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If you want your online business to be a success, you have to consider your customers and more specifically perhaps their buying behavior. It’s important to understand what shapes customer buying decisions online whether you are a marketer or a business owner. Once you understand how to persuade customers to buy, you’ll have the tools to completely take over the market.
One example of a factor that impacts customer buying trends would be public opinion. We can start by thinking about online reviews. It’s no secret that online reviews have become of greater importance as of late. In fact, just yesterday, insiders from Paramount and Disney were claiming the companies blamed the review site Rotten Tomatoes for the performance of two of their movies that scored well in the initial screener. While on the surface, this might seem silly, there is evidence to support this idea.
Research has shown that around eighty percent of users online consider customer reviews before buying a service or product. Or in this case, perhaps checking out a movie. So, what do business owners need to be aware of about online reviews?
Well, first they need to keep track of them. You can’t be caught off guard by negative buzz surrounding your company online. You should always know exactly what the opinion of customers is and how it could affect the sale of your products. To do this, you can hire an analysis team. They will regularly check the web for any problems that might be cropping up.
That said, there is no way to completely diminish or avoid negative reviews. No one likes everything and mistakes do happen. Looking back at the film industry, it’s very rare to get a film that stays at a 100 percent on RT. What matters is how you react to the negative reception. You can go into damage control, or you can rise above it. If there is evidence to support the claims in the negative reviews, you might want to think about changing your business model accordingly. If there isn’t, then perhaps a polite, sincere response on the same review site would be the best option.
Don’t forget, that negative reception might be related to something completely separate to the quality of your product or service. You can get in trouble with public opinion if you are connected to an individual or business that has tarnished their own reputation. That’s why you have to be careful about who you get into bed with in business.
Of course, reviews online aren’t the only factor that shapes customer buying behavior.
Little Details
If you’re selling online, you should consider the design of your website carefully. Believe it or not, the smallest detail on your site could determine whether customers want to buy. Research has shown in the past that they can be turned off by the color of a buy button, an image or even a specific word on the page. How do we know this?
It’s quite easy to work out what shapes consumer buying behavior with A-B testing. The basic principle behind A-B is quite simply. Basically, you run two versions of the same site, and one-half of your audience sees one version while the rest sees the other. After this, you can change specific details on the B version of the site to see if they have an impact on buyer behavior. If they do, you can then make this version the only running site design. So, you might remove one of the pictures or change the site design slightly. Anything like this could play a part in changing your conversion rate.
Since we’re looking at conversion rate, we can also think about CRO or conversion rate optimization. Using various statistics and feedback, you can change your site to get the largest audience of buyers possible. It’s important to understand that you can have a huge level of traffic to your site and make very little profit due to a poor conversion rate.
Ease Of Access
Logically, if you make things as easy as possible for customers, you’re going to see more purchases on your site. The idea here is simple. You need to ensure that your site responds quickly, doesn’t get caught in slow loading times and doesn’t freeze. To ensure this is the case we need to start at the very beginning of your site set up. You should begin by hosting your site. If you are hosting your site, you’ll have complete control over how it’s used, and it’s functioning. That’s important because a lot of business owners cut costs by piggybacking off an existing host. Doing this, they limit the functions of their site, and it’s upgradability.
Next, think about the platform that you’re running on your site. If you are selling online, you’ll need an ecommerce platform like Shopify. You can set this up through a Shopify Agency. Shopify is generally considered to be the best all around ecommerce platform. Essentially, it ticks all the boxes.
As well as this, you should look at the overall design of your site. You should make sure that it’s easy to navigate. You can actually make things simpler for customers by using links in your web content. That way, they can be reading information about a product and find a link directly to where it’s being sold. It’s subtle yet effective, and it will certainly increase your conversion rate.
Finally, don’t forget, that these days customers demand options. They want to buy when they like, how they like, where they like. To ensure they have this, you should be setting up various sources for purchases from your business. For instance, you can think about creating an app for your company. That way, customers can easily buy from their phone or tablet. Although, if you are going to set up various different sources of purchases, you also need to keep security tight. Otherwise, customers will avoid using a service that looks dangerous or risky.
