Understanding How Online Shoppers Decide Where To Shop Online
“Add To Cart”… What Really Encourages Your eCommerce Shop Visitors To Click It?
The vast majority of online shoppers tend to identify as “deal seekers”: Price point is usually the most important purchase consideration with free shipping right behind it.
What influences consumers when deciding to buy online?
The ranked list below is based on data collected as recently as October, 2018 by Google/Kantar TNS, Global and is taken from online shopping preferences from a pool of 1,500 frequent online consumers ages 18–64 who made a purchase in the past 6 months. The list is ranked in order of most important reason(s) for buying online and selecting which shop online to purchase from.
- Lowest price for item
- Free shipping
- Sale, discount, or promo
- Product availability
- Product specs (like, battery life)
- Customer item reviews
- Fast delivery
- Estimated delivery date and time
- Cross-store price comparison
What’s The Quick Takeaway From The List Above?
Selective Competitive Product Pricing
Highlight your competitive pricing when applicable. You can’t always beat the competition on pricing, especially if you’re a smaller player in the market but you can on some items occasionally. I often encourage our eCommerce clients with new shops online to simply pick a few products and prepare to only break even on them for a specified time period. Use those handful of products to entice that first sale and successful interaction with your eCommerce website. It’s a fair trade-off oftentimes as your customers will likely return for more purchases over time providing you exceed their expectations and deliver accordingly. When you are able to beat the competition on pricing, make sure you make it known. Use applicable “Sale”, “Special”, or “Discount” flags and icons on your product pages (see example screenshot below of how we do this on one of our client shops).
example of ecommerce sale pricing on client website
Free Shipping Is A Must If You Can Pull It Off
Some heavy or over-sized products make offering free shipping on your site difficult or next to impossible. However many products offered can be maximized by offering free shipping. Your best bet is to aim for fast and free shipping when you can. Look for ways to recoup any lost shipping expenses within the product pricing itself. The reality is that online shoppers are motivated by both free and fast shipping.
Improve Your Digital Shopping Experience On Your eCommerce Website
Let us help you boost your eCommerce shop with a quick and easy evaluation of your retail website. Simply use the form on the bottom of this page to send us your eCommerce website questions or request a FREE eCommerce project proposal. You can even include a phone number (optional) and we’ll call you. Be sure to check out my eCommerce costs guide if you’re new to eCommerce and looking to launch your own eCommerce shop.
With more than a decade of eCommerce development and design experience, we know first hand the many challenges and decisions that you’ll face along the way to establishing a successful eCommerce presence on the web. We’re here to offer our free expert advice and eCommerce industry knowledge without any fancy sales pitches thrown in (we promise).
Best wishes on your eCommerce venture!
Mark D. Hulett is the Senior eCommerce Website Developer & Designer at Georgia Web Development. His experience and working knowledge of eCommerce, website development and website design spans more than a decade.Mark responds personally to all inquiries and is more than happy to setup a quick phone call to discuss your project and answer questions.
