Impact of Autonomous Decision-Making Power on Conversion
Empowering consumers is the only way to grow!
Growth and conversion is a multi-faceted process that involves optimizing all aspects of an online business. With a more considerable emphasis on UX, web optimization, and consumer behaviour; online stores often forget to consider the impact of consumers’ internal decision-making process on conversion.
As we continue to digitize every aspect of our lives, consumers are concerned with privacy and freedom of choice. Amidst the most personalized search results and customized product listings, online users fear being told what to do, when to do it, and for how long.
Personalized searches and customization still play a vital role in the success of a business. Still, it is time to take a closer look at offering autonomy to consumers as a powerful tool for conversion.
What is autonomy for consumers?
Autonomy in consumer psychology lies in empowering the customers, where they hold the reins and the decision to shop entirely depends on their preference.
Imagine being a consumer during the BFCM sale. Every store has discounts, coupons, cashback, rewards, and countless other offers. All the stores have deployed the most efficient conversion strategy and visitors are seeing these offers everywhere. How likely are you, as a consumer, to make a purchase during this period when every store is offering the same perks?
Customers are often overwhelmed with similar sales in all the stores. They are hesitant to follow through with their purchase during the peak sale period because they don’t feel like they are really getting a deal. A confused consumer won’t be interested in buying a gold coin for the price of a carrot.
But does this mean you wouldn’t run a sale in your store while everyone else is offering perks to shop on theirs? Absolutely not! As a store owner, leverage this period to offer what everyone else isn't: autonomous decision-making power, one of the most important elements involved in converting visitors into customers.
After employing several conversion strategies in our own marketing plan, endless research on customer acquisition, and creating numerous case studies with some of our top customers, we have found that, in 2022, consumers respond to stores that offer autonomy in the constantly monitored and manipulative online world.
As a B2B business, we know that it’s not possible to offer complete autonomy to our visitors if we want to run a successful store. We found that autonomy does not depend on the business type but other guiding elements, such as your personal goals, profit requirement, vision for your business, etc.
How visitors can make autonomous purchase decisions in your store?
Turning every visitor into a repeat customer is the ultimate goal of any business. However, in the process of creating the best experiences for their customers, store owners often forget to look at their business from a customer’s point of view. Providing autonomous decision-making power to consumers bridges the gap between the goals of the business and the needs of the consumer while ensuring that the customers are happy and the businesses are profitable.
The volume of physical shopping might have reduced in the last few years, but it will never go extinct because of the amount of control it offers each visitor. Consumers feel powerful when they have control over the most important elements of shopping. We have narrowed it down to three elements: Product, Price, and Place.
1. Product Knowledge
When shopping online, the major apprehension for visitors is not knowing whether they will receive the same product that they are seeing online. This builds uncertainty about the product and creates the illusion of having no power over the decision or the outcome. Shopping in a physical store is an immersive experience. Offering a multi-sensory experience is a great way to hand over the decision-making power to consumers. Tools such as video pop-ups, Live stream video interactions, or augmented reality are some of the best ways to ensure that the customers can fully understand the product and its features. When consumers make an informed decision, it creates a strong sense of having maximum control.
Add as many product knowledge elements as possible. Some examples are live chat, FAQs, and product descriptions to empower your customers with a deep knowledge of your product, its attributes, and all its aspects.
2. Pricing
Pricing is the most critical point for both the consumers and sellers. Pricing differences of as low as 99 cents can influence the customer’s decision. A perfect price is the difference between a high conversion rate and a bounce rate. Unfortunately, the right price is subjective, i.e., the reasonable price for every customer is different. Offering autonomy in pricing is the most vital step you can take towards higher conversion and yet it is often the most overlooked hack.
Customer pricing strategy allows merchants to offer personalization on prices for all visitors. Think of it as an automated optimization for product pricing to ensure that the sale goes through. A customer pricing strategy is an optimized way to capture the potential of these highly motivated shoppers by giving them a chance to name their price and pay what they want.
Liberty on the price of the product is the biggest decision-making power that store owners can offer. This strategy not only converts high-intent users but also entices casual browsers. After all, who doesn’t like the power to buy products at their desired price?
Make an Offer allows merchants to add a negotiation button to their product page that lets the customers submit an offer to buy the product at a lower rate than the list price. Enabling an exit-intent “Make an Offer” button for the product page and/or the cart page significantly adds to the decision-making power of the visitors.
3. Browsing Experience
Think of this: you enter a beautifully designed store with well-lit dressing rooms, perfect product catalogues and more. But from the moment you enter the store, a sales representative or even worse, a robot is constantly popping out to offer you a discount or a better combination of products, or a thousand other things. Would your first instinct be to go inside and explore the store or run out of there as quickly as possible?
With pop-ups, automated chatbots, sales notifications and product recommendations, users are swarmed with information from the moment they enter your website. Autonomy in the browsing experience is hardly about website optimization or user-friendly design, it’s about whether you are offering what the customer asks for.
Allow customers the liberty to initiate a request for discounts, or wait for the user to respond to the first nudge before sending other notifications. Leverage the technology to work for your consumers and it will go a long way in retaining customers in your stores for longer and building stronger relations.
The path to conversion passes through a maze. With each article, we attempt to straighten the path for you. We are not wizards who have mastered the art of assured success, but we learned that the best results are only achieved with experimentation.
