The “Browse-And-Buy” Trap
Are Shopify’s Defaults Killing Your Conversion Rates?
Every successful e-commerce entrepreneur has made this mistake at some point in their career: Like Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams, they’ve built a beautiful website showcasing their product catalog, whispering to themselves “If you build it, they will come”. Excitedly, they’ve then pulled the trigger on an advertising campaign, expecting to wake up the next morning to tons of purchases, only to find…Nothing, Crickets. Perhaps they got a bunch of expensive likes on Facebook and Instagram, but few sales and an extremely high acquisition cost per new customer.
But that shouldn’t happen on Shopify, right? Shopify offers beautiful themes out of the box, right? (Yes, it does.) My catalog is perfectly organized. (It is.) I spent time and money on great product photography and copy writing. (That’s great.) My branding is gorgeous. My prices are fair. Everyone who uses my products loves them. (True, true, and true.)
So, why is my perfect Shopify Browse-And-Buy shopping experience not converting?!?!
As Shoppers, We’re All Lazy
Let’s face it, unless you’re selling something extremely compelling and exclusive, something I can find nowhere else, I’m probably just going to buy the same or a similar product on Amazon.
48% of all US e-commerce sales occur on Amazon.com. (Side note: If you haven’t integrated your Shopify Store with Amazon, let’s chat…)
Unless you’re niche and offer an incredibly compelling product discovery and curation experience on your website, very few online shoppers are going to take the time to browser through your catalog to figure out what they want to purchase. And even if they do, there’s a good chance that they are going to pop over to Amazon to see if they can just add your product to their next dental floss order.
So, did you make a mistake building out that beautiful Shopify site? No! Absolutely not.
But you do need to change your mindset around Browse-And-Buy and start using Shopify differently.
Narrow Your Funnels. Curate Choices. Upsell.
Understand: When I say that many brands have an over-reliance on Browse-And-Buy experiences, I don’t mean they have too many products on their website. What I mean is that they aren’t presenting them to potential customers in the right way.
In terms of offering a convenient Browse-And-Buy shopping experience, at this point, you’re just aren’t going to beat Amazon. So stop trying. Instead, start building narrow customer acquisition funnels that make it easier for customers to make that first purchase. For example:
- Offer a Daily Deal on your homepage.
- Test out landing pages that focus on solving a specific problem facing a customer — and explain how your product solves that problem in a unique way.
- And never again buy a Facebook or Instagram ad that just puts someone on your homepage. (That just won’t convert. You have to point them to a specific offer.)
Once you’ve narrowed your funnels, consider implementing customer quizzes and focused content that engage customers and get them invested in their shopping experience with you. It’s a psychological phenomenon: If you can get a website visitor to answer a question (even just in their own mind), they are much more likely to stick around to see the answer you provide. That’s why all those crazy “Are you a Hufflepuff?/Are you House of Stark?” pop culture quizzes perform so well on Facebook.
Remember, we shoppers are a lazy lot. We want to be told what we like.
Finally, once you’ve got a shopper in your funnel, offer them upsells. If a shopper has put in the effort to put one of your products in their shopping cart, they clearly have some interest in purchasing your product. Data suggests that upsells during the checkout experience can have a 65% conversion rate. Think about that: with the right upsell, you can increase the value of the sale 65% of the time — with zero additional marketing spend.
Next Steps
Shopify truly is a wonderful platform. There are off-the-shelf apps that you can install to make most of the adjustments listed above. With a little bit of strategy and some user experience tweaks to your site, you can embrace these funnel/curation/upsell techniques to dramatically increase your sales.
Originally published at https://humancode.io.
