By every indicator available, ecommerce is continuing to grow at an insane speed. Ecommerce is already totaling up to 5% of overall commerce, and there’s astronomical growth still to come.
But some the simplest elements of ecommerce stink so much.
It is 2018—why are there still light gray below-the-fold add to cart buttons?
There is an ocean of opportunities when it comes to elevating ecommerce. Today’s article focuses on something that is difficult to solve for, yet immensely profitable: Inserting a sense of urgency into the shopping process.
It doesn’t mean: BUY IT NOW OR ELSE!
It means developing and inserting a subtle collection of gentle nudges that can help increase the conversion rate by a statistically significant amount.
Nudges are based on a deep understanding of user experience. They solve for the user first, and all of the hard work is done by the company (you!).
In the long run that’ll also create a positive revenue outcome for you. Win-Win.
Below is a collection of nudges, influenced by research and lots of data.
I’ll include one example for each. There’s much more in the full article.
1. In-stock status.
How many hotel rooms, cameras, seats in a theater, are left?
Only 15 left in stock. Have that right under the price.
Or, 1 in-stock in the store next to your office.
Convert the inventory status into a conversion boosting nudge.
2. Life of current price.
Dynamic pricing is everywhere. Why not share that information with the shopper?
This price is guaranteed for the next 18 hours.
This price reflects the highest discount in the past 24 weeks.
Limited-time offer applied to the price you see.
Seasonal promotion! Expires Friday.
Reflects special pricing for our highest-tier Frequent Flyers.
Price has reduced by 14% since your last visit.
You have an entire staff of people spending so much time on finding the perfect price to charge an individual. Why not convert that immense hard work into a nudge that creates a sense of urgency?
3. Direct competitor comparisons.
38% cheaper than Nordstrom.
Sometimes, by using one of the multitude of price aggregators, you can have an understanding of where your pricing is at an item level. Where the match is in your favor, why not use that as a nudge?
Costco Special: Get an extra year of warranty!
Our average delivery times to California are 50% faster than Amazon.
Save $150 on installation compared to Best Buy!
Our return rates are 40% lower than Wayfair.
Here’s just one example from SugarCRM:
4. Delivery times based on geo/IP/mobile phone location.
Amazon does this really well.
Each item’s estimated delivery time to you depends on the closest warehouse to your home address. So that bag I wanted might be delivered to me the next day, but it would take two days to get to Carissa in Alabama.
Amazon shows this best delivery time for me right next to the price.
Another dimension of the delivery time nudge is order in the next 4 hours and get it tomorrow with fast shipping!
In our instant gratification culture, who can resist that?
5. Social cues to the rescue.
The last couple of months have not been great for social networks. I’m sure something beneficial will come to the entire digital ecosystem from all this.
A minority might believe that the whole social media thing is going to die. It is not. Community and sharing are core to who we are as humans. It is not going to change. (And, you still need a place for guilty pleasures: indulging in the latest Kardashian-West clan developments!)
Stretch your imagination and it is not hard to come up with some super-clever nudges that incorporate aggregate information that is public.
People have shared this blouse 18 times in the last hour on Instagram.
80 people in California have booked this destination in the last 30 days.
1,846 Pins for this closet on Pinterest.
Our most tweeted style of underwear!
800 plusses on Google+.
Ok, so maybe not Google+. But you get the idea.
Here’s a simple example of aggregated social cue, from ModCloth. Every product has a little heart sign, visitors to the site vote their love which helps me make more confident decisions…
Naked Wines has a lovely widget next to each of their wines that shows the would buy again rate…
And, they show you historical sales and would buy it again rates.
6. Personalization. Yes, from 1995!
Do you remember what I did during the last visit to your website?
Did you use that to change the site’s home page?
Does your machine learning-powered ecommerce platform leverage the lifetime of my site experience, complaints, purchases, etc., to anticipate my activity?
Personalization is the ultimate nudge—to create ecommerce-related urgency and to bring your brand closer to the customer over the lifetime of their experience with you.
That’s because personalization means truly caring. Personalization requires a huge investment in understanding. Personalization is translating that individual human-level understanding into anticipation. Personalization means helping. And when you do it right, personalization means you pimp with relevance—the best kind.
The desire to personalize across the complete human experiences kicks off the processes that fundamentally alter how you treat every human. The reason it works, when done right, is that deep down, we want people to care about us. And yes, we will end up doing more business with people who show that they care for us. Really care. The ultimate nudge.
Conclusion
You can pray that your conversion rates increase.
Alternatively, you can take advantage of the data you have access to, the permissions your users have given you, and the competitive advantages you’ve worked so hard to create and use them to create nudges that solve for delivering delight to your customers and more revenue to your company.
Creating A Sense Of Urgency For Higher Conversions Rates
PS. I can’t show a history of prices that would make sense (my history of prices: $0.00, $0.00, $0.00) so instead, I’ll nudge you socially.
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