Ecommerce: Sales Strategies Powered by Behavioral Science
Estimated reading time: 9 Min
In ecommerce, sales strategies are as diverse as the brands themselves. You can find all kinds of offers and activities for customer acquisition, with Behavioral Science serving as an important tool for achieving conversion. Do you know what it is and how you can apply it in your ecommerce business? Don't miss this article!
Have you ever asked yourself: What factors influence your customers' purchase decisions? Have you taken into account aspects such as their emotions, frustrations, or aspirations within your sales strategies? Doing so will allow you to focus your commercial actions more efficiently. Let's see how, by entering the fascinating world of Behavioral Science.
Why do we buy? Consider it within your sales strategies
Human beings respond rationally or emotionally to certain stimuli in our environment, which influences the decisions we make and how we act—consider this aspect within your sales tactics. For example, how do you react when you encounter a traffic light whose color tells you to stop? You surely stop immediately; it is your rational response to a traffic signal that, for your safety and that of others, you know you must obey.
Something similar happens with the emotional response—those sensations we develop in response to certain stimuli. What does seeing or interacting with a baby or a puppy produce in you? Tenderness, joy, love?
As we can see, the rational or emotional response determines our actions. Applying this to the world of ecommerce translates into those sales strategies that encourage certain behaviors in users, such as making a purchase or developing affinity for the brand—or at least increasing the chances that these actions will occur.
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Ecommerce sales strategy No. 1: Communicate to sell
The way a message is presented, what it conveys, and its visual appearance (such as how customers see the product on your ecommerce site or in your advertising) are stimuli that generate emotional or rational responses. When seeing your product: Does the customer feel interest, like it, and perceive it as relief from their frustration or need (emotional)? Do they consider it the best option based on its features, price, benefits, and purchase guarantees (rational)?
How do your customers react to brand communication or a sales strategy? Every click or conversion is a response to the stimulus you are giving them—behaviors that must be studied and measured to determine their impact and improve results.
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The process described in Behavioral Science is summarized in the following chart:
Where:
· The stimulus refers to anything that generates a behavior, such as an ad or a call to action.
· The response refers to the behavior generated by the stimulus, such as responding to the call to action or opening the ad.
· The consequence is what is achieved after the behavior, such as accessing an offer or receiving more information.
Based on the above, consider Behavioral Science in your online sales strategies. Before launching each of your campaigns, ask yourself:
· What emotions does it generate in your current and future customers?
· Does it fulfill or help solve a user need?
· Does it present your product as a simple and cost-efficient alternative?
· Do you offer enough guarantees to the customer about their purchase?
· Do you take into account testimonials or positive recommendations for your product?
Many of our purchase decisions are conditioned by the factors above. This is where you should ask yourself: Are you communicating to sell, or are you simply posting?
Ecommerce sales strategy No. 2: Win them over with content
Have you heard of the conversion funnel? It is a sales strategy used in digital marketing, where through content you guide a prospective customer through the different stages of the funnel, from capturing their interest to achieving conversion and retention. Behavioral Science also plays a role in this process—let's see how.
Sales strategies focused on content marketing are a powerful tool for ecommerce. They take into account the user's needs and emotions to capture their attention and introduce them to our brand in a non-commercial way—as creators of valuable content that contributes, educates, and is useful to the reader, becoming valuable information that helps grow the customer base and strengthen positive brand perception.
To deploy this sales strategy, you must first have a clear picture of your customer profiles or buyer personas—in other words, know who you are talking to and how you will reach them through your content. After that, you must identify what stage of the funnel the prospect or lead is in and guide them through the purchase process by generating content for each phase.
Content for each stage of the funnel
Learning and problem recognition. During these first two stages, offer content so interesting that it captures their attention and addresses their frustration or need. The user is looking for solutions to problems or consulting information (at this stage, many people discover needs they didn't know they had). Provide the valuable content they want to find to resolve their issue and subtly present your product as a solution—invite them to learn more.
Solution consideration. At this stage, the user is more aware of the problem and the possible solutions you have shared in the content. This is where they can become a lead; if the content was valuable, they will likely be willing to leave their details to keep receiving related information that interests them.
Take advantage of their email to send them supporting material on the topic such as e-books, tutorials, or infographics, invite them to webinars or podcasts. Continue nurturing the lead through valuable content they will appreciate and help them learn much more about the solutions your product offers.
Purchase decision. The customer is already considering the purchase—it is time to highlight more than ever your product's differentiators, its benefits, how it has helped other users solve their needs, success stories, etc.—compelling content that will increase the chances of conversion.
If you have done it well, after going through the different stages of the funnel, where they had positive emotional and rational responses to the content, you will surely be top of mind—you will be achieving one of the goals of your online sales strategy.
Let's look at an example
Still have questions about the previous sales strategy? Let's put it into practice with a simple example. In this case, we'll take as a basis a customer profile from an ecommerce store that sells pet products such as food, toys, clothing, and more:
María is a young professional who lives in an apartment in the capital with her 2 cats. She enjoys reading and spending her free time with her pets; when she can, she goes out with friends. Every day she commutes to work where she serves as an assistant in the risk prevention department—she leaves home in the morning and returns at night.
While she is not at home, the cats exhibit different behaviors: they scratch the sofa, carpet, or curtains, knock things to the floor, and break objects—which has become a real concern for María. Although she loves her pets, the damage they cause generates stress, anxiety, and additional expenses.
Searching the internet for a possible solution, she finds an article on your ecommerce blog called: "How to prevent your cats from wreaking havoc at home." At that moment, you have already captured her attention—you generated curiosity, joy, and excitement by publishing exactly what she was looking for to solve her problem.
When she enters the content, she finds statistics about these behaviors in cats, what causes them, and what actions can be implemented to prevent them—including buying certain toys, sharing play spaces for a set amount of time, setting up a home gym for pets, and other proven alternatives with a high probability of solving María's need.
After providing this valuable information, you can invite her to leave her details to keep receiving content related to cat care and introduce her to products from your ecommerce store that can help in this case.
At this stage of the process, you already have María's information—you discovered she is a qualified lead and is considering your product as a solution to her problem. She felt identified, knows you understand her need and offer solutions, and feels a certain affinity toward the brand (emotional response). Now, María is evaluating how much your product can help her, how beneficial and safe it will be for her pets, and how affordable it is for her budget (rational response).
It's time to continue the lead nurturing process and encourage the purchase decision! Use testimonials from people who had the same problem as María and highlight how they solved it thanks to your product. Send her tutorials showing how easy it is to use, introduce different options for her budget, share content backed by a professional showing the benefits of toys for cats' physical and emotional health, etc.—these actions will increase the chances of conversion.
Every day, users pay less attention to ads and more to what brands offer them; win them over through content and attract them to your ecommerce store—aim to earn a prominent place in their mind and preference.
Ecommerce sales strategy No. 3: Behavioral Design
Within the fascinating world of Behavioral Science, there is a branch called Behavioral Design, focused on how certain aspects of the structure and design of your ecommerce site, your ads, or communications can generate higher response levels in users to drive conversion.
Aspects such as images, content layout, spacing, presentation of titles or call-to-action buttons, among others, influence audience response levels. Small changes can generate significant results—on this topic, we spoke with Miguel Verduzco, an expert in this field, who shared some simple tips you can implement within your sales strategies.
Listen to the full interview with Miguel by clicking here
* Run small tests on your ecommerce site by placing text in different ways, changing the color of CTAs or prices; analyze and measure how this impacts your conversion rate.
* In your email marketing templates, test different designs, images, colors, and subject lines; measure which ones receive the best reception from users, recording the best open and click-through rates.
* Place at the beginning of each blog article the time it will take the user to read it—people tend to avoid activities whose perceived effort is very high. If they enter your blog and don't know how long it will take to read, they may think it is too long and not have the time or interest to do so. It has been proven that displaying the reading time improves consumption and dwell time on this content.
* Run a diagnosis of the flow your users follow until purchase and identify whether there are barriers during the process. If you found logistical friction—in other words, steps that make the procedure more difficult or longer—find a way to remove them or minimize the number of clicks as much as possible.
If the barriers found are cognitive—in other words, it is not clear how to complete the purchase process or consume the content—run tests with different people, ask them to try to buy product X on your ecommerce site or interact with your site; observe how easy it is for them or which steps need to be restructured, where they click, what catches their attention, what does not make a good impression, etc. This will allow you to make improvements to the store to make it more attractive and usable. The user should be able to buy or find what they are looking for quickly and easily.
* Include on each product page how many people have purchased it—by social norm, we feel more interest in buying something that other users have already acquired.
* Research Behavioral Design, run tests, and discover how you can improve your ecommerce site and other customer-facing communications; consider guidance from an expert.
Remember that all elements found in an online store, ad, or communication should help the user make decisions quickly and intuitively, guiding them through their decision-making and action process—this factor cannot be ignored within your online sales strategies.
You now know how Behavioral Science is an important tool that can help you achieve conversion. Now, after generating the sale, you must consider preparation and distribution. If you are looking for a partner to help you improve your delivery process, strengthen your fulfillment, and increase customer satisfaction, don't hesitate to contact us—we are the best fulfillment center for ecommerce in Mexico and Colombia; just click here.
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