If you are anything like me, you’ve made your fair share impulsive purchases online.
Unlike trekking into brick-and-mortar, I never get on the Internet with the intent of pulling out my credit card. Yet, inevitably, I’ve got two food delivery subscriptions and a blouse from the JCrew factory store shipping out tomorrow.
Are your visitors like me? How much of your business comes from impulsive behavior? Most importantly, are you converting your impulse visitors before their craving to buy passes?
In this post, I will show you how to quantify the number of impulse buyers on your site using Google Analytics, and I will also share strategies on how to get them to convert.
The Impulsive Buyer
We define an impulsive buyer as someone who is poised to take action. These are our spontaneous buyers, more likely to be relational than transactional. They may not be impulsive in life, but are behaving in their spontaneous mode on your site right now.
What makes an impulsive buyer impulsive?
- They perceive the risk of taking action as low.
- They perceive the value of taking action as high.
- They perceive the cost of shopping as high.
- FOMO: Fear of missing out may drive their behavior.
- Familiarity with your products makes a purchase decision easy.
- Repeat buyers simply restocking will act as if they are impulsive.
For these visitors, leaving a browsing session without having pulled the financial trigger is like leaving the confessional before they’ve received their prescription of penitential prayers. It’s a complete waste of time and fundamentally misses the point of the exercise.
For these buyers, you should dedicate a portion of your site to mitigating risk, building value, pointing the way to purchase, creating scarcity, and spelling out the facts.
Impulse buyers aren’t the crazed shoppers that can be found assaulting each other in the Walmart on Black Friday.
Impulse buyers aren’t the crazed shoppers that can be found assaulting each other in the Walmart on Black Friday. These buyers may be thoughtful and methodical in their approach. However, they will buy from someone today, unless no alternatives present themselves.
If they don’t buy from you now, they will most likely not return.
Finding Impulse Buyers in the Data
Impulse buyers don’t announce themselves upon arrival at your website, but they leave footprints in your digital sand. To start, we’re looking for those one-hit wonders, the drive-by shoppers. Google Analytics tracks this behavior for us with the “Time to Purchase” report.
Where to find time to purchase in Google Analytics
Impluse buyers are, by definition, those visitors who purchase within their first visit. Thus, we want to know which transactions are completed on our site within a single session.
The number of sessions it takes to convert
For an ecommerce website, a single-session percentage of more than 80% indicates that quick buying behavior is contributing to your overall conversion rate. You’re probably serving your impulse buyers well.
If single-session conversions make up less than 60% of your total transactions, one of two things is happening.
- You are selling something that methodical customers are going to purchase, such as appliances or a college education.
OR
- You are not satisfying the impulse-buyers’ craving before it passes.
Google Analytics makes it easy to track impulse buyers on your site. Create an advanced segment for those visitors who purchase in one session.
When you look at your Google Analytics reports through the lens of this segment you will see how impulse buyers are impacting your business.
Impulse Buyers (blue line) are a significant portion of all revenue (orange line) for this ecommerce business.
Use this segment to answer other questions as well. In the graph below, it is clear how an email promotion to existing buyers affects the impulse buyer segment.
Email campaigns appeal to return and repeat buyers (orange line) and less so to first-time impulse buyers (blue line).
How did these visitors get to your site? Where did they land? Did they use site search or navigation to get to a product page? What items did these quick buyers purchase?
Sessions with Searches: Search is clearly not important to most impulse buyers for this site.
Answering these questions will help to develop a map of impulse behavior on your site.
With this blueprint, you’ll be able to pinpoint the areas of your site that attract impulse buyers and begin to test conversion optimization efforts that focus on them.
Reducing Risk
When customers are poised to buy, they do a risk assessment. Impulse buyers love low-risk transactions. This is the job of what we call risk reversal tactics.
A risk reversal tactic is anything that takes the risk out of a transaction. Risk reversal comes in many forms.
- Money-back guarantees
- Warranties
- Trust symbols, such as the BBB logo
- Ratings and reviews
- Free shipping offers
- Low-price guaratees
Often sites signal that they can’t be trusted without even realizing it. They hide their return policies, or make them so complex that they become meaningless. They don’t display free shipping offers in a prominent place.
Impulse buyers have a quiet voice in their head asking “Is this a good idea?”. What can you do to make sure the answer to that question is always “Yes”?
Case Study: JetPens
The vaguest, most theoretical thing you should be doing is making people feel good about giving you their personal information. Trust symbols must be obvious but subtle enough to avoid that “Trust me! Trust me! Trust me!” vibe that we get from used car salesmen, so incorporate them as naturally as possible.
Take Jetpens.com, an online store selling Japanese pens and stationery.
JetPens naturally decreases risk reversal with the trust symbols on their checkout screen.
This store is somewhat specialized, so it doesn’t have the same degree of trusted name recognition as an office supplies store like Staples or Office Depot. One way it resolves the issue is having the Google Trusted Store symbol in the lower right corner. It sticks to every page, not just the checkout screen.
This is called “borrowing trust.” Sites can borrow trust from current clients, credit card companies, and certification organizations like Google and Buyer Safe.
Increasing Order Size
While you may see free shipping as a pricing issue, it really acts to reduce risk. It reduces anxiety about spending money on a website. It is can also increase the average order of impulse buyers.
JetPens offers free shipping for orders over $25, and they make it really easy for you to hit that mark.
You know exactly how much you need to spend to get free shipping.
There’s no need for their impulse buyers to do any math.
In lieu of free shipping, it pays for your site to be up-front about what shipping will cost. This takes the surprise out of the transaction, reducing cart abandonment.
JetPens uses a Calculate Shipping button for just this purpose.
You don’t even have to leave the checkout page to fill your cart to hit the $25 mark.
Getting to the $25 mark that signals free shipping is pretty good motivation for most people to spend more money, but once someone is in the checkout screen, do you really want them to leave it? By placing a few items from account holders’ wish list at the bottom of the page, JetPens makes it easy for impulse buyers to double-down. Customers see how much more they need to spend and a great suggestion for how to get there.
If the visitor hasn’t added anything to their wish list, why not add a few inexpensive suggestions of your own?
Case Study: ModCloth
With online retail, shipping information needs to be easy to find. Free shipping isn’t the only reason people convert: they’ll also be more likely to buy if they think it will be easy to return what they bought. Someone doing lots of research on a product may be willing to hunt around for money-back guarantees, but impulse buyers need trust symbols to be much more in-their-face.
ModCloth, an online women’s clothing store, uses the top of its website to embed lots of different trust symbols.
The top of ModCloth’s website covers lots of trust-building bases.
Customer care and shipping information is at the top of every page, and when you visit the page on returns and exchanges, it’s also pretty easy to understand.
ModCloth’s return policy
Someone in a hurry to spend money may not make it all the way to this page, but she’ll know it’s there, and she’ll know that exchanges are free without even clicking. Why wouldn’t she spend her money if it’s that easy to get rid of something that didn’t work out?
Introducing Scarcity
Scarcity is a term that includes limitied supplies, limited-time engagements, exclusivity and qualifications to buy. It imparts a sense of urgency to a shopping session, and impulse buyers are just looking for excuses to act. Give your impulse buyers excuses to act by making it clear that she will be missing out if she doesn’t buy right now. Remember, impulse buyers see the shopping process as expensive and don’t want to waste their time.
Dwindling stock makes this item much more attractive.
Only one Window Shopping Chic Dress left?! What am I going to wear when I go window shopping this weekend if that dress doesn’t end up in my closet!
Many impulse buyers like feeling like they’re part of an exclusive group. It feeds their egos and justifies the elitist tone they use when they brag about how the rest of us weren’t able to wear the right window shopping dress.
Increasing the Perceived Value of an Impulse Purchase
Free gifts and bonuses add value to a perceived purchase. The gift doesn’t have to be an extraordinary offer. It provides another excuse to act, often increasing urgency.
SheIn hits that impulse buying nail on the head not once, but twice. First, a popover tells you that there’s an opportunity for a free gift.
Free gift offer from SheIn
But here’s the fun part. You have to start a wheel for a free gift. So it’s a game!
Shoppers play a game to get a free gift.
This strategy works for pretty much any kind of business, not just retail. SheIn asks you to join a mailing list order to have the chance at spinning the wheel to get a free gift, so it’s a lead-generating strategy.
The Gift of Game
Gamification is much beloved by millennials, a group renowned for their impulsive buying behavior. Quizzes and games make even the most mundane tasks so much more interesting. Let’s say I’m looking for new running shoes, so I search “What kind of shoes should I buy?”
One result is from the American Orthopaedic Foot and Ankle Society. The name alone seems pretty trustworthy. What do they have to say about what shoes I should buy?
Running shoe buying guide
Yikes. This isn’t even half of the article! Luckily, I have another option to help me find the answer to my question.
Runner’s World shoe quiz
Runner’s World magazine makes things so much easier! First I take a short quiz, then it spits out a shoe suggestion for me.
Running shoe suggestion
Runner’s World doesn’t want to sell me a shoe, but if I were on a retail site selling running shoes, how awesome would it be to be able to click “Add to Cart” from this page?
Go Mobile or Go Home
This weekend I had a movie night with some friends at my house because we urgently needed to watch the first Magic Mike movie. We didn’t want to miss any major plot points when we watched the soon-to-be-released sequel.
I rented the movie on my phone using the Google Play Movies & TV app. I tapped the purchase button, and openly lamented to my friends how easy it was to throw my money away. I mean disgustingly easy. Three taps and four bucks of my hard-earned money was gone, replaced by the privilege of having two days of access to a movie I hope my mom never finds out I watched.
First tap
2nd tap…and 3rd tap my money is gone
Voila, I made a purchase I kind-of-but-not-really regret. Your website could have that purchase!
On mobile, fewer people are doing research. They’re either buying, or they’re leaving. I wanted that Magic Mike movie, and I wanted it right then. More obstacles would have meant using a different app or just watching a different movie I already own.
Buying something from you should be as easy as renting a movie on my phone.
Park the things you know about your desktop users. Think about the needs of your mobile visitors as if they were a different animal. They’re not unicorns or dragons or anything, but you wouldn’t put a leash on a cat. They just won’t stand for it.
As an example, Victoria’s Secret realized that promo codes are to mobile users what pull cords are to blow dryers. They’re not the right tool for the job.
Victoria’s Secret doesn’t ask mobile visitors to enter a promo code.
Impulse Abandoners
Impulse buyers become impulse abandoners when your site doesn’t serve their need to take action. The moment they perceive that a transaction is low value, that the effort is too high, that a purchase is risky or that there is no urgency to take action, they become less impulsive.
It is not manipulative to feed their need for speed. Giving impulse buyers the rationale to act is exactly what they want from you. Why deny them?
Feature image licensed under Creative Commons and adapted for this post.
What I Learned About Conversion Optimization from a Dating Profile
Landing Page OptimizationBrian Massey does a live markup of an OK Cupid dating profile using the same criteria that he uses when critiquing a business landing page.
Conversion Sciences employee Megan Hoover has agreed to be the test subject, using conversion optimization techniques on her dating profile.
21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks
Keep these proven copywriting hacks in mind to make your copy convert.
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There are five key takeaways that you should consider on your landing pages.
1. Don’t talk about yourself and your company
How often do you mention your company or your product names? Add to the that number of times you say “we”, “us”, “our”, etc. Have you forgotten your reader?
Are you talking about yourself or what you have to offer the reader?
In the video, we transform the sentence “(I’m) a northern yankee in the south…” to “Northern Yankees are known for having warm hearts.” Both communicate the same thing, but one does so and states why this is a good thing.
2. Design your copy for scanners
Much of your copy is invisible to scanners.
Scanners won’t see most of your copy without help.
Help them out by using things to keep their wandering eyes on track.
Don’t over-do it, but help a scanner out.
3. Repeat the call to action in key places
If you’re asking the visitor to take action at only the top and bottom of a long page, you may be missing key conversions.
Repeat the call to action with each relevant proof point or section.
4. “Show the product” with images and use Captions
Use images to explain your value proposition but don’t leave the meaning to your reader’s imagination.
Use captions to explain the point of your images.
Use captions and in-image text to spell out what they should take from each image.
5. Avoid distractions and irrelevant links
Landing pages have one goal. Focus on that goal and resist irrelevant distractions, such as social media icons, newsletter signups and links to other parts of the site.
Distractions and irrelevant links work against your landing page.
All of this should work on your dating profile
These are solid practices when designing a landing page, and should apply to a dating profile as well. Readers are people.
Our next step is to modify Megan’s dating profile based on my suggestions and see if we get a higher conversion rate.
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Get Around Website Blind Spots with Split Testing Software [PODCAST]
CRO Tests | Multivariate | AB TestingHow many goals do you set when you’re designing a split test for your website?
We’re goal-crazy here in the lab at Conversion Sciences. It is not unusual for our tests have dozens of goals. Why is that?
We see split testing as a data collection activity, not a tool that gives us answers. It’s not like wikipedia. The split-testing software on the market to day is amazingly agile when it comes to tracking, targeting and snooping on visitor behavior. We certainly want to track transactions, revenue and leads. But we learn so much more from our tests.
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In my new Marketing Land column The Multi-Goal Magic Of Split Testing Software, I describe how we use some of these goals to find sweet spots in a website.
You can listen to the column or read it for yourself.
Mobile Web 2.0: Judgment Day Video
Conversion-Centered Design[cs-black-band]
About the Amazing Presenters
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Conversion Optimization is Like Retirement Planning, Just More Exciting
Conversion OptimizationA shocking graph; The power of compound interest; What 7% a month growth gets you.
I had to study the graphic two or three times before my brain registered what it was saying. We recently enacted a new retirement plan here at Conversion Sciences — a Safe Harbor 401(k) for you odd ducks that find this sort of thing interesting.
I thought I understood the value of saving at an early age, especially since I have acquired the wisdom that is lacking among early-agers. Yet, a little graphic buried in the heavy pages of our retirement plan manual made me wish I could jump on George Orwell’s time machine.
Any young whippersnapper who can scrounge up $2,400 a year for ten years will have more party money at retirement than I will if I put away $2,400 every year until I am 80.
It’s just not fair.
I hope this next sentence will help my retirement problems, because it will make everyone want to call Conversion Sciences.
Any business who can scrounge up $10,000 or $15,000 a month for website optimization will have far more revenue in thirty months than a business who waits ten months before they start.
Conversion optimization is like compounding interest. New increases in revenue per visit or conversion rate are built on top of last month’s wins.
An increase in conversion rate of just 7% each month will double your revenue in one year.Time is your Friend
Time is not the enemy. It is your friend. Every business is a whippersnapper in the optimization game. The tools we use have been around for less than ten years.
If this makes you feel better about waiting, then I have bad news for you. Ten months will pass faster than you think.
Like proto-retirees, there are a number of rationalizations working against you when considering conversion optimization.
Juicy Rationalizations
The rationalizations that keep us from investing for retirement are the same as those that keep us from investing in website optimization.
I have time.
If you don’t have competitors, you have time. A higher conversion rate means a lower cost of acquisition. A competitor who has optimized, will spend less in advertising and still generate more leads and sales than you. As more time passes the odds of you catching up to them are, well, look at the graph.
I don’t have the money this month.
If your son or daughter was telling you this, you’d have a long list of “discretionary” expenditures that they could cut out to find $200 a month for retirement. The same is probably true for your business.
Budget for conversion optimization. Borrow from your advertising spend (gasp). Ask your rich Grandmother for a business loan. The money is there.
I’m investing. We have tools.
This is like signing up for your company’s 401(k) but not putting any money in. It makes you feel better, but not for long.
I was recently asked what my favorite Conversion Rate Optimization tools were. I listed “The human brain” as my number one tool. “Train it. Feed it. Let it run wild,” were my substantiating thoughts. Cheeky, yes, but oh so appropos.
Get the right people in place and they’ll grab the right tools for the job. It doesn’t work the other way around.
I don’t have the traffic.
This actually increases the imperative of starting early. Low traffic sites require longer to optimize. You may have to think in terms of quarters instead of months. The rules are the same: start now. Collect the right data and get someone to help you evaluate what you’re learning.
The Fine Print
Like the stock market, conversion optimization doesn’t give you a steady increase month after month. Your efforts will see agonizing plateaus as well as some jaw-dropping wins.
But, if you invest in reputable resources with a track record of success you can expect to see unfair gains over the long term.
Now, you should ask us for a free conversion strategy session. We’ll go over your current situation and help you decide how to get started, whether we’re involved or not.
Someone once said, “The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time to plant a tree is now.”
It’s now.
Retirement image provided by ADP.
Your Own Conversion Optimization Team
Conversion OptimizationWe’re proud of our website optimization family here at Conversion Sciences and display this fact proudly on our fictitious mobile conversion vehicle, CRO-1. This represents the team we put on each of our clients when we look for more revenue on the site.
The Data Scientist is a strange duck. We’re not talking about someone who spends all their time in spreadsheets, charts and graphs. This is a person who knows how to generate good questions from data. Questions like, “What do our best buyers have in common?” and, “Why are so many people abandoning on step two?” and, “What would happen if we changed the call to action?”
A great data scientist knows where to look for answers to business-changing questions. In some cases this requires a split test to get the best bona fide answers to burning questions. Yet, a good data scientist knows how to use data to decide what NOT to test.
Your data scientist can’t be a spreadsheet socialite. They need to pull their head out of the data and communicate insights with clarity. They will direct the actions of the developer and designer. They will persuade site owners to try new things and measure results.
For this reason, we call our data scientists Conversion Scientists. Data is just one part of what they do.
Optimization Team: Someone Who can Make Testing Tools Dance
If the data scientist is responsible for what gets tested, the Developer is responsible for how it gets tested. The developer gets her god-like power from the multivariate and split testing tools available on the market today. In the hands of the right developer, these tools allow one to present a different experience to each visitor to a site.
This person is capable if dissecting web pages, laying the pieces out on the floor, and reassembling them, all in the blink of an eye. He is comfortable with the vagaries of the different browsers on the market that often drive lesser talents into crying fits of rage.
CRO Team: Someone to Walk Your Visitors Around a Page
While we admire designers with creative minds, we work with designers of a different stripe. We seek data-driven creativity in our designers. Whether we’re redesigning an entire landing page or developing product images, our designers have to be able to park their egos at the door and let the visitors guide them. These designers understand a little motion or a couple of design flourishes can have a negative impact on conversions.
Our designers job is to guide the visitors’ eyes to the important parts of a page, in the right order. They use their knowledge of color, font, white space, negative space, juxtaposition and visual cues to take a visitor by the hand and introduce him to the content on the page.
Conversion Optimization Team: Loyal and Reliable Tools
I’m fond of saying that we are in a golden age of online marketing tools. Inexpensive, feature-filled software allows us to answer almost any question we have about our visitors and our websites. Our digital laboratory is bursting with analytics tools, click-trackers, session recorders, multivariate and split-testers, simulators and more.
The best of these tools greets you at the door and is always glad to see you. And they occasionally poop on the floor. There are many companies out there with the tools, but not the team. It’s great to have a pet, but we recommend having someone train it for you.
The Supporting Cast of the Optimization Team
The rear window of CRO-1 isn’t big enough to represent all of the people we rely on when optimizing a website. A well rounded team will have ready a good copywriter, an expert in email marketing, a paid search advertising guru, a search engine optimizer, an analytics monster and more. It takes a village.
Data Reveals Shocking Truth: Men and Women Shop Differently [INFOGRAPHIC]
Ecommerce CROIf it’s backed by data, it’s not sexist. At least that’s what we tell ourselves. If the data says it’s true, it’s not stereotyping. We all know men and women shop differently. Except when they don’t. So this daring infographic, conspiring with the numbers to perpetuate some of our favorite stereotypes definitely caught our eye.
We were intrigued because you could replace the word “Men” with “Relational Shopppers” and the word “Women” with “Transactional Shoppers” and this infographic would still make sense.
We’ve written about relational versus transactional buying behaviors before. Did you tune us out? Just like a man, amiright ladies?
If we were to take the low road, we’d gleefully embrace the stereotypes presented here. However, we’ve chosen to take this opportunity to redirect our attention to two important buying behaviors that you can use to increase sales on your website.
Yes, there are real differences between men and women. Take a few deep breathes if this comes as a shock.
The infographic from eCommerce Platforms affords us the view that men and women tend to fall on either side of the transactional/relational buying divide. Women tend to be more transactional whereas men are more relational.
What’s transactional about women’s shopping preferences? According to the infographic:
And what’s relational about men’s shopping preferences?
Different buying behaviors of men versus women (women are pink and men teal)
Some statistics that sum it up best tell us that price is less important to men that it is to women. The greatest fear of a transactional shopper is paying too much and, as women are more likely to do, will shop longer to get a bargain. Relational shoppers see the shopping process as part of the cost. Like men, they will pay more to reduce shopping time.
Women’s behaviors are in pink; men’s in teal.
That stereotype that women love the experience of shopping holds up if we’re to believe that they shop based on future needs and that they are more likely than men to be shopping for other people as well as themselves. It’s the opposite for relational shoppers and men. Shopping needs to be easy and uncomplicated.
Move Past the Stereotypes
Not every woman is a transactional shopper and not every man is relational. But designing for your stereotypically transactional woman will pay off for transactional men as well. Relational shoppers will respond to relational buying cues regardless of their sex.
As I studied this infographic, I couldn’t help but think about my own (female) shopping behaviors. I mentally went through a checklist for each item that supposedly applied to me and which did not. Turns out, I’m kind of a dude.
With this realization, I was immediately taken back to my middle school and high school days when my older, cooler brother asked me to go to the mall with him. If that was the road to his approval, obviously I was going to be into shopping. New favorite hobby, right? Wrong. I hate shopping!
I went back through the entire infographic, checking off his behaviors this time. Turns out, he’s kind of a girl.
For the most part, I’m pretty girly and he’s a bro, but we don’t fulfill gender expectations when it comes to online shopping. What stuck out the most to me is that my needs are immediate and his rarely are. If you don’t have an immediate need, why else would you be looking to spend money except that you enjoy the experience?
It’s the same idea with impulse buying or being logical with your purchases. I almost always spend a lot of time mulling over whether I actually need something, and I try to think through all of the ways that buying a particular item is going to make my life easier or how often I’ll use it if I buy it.
A more subtle character trait is how we choose what we’re going to buy.
Here are a few of my brother’s most trusted review sources.
My brother’s review sources
Nope, you don’t know these people. They’re just a bunch of his friends. On the other hand, I used to be a librarian, so the reviews I trust look a little different.
My review sources
I also noticed an area where marketers could easily get my brother to spend more money.
He has never really been into social media, but he recently joined Instagram, and it felt like our family dynamic changed overnight. I now get a play-by-play of his life complete with as many hashtags as he can imagine.
Documentation of a very successful shopping trip
Since he’s still new to social media his hashtags are mostly jokes, but eventually he’s going to realize that he can use them so that they’re searchable. When that day comes, I’m sure I’ll be flooded with hashtags about Yeti coolers, Bud Lite with Lime, and whatever brand makes those flip-flops with the beer bottle opener in the sole. He will absolutely love sharing and being able to see how other people are using all of the things he loves.
Since I’m on the other end of the spectrum, I don’t have a Facebook screenshot to share about the Warby Parker at-home try-on sunglasses that just came in the mail. You just won’t find me posting about my online shopping experiences. Instead I’ll be posting cute pictures of my cat.
This is Frankie, and she’s wearing a cute hat.
What’s the moral of the story?
There is actual data to support the claim that, in general, the shopping behaviors of men and women are different. But there is also plenty of evidence that stereotypes don’t always hold up or that individuals are complex in their buying behaviors. And even that transactional versus relational shopping behaviors are situational.
When it comes to increasing conversions for your own business, being able to generalize about your buyers could be helpful, but not as helpful as using data specific to the visitors of your own website, not just the internet as a whole. What if all of your customers are just like my brother and me?
Thanks to ecommerce-platforms.com for sharing.
Close the Conversion Gap. Cater to the Impulse Purchase
Conversion OptimizationIf you are anything like me, you’ve made your fair share impulsive purchases online.
Unlike trekking into brick-and-mortar, I never get on the Internet with the intent of pulling out my credit card. Yet, inevitably, I’ve got two food delivery subscriptions and a blouse from the JCrew factory store shipping out tomorrow.
Are your visitors like me? How much of your business comes from impulsive behavior? Most importantly, are you converting your impulse visitors before their craving to buy passes?
In this post, I will show you how to quantify the number of impulse buyers on your site using Google Analytics, and I will also share strategies on how to get them to convert.
The Impulsive Buyer
We define an impulsive buyer as someone who is poised to take action. These are our spontaneous buyers, more likely to be relational than transactional. They may not be impulsive in life, but are behaving in their spontaneous mode on your site right now.
What makes an impulsive buyer impulsive?
For these visitors, leaving a browsing session without having pulled the financial trigger is like leaving the confessional before they’ve received their prescription of penitential prayers. It’s a complete waste of time and fundamentally misses the point of the exercise.
Impulse buyers aren’t the crazed shoppers that can be found assaulting each other in the Walmart on Black Friday. These buyers may be thoughtful and methodical in their approach. However, they will buy from someone today, unless no alternatives present themselves.For these buyers, you should dedicate a portion of your site to mitigating risk, building value, pointing the way to purchase, creating scarcity, and spelling out the facts.
If they don’t buy from you now, they will most likely not return.
Finding Impulse Buyers in the Data
Impulse buyers don’t announce themselves upon arrival at your website, but they leave footprints in your digital sand. To start, we’re looking for those one-hit wonders, the drive-by shoppers. Google Analytics tracks this behavior for us with the “Time to Purchase” report.
Where to find time to purchase in Google Analytics
Impluse buyers are, by definition, those visitors who purchase within their first visit. Thus, we want to know which transactions are completed on our site within a single session.
The number of sessions it takes to convert
For an ecommerce website, a single-session percentage of more than 80% indicates that quick buying behavior is contributing to your overall conversion rate. You’re probably serving your impulse buyers well.
If single-session conversions make up less than 60% of your total transactions, one of two things is happening.
OR
Google Analytics makes it easy to track impulse buyers on your site. Create an advanced segment for those visitors who purchase in one session.
When you look at your Google Analytics reports through the lens of this segment you will see how impulse buyers are impacting your business.
Impulse Buyers (blue line) are a significant portion of all revenue (orange line) for this ecommerce business.
Use this segment to answer other questions as well. In the graph below, it is clear how an email promotion to existing buyers affects the impulse buyer segment.
Email campaigns appeal to return and repeat buyers (orange line) and less so to first-time impulse buyers (blue line).
How did these visitors get to your site? Where did they land? Did they use site search or navigation to get to a product page? What items did these quick buyers purchase?
Sessions with Searches: Search is clearly not important to most impulse buyers for this site.
Answering these questions will help to develop a map of impulse behavior on your site.
With this blueprint, you’ll be able to pinpoint the areas of your site that attract impulse buyers and begin to test conversion optimization efforts that focus on them.
Reducing Risk
When customers are poised to buy, they do a risk assessment. Impulse buyers love low-risk transactions. This is the job of what we call risk reversal tactics.
A risk reversal tactic is anything that takes the risk out of a transaction. Risk reversal comes in many forms.
Often sites signal that they can’t be trusted without even realizing it. They hide their return policies, or make them so complex that they become meaningless. They don’t display free shipping offers in a prominent place.
Impulse buyers have a quiet voice in their head asking “Is this a good idea?”. What can you do to make sure the answer to that question is always “Yes”?
Case Study: JetPens
The vaguest, most theoretical thing you should be doing is making people feel good about giving you their personal information. Trust symbols must be obvious but subtle enough to avoid that “Trust me! Trust me! Trust me!” vibe that we get from used car salesmen, so incorporate them as naturally as possible.
Take Jetpens.com, an online store selling Japanese pens and stationery.
JetPens naturally decreases risk reversal with the trust symbols on their checkout screen.
This store is somewhat specialized, so it doesn’t have the same degree of trusted name recognition as an office supplies store like Staples or Office Depot. One way it resolves the issue is having the Google Trusted Store symbol in the lower right corner. It sticks to every page, not just the checkout screen.
This is called “borrowing trust.” Sites can borrow trust from current clients, credit card companies, and certification organizations like Google and Buyer Safe.
Increasing Order Size
While you may see free shipping as a pricing issue, it really acts to reduce risk. It reduces anxiety about spending money on a website. It is can also increase the average order of impulse buyers.
JetPens offers free shipping for orders over $25, and they make it really easy for you to hit that mark.
You know exactly how much you need to spend to get free shipping.
There’s no need for their impulse buyers to do any math.
In lieu of free shipping, it pays for your site to be up-front about what shipping will cost. This takes the surprise out of the transaction, reducing cart abandonment.
JetPens uses a Calculate Shipping button for just this purpose.
You don’t even have to leave the checkout page to fill your cart to hit the $25 mark.
Getting to the $25 mark that signals free shipping is pretty good motivation for most people to spend more money, but once someone is in the checkout screen, do you really want them to leave it? By placing a few items from account holders’ wish list at the bottom of the page, JetPens makes it easy for impulse buyers to double-down. Customers see how much more they need to spend and a great suggestion for how to get there.
If the visitor hasn’t added anything to their wish list, why not add a few inexpensive suggestions of your own?
Case Study: ModCloth
With online retail, shipping information needs to be easy to find. Free shipping isn’t the only reason people convert: they’ll also be more likely to buy if they think it will be easy to return what they bought. Someone doing lots of research on a product may be willing to hunt around for money-back guarantees, but impulse buyers need trust symbols to be much more in-their-face.
ModCloth, an online women’s clothing store, uses the top of its website to embed lots of different trust symbols.
The top of ModCloth’s website covers lots of trust-building bases.
Customer care and shipping information is at the top of every page, and when you visit the page on returns and exchanges, it’s also pretty easy to understand.
ModCloth’s return policy
Someone in a hurry to spend money may not make it all the way to this page, but she’ll know it’s there, and she’ll know that exchanges are free without even clicking. Why wouldn’t she spend her money if it’s that easy to get rid of something that didn’t work out?
Introducing Scarcity
Scarcity is a term that includes limitied supplies, limited-time engagements, exclusivity and qualifications to buy. It imparts a sense of urgency to a shopping session, and impulse buyers are just looking for excuses to act. Give your impulse buyers excuses to act by making it clear that she will be missing out if she doesn’t buy right now. Remember, impulse buyers see the shopping process as expensive and don’t want to waste their time.
Dwindling stock makes this item much more attractive.
Only one Window Shopping Chic Dress left?! What am I going to wear when I go window shopping this weekend if that dress doesn’t end up in my closet!
Many impulse buyers like feeling like they’re part of an exclusive group. It feeds their egos and justifies the elitist tone they use when they brag about how the rest of us weren’t able to wear the right window shopping dress.
Increasing the Perceived Value of an Impulse Purchase
Free gifts and bonuses add value to a perceived purchase. The gift doesn’t have to be an extraordinary offer. It provides another excuse to act, often increasing urgency.
SheIn hits that impulse buying nail on the head not once, but twice. First, a popover tells you that there’s an opportunity for a free gift.
Free gift offer from SheIn
But here’s the fun part. You have to start a wheel for a free gift. So it’s a game!
Shoppers play a game to get a free gift.
This strategy works for pretty much any kind of business, not just retail. SheIn asks you to join a mailing list order to have the chance at spinning the wheel to get a free gift, so it’s a lead-generating strategy.
The Gift of Game
Gamification is much beloved by millennials, a group renowned for their impulsive buying behavior. Quizzes and games make even the most mundane tasks so much more interesting. Let’s say I’m looking for new running shoes, so I search “What kind of shoes should I buy?”
One result is from the American Orthopaedic Foot and Ankle Society. The name alone seems pretty trustworthy. What do they have to say about what shoes I should buy?
Running shoe buying guide
Yikes. This isn’t even half of the article! Luckily, I have another option to help me find the answer to my question.
Runner’s World shoe quiz
Runner’s World magazine makes things so much easier! First I take a short quiz, then it spits out a shoe suggestion for me.
Running shoe suggestion
Runner’s World doesn’t want to sell me a shoe, but if I were on a retail site selling running shoes, how awesome would it be to be able to click “Add to Cart” from this page?
Go Mobile or Go Home
This weekend I had a movie night with some friends at my house because we urgently needed to watch the first Magic Mike movie. We didn’t want to miss any major plot points when we watched the soon-to-be-released sequel.
I rented the movie on my phone using the Google Play Movies & TV app. I tapped the purchase button, and openly lamented to my friends how easy it was to throw my money away. I mean disgustingly easy. Three taps and four bucks of my hard-earned money was gone, replaced by the privilege of having two days of access to a movie I hope my mom never finds out I watched.
First tap
2nd tap…and 3rd tap my money is gone
Voila, I made a purchase I kind-of-but-not-really regret. Your website could have that purchase!
On mobile, fewer people are doing research. They’re either buying, or they’re leaving. I wanted that Magic Mike movie, and I wanted it right then. More obstacles would have meant using a different app or just watching a different movie I already own.
Buying something from you should be as easy as renting a movie on my phone.
Park the things you know about your desktop users. Think about the needs of your mobile visitors as if they were a different animal. They’re not unicorns or dragons or anything, but you wouldn’t put a leash on a cat. They just won’t stand for it.
As an example, Victoria’s Secret realized that promo codes are to mobile users what pull cords are to blow dryers. They’re not the right tool for the job.
Victoria’s Secret doesn’t ask mobile visitors to enter a promo code.
Impulse Abandoners
Impulse buyers become impulse abandoners when your site doesn’t serve their need to take action. The moment they perceive that a transaction is low value, that the effort is too high, that a purchase is risky or that there is no urgency to take action, they become less impulsive.
It is not manipulative to feed their need for speed. Giving impulse buyers the rationale to act is exactly what they want from you. Why deny them?
Feature image licensed under Creative Commons and adapted for this post.
Exclusive Mobile Design Insights from Dozens of Split Tests [Webinar]
CRO Tests | Multivariate | AB TestingThe Mobile Web is still in its infancy. Today, alleged “mobile best-practices” are nothing more than successful desktop strategies scaled to a smaller screen. But people behave differently on small-screen devices than they do when they are sitting at a computer.
Conversion Sciences has begun to see what Mobile Web 2.0 will look like. Having completed dozens of mobile design split tests, key trends have begun to show themselves. Much of what we have learned flies in the face of conventional beliefs.
This is why we test.
Our approach to mobile design is controversial because, as scientists, we can’t just accept traditional wisdom at face value. We need evidence.
Joel Harvey will be reveals the results of dozens of tests we’ve completed. Insights are based on real tests. No gut instinct here. Watch Mobile 2.0: Judgment Day to learn what he has discovered. He shares:
Watch the replay on demand in its glorious entirety.
Don’t ignore your mobile traffic. It can be a real revenue generator sooner than you think.
Landing Pages: Grilling The Conversion Scientist™
Landing Page OptimizationIt was a dark room with on of those overhead lights above a lone chair. This was the room Joe Kerschbaum found to interview me at the Hero Conference in Portland Oregon.
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He proceeded to grill me about Landing Pages the special way we build them backwards. You can hear the recording here. We talk about
We learn that pretty pages often aren’t the highest converting pages. If pretty always won, I’d be president by now.
3Q DIGITAL DOWNLOAD EPISODE 13: CONVERSION OPTIMIZATION
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Image, Proof, Trust, Offer and Form: Parts of a Successful Dating Landing Page
Landing Page OptimizationThis is the next segment of our series on how a dating profile is like a business landing page. This series is written by Conversion Scientist Megan Hoover.
A few weeks ago when I decided it was time to optimize my dating life, I took the first step by creating a list of the qualities I’d like to attract with my profile. It’s an approach I also take in optimizing websites. I need to understand the qualities of an ideal business prospect, one that is likely to convert on the site.
Once I knew who I was looking for, I had to figure out how I’d find him in the sea of non-contenders. I came up with the (quite literal) Formula For Love.
P(first date) = db x (∑ti x 2∑tomg)
Here, P is the probability of a first date. The variable db is a one or zero, zero if there is a deal breaker. The variables ti and tomg are scores for traits that are important, and very important respectively.
Now that I know how I’ll qualify a lead, it’s time to get out my beakers and scales and use the chemistry of landing pages formula to create the landing page of me – aka fill out the big scary blank profile that will attract the kind of man I’d like to go out with.
The chemistry of the landing page
A blank page. It might be time to refill our wine glasses. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
The dating site I’ve chosen, OkCupid, gives me a series of open ended questions to fill out. There’s the vague “Self-Summary” section, the slightly less vague “What I’m doing with my life” section followed by a few more sections with more directed prompts: “The six things I could never do without”, “I’m really good at”, “The first thing people usually notice about me”, and “My favorite books, movies, shows, etc.”.
At the very end of the template is my offer and a way to take action, which I will discuss below.
Avoid Distractions
As a girl faced with the daunting task of creating a dating profile, the template is a huge relief. If you’ve ever been tasked with creating a landing page — or writing a blog post — you’ve probably been intimidated by the blank page, too. Your palms sweat, you get up 15 times to use the restroom and refill your coffee. So a corporate web template is the blank-page-sweaty-palm cure, right? It’s not so blank.
It may help with your dating profile, but it’s not a good idea for a business landing page. In the formula for creating a winning landing page, a template is not your friend. In fact, it’s likely to cause a massive chain reaction that will cause the whole experiment to fail.
Like a dating profile, a business landing page should be singularly focused. If you start with your corporate template, it’s already full of stuff like unrelated navigation and social media icons. In other words, it’s full of distractions that can take a visitor away from your primary purpose.
If he does, the chances of me converting my dream guy into a date go way down.
We want to start our landing page with a clean slate, a pure webpage. Then add an offer and a form.
Have a Great Offer
I’m stuck using a template on OKCupid, against my scientific knowledge. At least OkCupid’s template gives me a form with the call to action “Send a message” and a place to create an offer: the “You should message if” section.
As a marketer, it’s my job to make the offer compelling so that my dream suitors click that little blue button and make first contact.
Don’t break the promise that got your visitor to the page. In the case of a dating profile, the promise is a my main profile photo, user name, age and location. I’ll need to choose a photo that best represents my personality and will line up with what I present in my profile.
Promise: Trail loving Austin adventurer with a mountain bike.
Offer: A tour of the best mountain biking trails in Austin.
The Offer Should Match the Ad
For your business, make sure to think about where your visitors are coming from. Are they coming from an ad where the image displays a purple t-shirt? Then they should see a purple t-shirt on the landing page. Did you advertise 50% off of $1 bills, then your landing page needs to offer 50% off of $1 bills. Keep your promise.
Forms that Convert and Qualify
What about the form? I’m still using OkCupid’s template, so I don’t have any control over the form. In a perfect world I customize my form to help me pre-qualify some of my leads. Consider what information you actually need or want from you leads/purchasers. Sometimes, asking for more information can raise the barrier to entry and lower the number of leads you’ll receive.
Think carefully about what information is absolutely necessary for the next step as you create your form. And don’t be afraid to A/B test form length and content. Sometimes more is better, but sometimes less is. Start with a well thought out form with all relevant information to get your visitor to the next step and then test more or less information.
So now what? I’ve got an offer and I’ve got a form. I’m done right?
Technically, yes, I’ve got a dating profile and you’ve got a landing page, but will it convert?
Unlikely.
It’s time for us to dig out our goggles because we’re about to heat things up and add the catalysts.
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Provide Proof
Put your protective gloves on for this one, we’re about to add a dash of proof.
We have to demonstrate that what we’re saying is true. Have you sold 13 billion hamburgers? Say that. It’s even better if you say 13,982,534,121 hamburgers sold. Do you have a customer that is well known or willing to lend you a quote or their logo?
I asked a few ex-boyfriends if they’d give a reference, but thought better of actually posting those on my profile.
Since posting logos or quotes on a dating profile isn’t going to work, I have to rely heavily on copy to provide proof. The more specific I get the better proof I’ll provide. Instead of saying, “I enjoy mountain biking” I can say, “I ride my Contessa Scott every Sunday at Walnut Creek Park”.
Instead of “I enjoy volunteering with animals,” I would say “Jake the Tank is my favorite four-legged Jog-a-Dog companion.”
I can utilize profile photographs. “I love to travel” is vague, but a photo of me on top of the Great Wall of China is better proof of that enjoyment. We’ll talk more about images in a minute.
Proof makes visitors feel more comfortable taking action by overcoming their objections. It’s the logical argument that supports an emotional decision.
So what are my potential dates’ objections? Do I have anything in common with this person? If I message her will she respond? Is she looking for the same thing I am? Will I be wasting my time by messaging her? Is she even a real person?
In your business, what are your visitors’ potential objections? What would stop a visitor from filling out your form or making a purchase on your site?
In the online dating world a big red flag is a blank profile. How serious is a guy if he can’t even be bothered to write a few paragraphs about himself? The same goes for businesses. A blank page with nothing but a form isn’t enough for a visitor to take you seriously.
When writing copy for a landing page there should be just enough to overcome objections and no more. Dating profiles are no different. Data shows that shorter profiles in a conversational style get far more attention than long resume-style profiles do.
Build Trust
My most powerful trust builder will also be copy. The tone of my copy needs to be friendly and approachable, overcoming the fear of rejection, and I need to make sure I mention exactly what I’m looking for and some specific things my ideal date would have in common with me.
Some common visual ways to add trust to your business landing pages are your company logo, recognized affiliate logos – Visa/Mastercard are common in eCommerace – and certifications. Do you have a Better Business Accreditation? What about Norton antivirus?
A word of caution on trust symbols: too much can come off sketchy. Have you ever been to a site that just rams trust down your throat with pop-ups, stickies, and giant logos? It starts to feel like you’re on a used car lot and not one of the fancy “certified pre-owned” ones.
In my dating profile I’ll need to avoid ramming my niceness, smarts or creativity down anyone’s throat. If I mention in each section that “I’m super nice” by the time they get the message portion they might be wondering if I’ve just set them up to receive a really insulting reply.
OkCupid has another trust tool that often gets overlooked: the “how often do they respond” bar. If one of the biggest fears of dating is rejection, having a yellow or green bar can up the chances of a person messaging. Being too selective with replies can tear away trust that you’re serious or could send the signal that only models with Ph.Ds should apply.
OkCupid’s trust tool shares how often everyone responds to messages
Do you respond within 24 hours to all inquires? Do you have a chat or phone number customers can utilize? These types of communication standards go a long way to assure visitors that they can trust your business.
We’ve overcome most of our visitors’ major objections by building trust with copy and images, and they’re almost ready to contact us or buy from us. How can we push them over the edge?
Show the Product
The final component of a landing page is the images. Studies show that it is the most important component of a dating profile, and it’s the first thing on a dating profile.
One of the biggest fears people have in online dating is their date looking totally different in person than they do online. I can build trust by choosing recent photos without any fancy filters and by adding a date to my photos to assure nervous suitors that I probably haven’t gained 100 pounds since March of 2015, and that I look okay without the wonders of photoshop.
This is true for both online dating sites and your business landing page. OkCupid won’t even show my profile to users if I don’t have a photo.
Without an image, my dating landing page doesn’t exist.
If your product is tangible it’s pretty easy. But if you offer a service or a downloadable PDF it might be more difficult. Choose an image that allows visitors to imagine what it will be like after they’ve completed the offer.
Video is classified just an image delivered at 30 frames per second usually with audio.
The same goes for my dating profile. To attract the kind of man I want to date I need to choose images that are fun, active, and show me – no photos of that hot friend I talked about earlier. I need my potential suitors to be able to imagine meeting me in person and having a good time doing something we both love. Your photos should capture the same feelings.
A Complete Page
If you want to get a reaction from your visitors, you have to have all of the components. We started with a pure webpage (or as pure as possible) and added and created an offer and a form thinking carefully about how our potential customers/suiters arrived at this landing page. We spruced the landing page up with a bit of proof and trust and carefully added appropriate images. Voila! We’ve mixed up the perfect landing page (aka dating profile) to attract the customer we want – in my case someone to hold my lab coat.
If you’re finding my project entertaining, you should also check out Amy Webb’s Ted Talk and book.
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