For aspirants in the eCommerce segment who wish to make it big, realize something pretty fast! Merely cataloguing your products online with intelligent search capabilities are no longer going to bring you customers.
Today, customers are looking for a more transparent and compelling shopping experience. They expect you to show comparisons between two similarly priced products than try to push an expensive one. Or, as in normal shopping behaviour, peer reviews are impactful, like as in “customers who bought this also looked at or bought.” Buying behaviour is always influenced by peer purchasing behaviour. Promotional attributes like “This X product comes at an X price with X years of warranty, which is valid till X”, also encourage buying.
Remember, even when he/she has made one purchase, the e-tailer must persist in trying to get the customer to buy more, either through upselling or cross-selling. The selling tactic is in increasing his needs with related searches that give him/her a more wholesome buying experience rather than make him feel “cognitive dissonance” or post purchase anxiety on buying only a part. To cite an example, for somebody buying a wedding dress is not going to stop at that particular juncture. They are definitely going to browse around for matching shoes, jewellery, watches etc. This presented as a set rather than a single buy, ensues in a win-win situation for both the buyer and the seller. More than selling, cross-functional areas like up-selling and cross-selling are going to influence online purchase because for somebody who visits a product portfolio with a one-dimensional mindset, companies must be able to give them that much extra by empathizing with them.
Analytics tools help in assessing the buys that have happened and the trends associated with the purchases. For example, for somebody buying diapers for his/her child, there are always going to be additional purchases related to infant care. These trends must be analyzed and the next time somebody clicks on a bag of diapers in an online catalogue, he must get a popup with related products. These related products are based on what other customers have purchased and is quite useful to a prospective buyer.
In today’s advanced data analysis techniques and the advent of big data scenario, the competitive edge is sustained by not refining one’s own selling position, but by assimilating and responding to the buying trends of customers, because they are highly knowledgeable and their loyalty depends on who sells, cross sells or up sells at a distinguished level.
Any customer bereft of attention is going to go to the next vendor. After all, who doesn’t love being pampered with attention and that something extra!
Also Read: how data analytics can help you in up-selling and cross-selling