How to Ease Your Customer's Decision-Making Process
Michael Gronski
Data-Driven Digital Marketer | SEO & Content Strategist | UX Advocate
Having more choices when it comes to shopping may seem exciting to some people, but it often leads to decision paralysis. Consumers experience more information overload and options today than in any previous historical period. If your customer's decision-making process is bogged down, this can directly impact your sales and e-commerce efforts.
In other words, when consumers are confronted with many options, it paralyzes them and makes decision-making more difficult. Consequently, they do not make any decisions, impacting e-commerce conversions and sales.
Having more options can have the side effect of leaving customers feeling dissatisfied with their purchasing decision. They'll keep thinking about what they've missed by choosing one option over the rest, which causes buyer remorse.
Because of this, you need to limit your customers' options to make it easier for them to make a purchasing decision. Here are some great tips to ease the customer's decision-making process and helpful tips for boosting e-commerce sales.?
1. Simplify Your Website Design
Overloaded webpages with all kinds of products and no proper organization can cause your customers unneeded grief and frustration. This scenario can make their experience difficult when it comes to finding the products that fit their needs, solving their problem, and increasing their difficulty in making a purchase decision.
This is one reason why you must keep your website design as simple and clean as possible.
You can do so by displaying your best-selling products at the top of the homepage, followed by the different categories of products you have to help customers find the items they're looking for quickly.
In addition, you should make product search easy for those who already know what they want to buy by placing the search bar where it's clearly visible to everyone.
2. Have Just One Call-to-Action (CTA)
Having many call-to-action buttons on your product pages, checkout pages, landing pages, and emails may seem like a good idea to guide people to the desired action.
However, too many CTAs can cause distraction and confusion, making it harder for them to decide. It also reduces the effectiveness of a CTA by having multiple CTAs close to one another.
So, it's best to have only one CTA on each page and eliminate anything else that may prevent users from taking the action you want them to take.
3. Allow Customers to Compare Products Effortlessly
Another thing that can make decision-making easier for customers is by allowing them to compare multiple products feature by feature.
This feature is especially important when shoppers have to choose between multiple similar products with different prices.
When you allow them to compare the features and benefits of similar products, they can see their differences and make informed decisions based on their budget and needs.
Additionally, this allows users to build their confidence in the product and purchasing decisions.
4. Provide Customers with Highly Personalized Product Offers
Another way to help your customer make purchasing decisions easily is by presenting them with highly personalized offers that are most relevant to their needs.
For example, if a customer has bought suits consistently from your store, you can find shirts that go well with or complement the suits and sell both products to the customer as a bundle.
Send them a post-purchase email thanking them for their last purchase and recommending the bundle you've just put together.
If you can offer the bundle at a slightly lower amount than the prices of the individual items put together, it will encourage the customer to make a purchase immediately.
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This strategy works because you're presenting the customer with one simple and highly personalized offer, so they don't have to choose between many options.
Secondly, you're selling the offer at a discounted price, which helps the customer save money and potentially time shopping for required items.
5. Showcase Certain Products Using Badges
The same way physical stores display some of their items in the windows to attract attention and draw people inside to buy is the same way you should showcase certain products in your e-commerce store.
Display tags like recently added, best-selling, limited edition or top-rated next to some of your items to help shoppers make decisions more easily.
You can also use badges to reveal helpful product information to the customer. For instance, if you're selling different types of jackets, you can use badges like rain, snow, and wind to indicate the weather type each jacket is meant for.
6. Provide Customers with Social Proof
Humans have this natural tendency to let other people's experiences and opinions influence their decisions.
For example, you can pass by a restaurant and see a long line of people waiting to be served and feel this urge to go and eat there as well. That's how powerful social proof can be.
E-commerce businesses like yours can leverage the power of social proof to help customers make decisions quickly by:
All these tactics help give shoppers the confidence to continue with their purchases because they know that many other people have bought products from your store and are happy and satisfied with their purchases.
7. Offer 24/7 Customer Support
Customer support is crucial in e-commerce because shoppers can face challenges at any point in the buying process. If you cannot offer them immediate support, most of them will abandon their purchase and leave your site immediately.
During regular operating hours, you need to have a dedicated team of customer support staff available to your customers. To cover a whole 24/7 window can be challenging for smaller companies, but there are automation solutions that can help cover many scenarios. Ensure you provide access to support channels through phone calls, live chat, email, etc.
8. Offer Customers a Generous Return Policy
Lastly, it would help if you remembered that many people don't like shopping online because they don't want to deal with returning items they don't like.
Such people will be more willing to buy from your store if you can offer them a return policy that's clear, simple, and very generous. For example, you can offer free shipping on all returns to give potential customers the confidence to shop with you.
Final Thoughts on the Customer's Decision-Making Process
There are numerous ways to help make your customer's decision-making process quicker and easier.
These include allowing them to compare products feature by feature, providing them with highly personalized product offers, and offering clear and concise call-to-actions on your landing pages, checkout pages, emails, and product pages.
Because not all of these tactics will apply to your e-commerce business and customers, it's best to test them before implementing them to see what works for you.