E-Commerce websites are the digital version of the car salesmen, albeit less pestering. Just as a salesman communicates features, benefits, price; the website does too.
But there’sone important thing that’s missing: the power of persuasion.
Whether it is consultative or solution selling, our sales guy knows which buttons to push to close the deal. They mimic the customer’s body language and gestures to be in sync, and once the customer starts trusting the sales guy they make their sales pitch.
Persuasion marketing is one of the fundamental components of sales because it answers to the emotions of the buyer. And the golden rule states that ‘people buy because of emotions first and logic second.’
We rounded up 8 persuasion techniques to make your website the Joe Girard of the e-commerce world.
Note that not all techniques use SEO and SEM. Some harnesses the power of words, some calls for a technical touch, and some can be downright silly.
But a combination of these techniques can help your e-commerce business increase sales.
Web Design and Layout
Want people to stay longer at your terribly boring house party? Uncork a bottle of red wine.
Want people to stay longer on your website? Unleash the power of clever web design.
If people don’t find your website attractive, they are not going to scour through the pages. Unless you are looking for PNR confirmation and your website happens to be indianrail.gov.in.
A de-cluttered visually appealing website with large pictures of happy people smiling (preferably because of your product) will keep the traffic a little longer than they originally intended to.
Your pictures say what you can’t brazenly write on the website which more or less is ‘Hey you, yes you, you want to be happy like these people in this picture that I stole from StockPhotos? Buy our product now!’
Truly, a picture is worth a thousand words.
Here’s a good example
Besides communicating the primary message,like a web designer’s page feature a slideshow or a static gallery of their portfolio, it also prompts them to take actions provided the CTA is clear and limited to 1 per page.
Write Seductive Copy
Without going all 50 shades of Grey on the text, your aim should be to write content that resonates with the audience. SEO SEM blah blah will not work unless your words are rivetingly connectable.
Tell a story through words, use simple language, speak to their emotions, and be earnest- the formula for copy that sells.
ModCloth paints a picture with words
Dan Kennedy’s tip for copywriters is to ask initial questions that make the audience go ‘yes yes’. This brings you to the same wavelength as them and they are ready to trust you.
So a fashion retail website with a tagline ‘Your Life, Your Choice of Fashion’ makes your customers go ‘Yes yes! My life my choice! Not mummy’s or papa’s or for that matter no one else’s choice.
Offer valid suggestions
All ecommerce websites must integrate the ‘you may also like’ feature that shows relative products for the one the customer is currently viewing. Both e-commerce biggies –ebay and Amazon- swear by this.
Search for kitchen knives on Flipkart and you are bombarded with suggestions plus combo offers
Learn from Infomercials
Hurry! Offer valid till stock lasts and other such claims that communicates a scarcity is an effective way to get customers to take action. We are wired to take actions in urgency and a lot of sales techniques capitalize on this.
Though we’ve come to detest the hard selling technique, a legitimate scarcity can boost sales. People keep putting off taking actions unless it’s absolutely necessary- people would happily go most of their lives carrying extra weight but six months before their wedding day you should see them sweating their tooshies off at the gym.
Legitimate scarcity gives them a reason to buy the product today itself, not tomorrow or the day after.
Incentives
A better alternative to scarcity, but which sometimes can also work as a complementary technique, is incentives. People love getting something extra and a purchase incentive is the best prompt they need even if they were remotely considering buying the product.
And if you are incentives are strong enough, they might buyeven if they weren’t considering to do so.
Incentives also could sometime be the reason why your product is chosen over a competitor’s.
Neuromarketing
Very commonly used in advertising food items, showing thick rich brown chocolate melting and dripping is enough to get anyone craving for a bar.
Neuromarketing is the basis of persuasion marketing,which uses and applies psychological triggers to market products.
From choosing apt color schemes to priming the prospect’smood through brilliant visuals, neuromarketing is all about understanding human psychology and using it to reach out to tap the emotions (not feelings) that govern a buyer’s decision.
Give the buyer the freedom to choose
The old-school technique that our pestering car salesman used does not work anymore, and there’s a psychological reason behind this. Buyers don’t like the idea of being sold, what that means is that if they buy something they want it to be a completely uninfluenced decision, their decision alone.
Based on the principles of neuromarketing, sometimes acting cool can work in a positive way.
Acting cool to close the deal? Still not as cool as us! Image courtesyphilipsandifer.com
Compared to a salesman who’s asking you to buy buy buy, a clever salesman will step back and let you assess. He doesn’t give you the idea that the world depends upon your purchase so you don’t get all high and mighty, and can consider the purchase level headedly.
For your e-commerce website make sure you don’t have ‘buy now’ pop-ups springing up every now and then. Plus make it easy for them to go back to the previous page in case they don’t want to buy.
Providing your customers with the notion that they can say no to this purchase nudges them to see the product in an elite light. Like something luxurious, something that people buy because they want to not because they are cajoled to
Testimonials
People believe what other people say, which is why gossip and rumours spread like wildfire. If you have someone testifying your product, confessing it to be a life-saving miraculous product that grows hair on bald head, chances are your other customers will believe this totally random stranger they will never ever meet.
In fact you do too. While shopping online, how many times did you buy a first time product that had a lower rating or a customer stating how utterly useless the product is, in caps lock?
This review of Sennheiser 800 is hilarious.
Besides customer generated testimonials, if you can get reputed names and known people talking about your product, you can boost sales overnight. This were just eight persuasion techniques, business might be using many other techniques to increase sales from your their ecommerce store.
Amongst these techniques, we can surely help you out by providing a better website design and layout with the New Responsive Avactis Themes. And if you are using our free eCommerce software, don’t forget to try out newly launched free themes
