A shopper comes to your site with a specific product in mind. They’re not there to browse or pass time scrolling. They’re highly motivated to make a purchase in minimal time and with minimal effort. The dream customer, right? Only if they can find what they’re looking for. Retailers need to eliminate common product discovery problems and optimize online stores for purchase-ready customers.
Why You Need to Focus on Purchase-Ready Customers
Many retailers place their focus on converting browsing shoppers and new site visitors. Why would anyone put time and effort into customers that are already prepared to buy? The problem is, by neglecting this shopper’s journey, you lose out on low-hanging fruit.
Highly motivated shoppers won’t hang around to comb through a site if they can’t find what they’re looking for. Research shows they bounce to a competitor that offers the instant gratification they seek:
- Nearly three-quarters of consumers cite difficulty in finding a wanted product as the reason they abandon an ecommerce site.
- 54% of consumers stopped purchasing products from a website because choosing the right product was too difficult.
- 42% of shoppers abandoned a planned purchase because of too many choices.
So, how do you drive down bounce rates and get the right product in front of the right shopper at the right time?
4 Key Components of a Purchase-Ready Shopper Journey
Focus on these four aspects of the shopper experience to cater to customers who are on the hunt for a specific result.
1. Search
Shoppers who search are 5-10x more likely to convert. Why? Because purchase-ready customers use the search bar to get straight to the product. Does your search experience support this buyer? Keep in mind that they are more likely to enter highly-specific, long-tail search queries such as: “Red Nike running shoe size 10,” rather than generic terms like “shoes.”
If your site responds to these high-intent queries with irrelevant results or “no results found,” the shopper will bounce. Invest in an intelligent site search solution that handles a variety of search queries to overcome this problem and continually review your search reports to identify opportunities for improvement.
2. Navigation
If site search is like asking a store assistant to take you directly to a product, navigation is like the helpful aisle signage that helps locate the product yourself. A clear site menu structure is vital to get purchase-ready shoppers to the correct category. From there, relevant filters and sort options help customers narrow their search. How many steps does it take to go from your homepage to a small selection of results of a specific brand, style, and size? Sites vary, but the universal rule is the fewer the clicks, the better. Check out these tips on how to optimize your navigation filters for more.
3. Personalization and Recommendations
Purchase-ready shoppers come to your site to buy a particular product – but that doesn’t mean you can’t help them find something they didn’t know they needed. When a shopper lands on the product page of choice, recommend complementary items they might also add to their basket. Hyper-relevant cross selling is an excellent way to boost cart value for a customer that plans to purchase a single product. For repeat customers, leverage order history to predict products they’re looking for on their next visit. Guide them straight to the results they’re looking for with recommendations right from the homepage.
4. Don’t Forget the Checkout
Even if a shopper quickly locates and successfully adds their item to their cart, your job isn’t done yet. Cart abandonment rates show that an eye-watering number of customers make it to the point of near-conversion, only to bounce at the last minute. Don’t overlook the importance of an easy checkout experience to secure a sale at this crucial moment. Avoid cumbersome forms with unnecessary fields, restrictive payment methods, or clunky multi-page processes. Purchase-ready shoppers typically don’t have the time or patience for inconvenient carts. Find more tips here on ecommerce checkout design.
Help Shoppers Find What They Want for Effortless Conversions
If a customer is ready and willing to buy from your ecommerce site, the very least you can do is provide a seamless shopping experience. While purchase-ready shoppers have the potential for lightning-fast conversions, they can also become easily frustrated if they don’t quickly find the product they’re looking for. Ensure site search, navigation, personalization, recommendations, and checkout are appropriately set up to support these shoppers, and you’ll enjoy higher conversion rates, happier customers, and more repeat buyers.
