Online shopper behavior: tips & tricks
- What are we talking about today?
We will discuss shopping, online shoppers, and their behavior at the invitation of our friends at Simplify.
I’ll begin with both good and bad news.
The bad news is that there is no magic recipe for attracting online shoppers to your store, regardless of your profile. But the good news is that there is a lot of information publicly available right now that you can use to attract visitors to the site.
For example, did you know that as a result of the pandemic, 20% of online shoppers have shifted to the internet? This is because the majority of them perceive the online environment to be a safe place with a low risk of infection. Another advantage is that they have time to leisurely discover and analyze the offers, promotions, and product variety available.
- Where can we find these online shoppers?
According to a Nielsen study from last year, three out of every five online purchases were made directly from social media platforms, with Facebook accounting for two out of every three. This means that Facebook is currently the most popular platform for online shopping.
What to do with this information?
On the one hand, you can either open an online shop directly on the platform, or you can consider a Facebook ad campaign that will effectively bring your Facebook buyers directly to your website.
According to the same study, one-third of online shoppers purchased directly from the Instagram platform, particularly those aged 18 to 24. If you run an online store and want to reach this demographic, you should not avoid Instagram. You should actually think about using Tik Tok, because one out of every ten Romanians purchased directly from the app.
- How can we learn more about online shoppers?
You can use the tools provided by the platforms as well as the insights from your site.
For example, one statistic that I found very interesting was that the majority of online shopping was done on weekends, from Friday to Sunday, with the most intense activity occurring on Saturday evening between 18:00 and 22:00.
So, place your ads online when your target audience is online, and make use of all of this data.
- Laptop or smartphone?
Definitely a mobile-friendly version of the site, because smartphones are primarily used for online shopping.
Because 80 percent of online shopping is done on a smartphone, the purchase process must be simple and quick, from the moment you select the product to when the order is completed. As a result, many people shop while they are on the go.
Examine your online store to see how complicated the purchase process is, how user-friendly the mobile version is, and how many steps it takes someone who sees a product of yours on Facebook or Instagram to buy it and add it to their shopping cart.
If your answers to these questions do not meet the requirements, reconsider your business plan because a well-designed business includes these costs.
- Short recap?
To sum up:
- Define your target audience;
- Learn about it and its online behavior;
- Use the tools you’ve discovered to learn even more about their online behavior;
- Be present where your audience is;
- Test, measure, analyze, and good luck.