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5 Tips to convert browsing customers to buying customers

In the age of social media, browsing has become everyone's favourite pastime. As we all understand, social media is not only a platform for everyone to share their views and lives but also an excellent place to conduct business. Research suggests that nearly half the world is interacting on social media, and each person nearly spends around 2 hours in a single day on browsing. This proves that browsing each day has become a significant activity for nearly half the world. Therefore, social media has become one of the greatest sources to advertise and market a business. If placed strategically, your marketing efforts will convert browsing customers into buying customers. Apart from social media strategy, it is also required to have an easy-to-use and interactive website, which can hold your customer's attention for longer than usual. However, there are many areas where browsing customers might experience a roadblock, or get distracted due to many options. Hence, as business owners, it is our job to make sure that our customers not only interact with our e-commerce website but also make successful purchases. Let us find out how we can convert browsing customers to buying customers.

  1. Reviews: The one thing which makes a customer stop and re-consider. Any customer who is serious about buying a product will check out the reviews posted about that product. Reviews give a customer a sense of validation of the product and satisfaction with the quality of the product. Principally, a browsing customer who might be interacting with your website for the first will require some assurance on the product and quality. Therefore, it is imperative that reviews are placed in a manner that will draw eyeballs to it when a browser is looking at the product. Your product's best advertisements are honest reviews posted by your customers.
  1. Play on impulse: Browsers are not usually looking to make a purchase while browsing, they are usually researching or enjoying their leisure time. However, impulse purchase is an existing concept. Why does an impulse purchase take place? It meets the requirements of your customer immediately i.e.,
  1. Product
  2. Features
  3. Shipping date
  4. Reasonably priced
  5. Uniqueness

The thumb rule of impulse is ease. If your product meets all your customer's requirements with ease and convenience, your impulse purchase will increase. If your page can make all these things available on a single page in a simple manner, you can encourage impulse purchases on your website too. For eg., a big e-commerce website has been getting a lot of business by people buying on impulse. Research suggests that 80% of the younger crowd has been believed to make their purchases on this e-commerce platform impulsively. Therefore, playing on your customers' impulse is the quickest way to convert browsing customers into buying customers. If you have a Shopify e-commerce website selling services, you can draw a person's impulse by making your customer commit to your services. You can gather many applications which might be suitable to simplify your website for your customers. For eg., if you sell maintenance or salon services, you can prompt your customer to book an appointment for their required service. In this manner, you get your cutsomer's contact information and a history what their requirement really is. Therefore, even if your customer decides to bail on your appointment, you get your customer's contact information to some direct marketing. Appointo, an automated appointment scheduling software lets you book appointments via your websites. This application also helps with re-scheduling, sending reminders, etc. Your customers can easily re-schedule or cancel their appointments with a simple click of a button. You can also send reminders for their impending appointments, in order to enable a customer to show up for their appointment.

3. Convenient checkout: Your website must have 2 attributes, i.e., aesthetics and ease of use. If a browsing customer has selected a product for them to purchase, your website must be convenient enough which lets your customer checkout easily. This involves avoiding unimportant details of your customers, enabling automatic fill-in options, no requirement for your customer to sign in or sign up while making a purchase, etc. These will be a few things that will enhance your customer's experience and more importantly, not deter them to make a purchase. These are tiny things that might deter a customer from making a purchase from your website.

4. Easy pricing: Price is a formidable element while purchasing for a customer. Therefore, it is imperative that pricing is easy to understand. For eg., your price must include taxes and shipping costs, so that your customer is not surprised while checking out. No one likes to pay more than they had anticipated. Small welcome offers or welcome gifts on a customer's first purchase can enhance your customer's experience. Another manner of pricing can be provided by making a bunch of some products that go hand in hand. For eg., if you have an e-commerce clothing store or a utility store, you can bunch the pricing of an entire workwear ensemble or bunch pricing of all your cleaning products can enable your customers to buy more of your merchandise. Also, a legitimate receipt of your customer's purchase after their payments, also restores faith in your company, if your customer is hearing about you for the first time.

5. Reach your customers: The most basic feature that you can include in your website is making it laptop, tablet, and mobile-savvy. Research suggests that maximum browsing takes place from a smartphone than on computers or laptops. In fact, it is much easier to sell your merchandise on phones, as you can be re-directed to other apps for communications or payment gateways. It is imperative that you reach your customers on their phones and tablets. Another way of reaching your customers is via social media. Many social media platforms provide a shopping feature on their pages. In this manner, any customer of yours who visits your page can make a purchase if they see what they like. Shopping via social media has become very popular and convenient for customers, and therefore maintaining a presence on these platforms will at least get you traffic if not a business.

Tarang Agarwal

Designer by degree and developer by profession, a front end wizard who likes to keep things neat and clean for the clients