The rapid growth of ecommerce has driven consumers online. Does this mean that impulse buying is over? On the contrary, it means that online business owners have to up their game to encourage the spontaneous purchase from web visitors. So how do you take advantage of impulse buyers? Here are five sure ways to motivate a temporary lapse of self-control online.
Offer Suggestions and Reminders
Offer suggestions to customers about an additional item that complements their primary item. Impulse purchases are usually made on items that are perceived to be low risk and cheaper. Use this to your advantage by identifying a lower priced item that would go well with the main product people buy. Convince them that they need more than what they came to buy.
Another way to pair items together and encourage an impulse purchase is to use your existing buyer’s history. Look at how buyers in your store shop and discover which items they buy together. For example, an online shop that sells paint should have paintbrushes, thinners and overalls as the complementary products. Then introduce a “frequently bought together” feature to encourage a sale.
Enhance the User Experience
You need to optimize your site to attract impulse shoppers by making it enticing at a glance. Your website design has a vital role to play in the overall shopping experience of your target market. It should include appealing photos and videos, thoughtful hyperlinks as well as inspirational text. Remember that less is more so do away with ads and pop-up windows.
Many shoppers use smartphones for their online shopping experience. Make sure your website is mobile-friendly in all aspects by using the responsive design. It enables your web page to detect the visitor’s screen size and orientation. This feature allows the responsive design to change the layout accordingly across different mobile devices. You should also allow customers to save their user details and credit card information to encourage them to make future purchases with just a simple click.
Leverage on Social Media
Effectively use social media to appeal to a broader audience of impulse shoppers. You can use pay-per-click ads to encourage your target audience to follow your business profile on different social media platforms. Then post announcements of new products, brief sales and other offers once you have a substantial number of followers. You can then use an ecommerce automation tool like Buffer to schedule social media posts.
Lure impulse shoppers to check out your store by providing promotional incentives such as volume offers and exclusive price discounts. Use powerful cues such as “limited” and “exclusive” as a call to action. Free stuff also captures the attention of impulse buyers. Who does not want valuable freebies? Offer free goods, free shipping or even free returns. Another effective way is to identify the most popular social media platform among your target audience and use social media advertisements to grab the attention of impulse buyers.
Boosted posts are also an incentive to attract impulse shoppers. A boosted post is a post from your business page that for a fee appears higher up on the News Feed of your target audience. Incorporate high quality images with your boosted posts on Facebook to drive impulse sales.
Invest in Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is a type of digital marketing where a brand collaborates with a popular web personality to expand their reach and credibility using a targeted audience. Influencer marketing is a powerful tactic to encourage impulse shopping. For every $1 spent on influencer marketing, a return of $6.50 is experienced. According to a joint study by Twitter and Annalect, 40% of Twitter users made a purchase after seeing an influencer tweet about the product. Find influencers with a genuine interest in what your brand has to offer.
The next step is to ensure that they have an engaged audience and evaluate their follower demographics using a tool like Audiense. Just ask the influencer to use the tool and send the report to you. After establishing that the potential influencer is right for your brand, give them creative freedom to generate content. Remember to ask them to share links to your product pages and not the homepage. Offer links and discounts to give their readers an extra push into buying your products.
Use FOMO to Your Advantage
FOMO stands for fear of missing out. This psychological trigger is by far the most effective approach for impulse shoppers. This is because it encourages them to take instant action to make a purchase. Leverage on the innate fear of your web page visitors by showing stock levels to highlight scarcity.
Another approach is to show that people are buying. Present live information on sales so that visitors know people are actually buying. This will trigger them to do the same. You can achieve this effect on any WordPress site using FOMO plugins available for WooCommerce sites. Make web visitors monitor the clock to create urgency. Let them think they will miss out on a product by running out of time.
Impulse shoppers are valuable to any business because you do not have to invest a lot in terms of marketing campaigns. Do not miss out on this lucrative moneymaking opportunity. Use the above strategies to market your online business and ensure buyers make those unplanned purchases.
Guest article written by: Belinda Kendi is a content marketer who develops insightful blog posts that teach e-commerce storeowners ways to manage and grow their business. You can follow her on Twitter at @belindakendi99