When someone lands on your website, you need to immediately join the conversation that’s already going on in their heads. This is why it’s essential to understand your user’s journey before they arrived at your website. It is also important to know how to second guess visitors off buying.
What prompted them to start searching for your type of product?
How did they find your site?
What other sites did they look at first? Was it a blog, a Facebook post, a review, or a competitor site?
To get a good understanding of the answers to these questions, you need to have a good grip on your traffic sources by knowing your way around Google Analytics but also be using a tool like Hotjar. Hotjar lets you trigger polls and also sends visitors to surveys so you can uncover their user journey and thought processes.
On top of that, to keep your visitors from exiting your site, you must answer these questions that shoppers will subconsciously be asking themselves:
- What are you offering?
- Why do I want that?
- And why should I buy it from you?
- Why should I do it now?
- What’s going to happen once I buy?
So, let’s tackle each in turn…
What are you offering?
If you’re driving Facebook traffic or any other kind of paid media to your Shopify store, then I hope to God that you’re sending your visitors directly to your product pages or a dedicated funnel. If you’re not, and doing something ridiculous like sending visitors to your homepage, then you’re likely hemorrhaging cash.
So, assuming you are sending visitors straight to a product/funnel page that directly relates to the ad they clicked on, then they’ll already have a sense of what you’re offering. In this case, visitors will likely make their next judgment based on your offer, which usually boils down to “How much does it cost?”
And if the price isn’t in the ballpark of what they were expecting or think is reasonable, you’ll need to take measures to overcome their price objections.
But your offer isn’t just your price, it’s the product quality, the returns policy, the guarantee, and it’s how long it will take to ship. You need to make sure all these things are covered off so shoppers can make a purchase decision based on more than just the price.
Why do I want that?
This is where writing good copy and using good quality images/video comes into play. You need to amp up the desire for your product.
Here’s the thing, your copy needs to tap into the emotional desires of your visitors. What will your product do for them? Will it solve the problem they have?
Will it save them time, make them smarter, more liked, more attractive, more respected, happier?
The secret is in connecting to the dominant emotions of your audience…
- Joy
- Peace of mind
- Excitement, adventure
- Safety, release from fear
- Release from frustration
- Release from stress and anger
- Fulfillment
- Romance
- Self-determination
Since shoppers can’t touch or pick up and feel your products before they buy, the next best thing is a good product video.
Your product images should be fast-loading and zoomable. (If you haven’t optimized your store’s images yet, the Shoptimized™ SpeedBoost Ninja app has an image optimization tool built-in.)
Not only that but if your images include people, make sure they’re not cheesy stock models. The people in them should mirror your target audience as closely as possible.
Finally, your images should show your product from all angles and also demonstrate them in use.
Why should I buy it from you?
Once you’ve got someone interested in buying a product from your Shopify store, you must then answer the question of “why should I buy it from you?”
After all, Amazon is just a couple of clicks away, so you need to make damn sure, you have a convincing reason to stop users from going to where they likely feel familiar and safe.
To win the sale you must have a solid value proposition and ideally, a compelling tagline too. You also need to tell your buyer when they can expect to receive the item.
On top of that, you need to demonstrate the others have bought from you recently and had a good experience with a plethora of customer reviews.
Finally, you need to overcome any anxieties around the safety of their card details and personal information.
Why should I do it now?
It’s no secret that urgency and scarcity are two of the topmost influential factors when it comes to conversion rate optimization.
If someone is on the fence about whether to buy, injecting some urgency and/or scarcity into the equation will often skyrocket your response.
If you can combine urgency and scarcity, this is when you can really crank your conversions up a notch or two:
What’s going to happen once I buy?
Part of the persuasion equation to get the sale is also managing expectations about delivery and also returns.
I mentioned earlier about predicting when the customer will receive the item. But they’ll also have questions about returns…
“If I want to return the item(s), can I get a refund without any hassle?”
Another question might be, “Can I speak to a real person if I need to?”
Conclusion
To win the sale, you must answer all the possible questions you can think of (and those you gathered from visitor intelligence), and then still provide visitors with an easy means to ask others, i.e. via Live Chat.
