to communicate with your clients verbally or via email, are you listening to their needs? Whether or not you listen to your website visitors can easily be determined by your USP, Unique Selling Proposition. What? You don’t have one? Then you may not be listening to your customers needs. Your USP is what makes you stand out from the thousands of other stores online peddling the same wares as you. Why should they buy from you as opposed to someone else? Price alone is rarely the determining factor.
You need to offer your visitors something unique that tells them that you have listened and responded to their needs. Even if you sell the same product or service as others, your unique approach is one developed out of conversations with your customers and seeking ways to find solutions to problems even before those problems existed.
People are Selfish; Speak to Their Needs First
More than anything, people want you to meet their wants and needs. They’re not shopping on your site for your benefit; they are there because they are in need of a solution for X. Your first order of business on your website is to tell the customers how you can meet those needs and what your products or services will achieve for them.
People are Emotionally Low; Encourage Them
For some sites, shopping cart abandonment is astronomically high. Why is that? Primarily because people need to be encouraged to proceed with their purchase. I’ll often start shopping for a book or DVD, have it in my basket, go through much of the checkout process, but just before I finalize the payment I hesitate. In my mind I’m thinking, “should I buy this now?”, or “Will my frivolous spending upset the wife?”, or for larger purchases, “Can I afford this?” Most of these questions surface on an emotional level; sometimes rooted in fact, sometimes not. The bottom line is that a little extra encouragement can help persuade visitors through the selling process.
In fact this very thing happened to me just the other day. I threw a couple of books into my Amazon shopping cart but since I’ve purchased quite a few books lately so I began to think twice about buying a couple more now. Amazon provided the encouragement I needed. By filling out an application for an Amazon Visa card I got something like $30 off my purchase. I was sold and so were the books. You don’t have to give away money to encourage your visitors to make a purchase, but you can re-iterate the benefits of their purchase one more time.