Interest equations of E-Commerce.
The practice of keeping the consumer interest at heart across stages of path to purchase is not a new theory, but at times can be a tough one to crack. Consumers today are constantly evolving in terms of how they research, understand, experience and finally buy the product, and brands need to make it easier for consumers to experience their product at every path to purchase stage.
Interest is hard to grab. And capitalizing on this interest once you have it, without annoying the consumer is a job half done.
How can brands leverage the consumer interest and purchase intent?
1. Interest + Information = Decision.
Making it easier for your consumer to know about the product they are interested in. Some of the most common ways of doing this would be to
Have a clear product description, return policy, warranties, out of stock info.
One of the things I personally like to follow is to “Aim for Amazon” — Basically the product pages that amazon has for its own product. Even if you start off with trying to adapting and including 30% of what amazon has for your own product and gradually keep on improving and adding relevant information.
2. Interest + Simplicity = Satisfaction.
In an ideal scenario if a consumer wants to purchase your product right after product search how easy will it be? Simplifying the check-out process, will always result in lower cart abandonment.
Some of the ways you can do this is by:
1. Pre-filling information if the user has already registered
2. Guest check outs, where you can always go after registrations at a later stage now that you have information.
3. Universal Basket, prefilled products from last add to basket.
4. Clear Steps, Ideally a total of 3 steps or less including payment (Ex: Summary, Delivery, Payment)
3. Interest — Hassle = Less Annoyance
It’s highly essential to provide a frictionless experience when it comes to both product research and purchase.
And experience on mobile becomes the biggest issue to tackle. Mobile has become the first preference of consumers to initiate product research and it’s hence important for brands to think mobile first in terms of overall path to purchase experience.
Some early steps to be mobile ready are:
1. Responsive Mobile Site
2. Mobile ready hero product images. (Great Resource: Guidelines developed by Unilever and Cambridge Engineering Design Centre, http://ecommerce.inclusivedesigntoolkit.com/)
3. Mobile website load time
4. Easy and simple navigation
5. Avoid pop-ups
6. Think with Thumb: Design with thumb scrolling in mind.
4. Interest + Insights = Value
To further improve the experience, it’s important to utilize stats and insights to further improve the efficiency, and increase the probability of a consumer purchase — repurchase. The key for brands should be to effectively leverage on data/insights to develop profitable relationships that last.
1. Relevant recommendations
2. Relevant Cross-sells
3. Relevant Offerings and more.
In short, understand what your consumers are searching for, buying, abandoning and optimize towards that to make their online shopping experience more relevant.
5. Interest + Choice= Decisiveness
It’s a proven fact that, consumers want a much comprehensive shopping experience that involves shopping from both direct-to-consumer stores and various 3rd party retailers. Amazon, Alibaba, Flipkart and many others have revolutionized the way people shop and brands need to take this into account.
Choice has always resulted in more conversion and implement an online selling strategy that goes hand in hand with D2C and Channels is the best way to go ahead.
Some of our clients at ChannelSight have integrated retailers in their selling mix and found tremendous success in terms of conversions, vs when the retailers were not introduced.
But the idea of choice shouldn’t just be restricted to website, it can also be expanded all the consumer touch points where the primary goal is conversion, (Media, Content, Videos and more).
Ideally brands need to realise that, if a consumer wants to buy their product, but if they want to let’s say buy it from Amazon, that’s a win aswell, as the product bought was your brand at the end of the day.
6. Interest + Understanding = Relationship
Lastly, when a product interest was converted into a purchase, it’s very essential to understand the reviews, complaints, and feedback to keep the relationship going. A good after sales service always works in getting more recommendations and consumers are ready to pay more a better shopping experience that takes into account the aftersales.
Ecommerce across product categories is growing everyday globally. Winning the digital consumer can be tough route to crack, but it’s not un-achievable if you the consumer and their interest at heart.
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