5 Factors that Can Significantly Influence a Customer's Buying Decision

Building a loyal customer base is super tough and what’s more difficult is to get them to trust and buy from you the first time as a new brand in the market.

And it’s not because your products are bad, because over the period of time the market has evolved quite a lot and now there are tons of other choices which a customer Think about it when you saw the ad of a certain product from a company where you loved the idea or the concept of the product but you didn’t buy it because of some reasons.

This is not just in your case it happens to almost every new brand out there in the market.

And the only way you can make customers buy from your brand is if you could influence their decision and to do that every brand should know what are the key factors that shapes the decision of the customer for buying anything online.

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Here I have compiled a list of top 5 decision factors that you can use to influence your visitors to become your customers.

1. Price:

One of the most important and crucial factors when it comes to buying stuff online.A great product with a bad pricing can break your entire value chain and create a negative impact on your brand.

It’s difficult for new brands to beat their top in category brand in terms of price because the top brand have huge ongoing demand and they place the game of price due to their advantage of economies of scale i.e buying/building in bulk due to which raw materials, cost of labour etc because quite less on per product basis.

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Here price for me means a decent price which your audience will be willing to pay and would be happy to pay again when they buy from you for their other products or even repeat buy from you the same product.

So how to price your product that would attract the customers and make them buy?

Competitive pricing:

In this you as a brand keep your rates either par or just 10% - 20% above the general market rate. Now this helps you to not only build a brand but also attract customers who want to try your product.Not as effective on long run but to sell and get few starting customers it’s one of the most effective way.

Offer based pricing:

If you can’t lower or sell products on competitive pricing because of brand value degradation or issues that would come in future when you would be selling a little higher priced items then offer based pricing is best for you.

In this instead of reducing the MRP based price you give a lucrative offer to your customer like -For first time buyers get flat 30% off, Limited period sale, Buy one get one free etc.

Keeping on testing your pricing and looking at the suitable spot can help your fix this problem and get to your results faster.

To test pricing effectively you would need to have good traffic on your eCommerce website and what;s faster and better way to get quality traffic than using facebook ads?

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So we have prepared an article that shows you how you can launch a cost effective facebook ads campaign at a tight budget. Go check it out here.

2. Product reviews:

Have you ever abandoned the purchase of a product online because the product either didn't have a review or had bad reviews?Well this happens all the time….

Reviews showcase the real value of a customer from a customer's point of view as it comes from a customer who has bought the product and has experienced it.

It gives a future buyer a sense of self satisfaction that this product might actually be worth it and good to try.

Product reviews are like the social proof factor which was described by Robert Cialdini in his book Persuasion that  talks about how you can persuade someone to take action and in this case make them buy.

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So what can you do here?Try to add more product reviews on every product page of your website.

Ask your repeat buyers to post their review of their product on your eCommerce store so that the next time someone visits your prodigy page they could see the review and this would help them to make a decision whether they should buy the product or not?.

By getting your customers to give you reviews it’s kind of a challenging task + very hard to execute but it’s just a piece of cake if you build your eCommerce platform or website with Typof.

Typof has an automated review request flow where the serum automatically sends review emails to all your customers who have received your product.

3. Convenience:

Everyone wants convenience and ease of use for everything they deal with in their day to day life. So it becomes really crucial when selling your products online.Your customers should find it convenient to buy product from you online that means your website should be:

• Fast loading
• Easy top checkout
• No bugs
• No hidden prices

This not only influences great customer experience but also make your customers relationship better a glitch website with slower checkout process often misses out on all of these important factors that really affects the buying decision .

4. Trust and Transparency:

Trust is a critical factor in online shopping. Customers need to trust the website and the company selling the product before making a purchase.

Often you might have negative publicity of brands who have cheated their customers with extra charges, unnecessary things and default products etc.

This not only hinders a customer's buying experience but also removes all the chances of customer coming back or referring other customers to your brand which is way more costlier .

This trust can be built through factors such as website security, customer service, transparent pricing, proper post purchase communication, faster delivery  and brand reputation.

5. Shipping and return policies:

Shipping and return policies can also influence a customer's decision to buy a product online.

As founders or markets we need to know that unlike offline buying here our probable customers or visitors are unable to touch,feel, smell or experience the product.

This is often the problem for customers who don’t buy products online,now that infuses the sense of risk factor in buying the product from your website because if the customers find their way of returning the product then he/she might lose the money and this would create a barrier.

Similarly the cost of shipping is often seen as a very close reason why people abandon a product before buying it online.

Things you can do ….

Transparent Return policies:

Don’t play around this and keep it super simple and easy to understand for the customer in your returns policy mention about things like

• Conditions in which returns will be accepted
• What is the time frame for returning the product
• The entire process of return explained in a proper page
• Complete transparency on refund initiation if paid online

Shipping delivery charges :

Make sure that you don’t charge really high for your delivery services ex if your product is Rs 500 a suitable delivery charge should be around Rs 50 max.

A better way to this could be to either absorb the delivery charge within your Selling price or add your delivery charge in your product costing and portrait your overall price stating it as FREE delivery.

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