The Buying Experience

This Easter weekend, like any other, many of us trudged down the local high street. We navigated smoothly as we visited our favourite shops who make it easy to buy whatever it is we are looking for. Whether the item is in the ‘Sales’ or not we rarely care if we are intent on securing that must have purchase.

Even when we visit a town we have never visited before we will quickly adapt, getting to where we want (maybe asking a local someone who knows), review what we want possibly via a helpful shop assistant and start buying.

Online should be even easier, using our trusted browser to just tap in what we want, and a plethora of related websites just pop up as if by magic.  Most businesses have some understanding of what it takes to get noticed online.  And if you have bothered to create a website then you have probably invested a whole load of time, energy and a fair bit of money to get yourself noticed, capturing your audience when they drop into your virtual shop front.  Right?

Why do I not get more sales converting?

‘Why do I not get more sales converting?’ is a common question amongst business owners that have good web traffic.  We spend additional time and money on re-marketing (having set those important pixels such as Facebook into their site, but wonder why we have a low sales conversion level.

Well my exploits this weekend might just have uncovered the answer for some of you. 

You see most businesses focus so much on driving traffic, pushing their message to their captured audience and obsessing how it is presented (you know the thing I mean, like ‘What colour ‘Buy Now’ button should I have?’) that they forget the most important part of the customer experience – being the customer journey.

The Customer Journey

So, how do you get them to checkout?

This is a critical question that all business owners should be asking themselves.

Back to my weekend of shopping, I dropped on to a site knowing exactly what I wanted but I gave up! Why?

Because I needed to register so much information, then download a voucher to get a discount that made it marginally cheaper, before redeeming the same ………. ‘ZZZZZZZZZ’.

It was just too much hassle for something I could get elsewhere, even if it did cost marginally more. The outcome was I did go elsewhere, to a reliable favourite Amazon.  A few clicks later I had made my purchase.

KISS – Keep it simple stupid!

I doubt I shall ever forget this early lesson in my career from a knowledgeable business mentor.  It was said with a grin, but the message was straight forward.  That’s why the acronym KISS is always something I keep in mind.

All your marketing and sales is a waste of time if the buying process is too complicated or time consuming.
Work through the customer journey carefully and make it obvious and easy to buy from you, and even easier to buy again from you (aka Amazon).