Consumer Behavior

If you’re involved with online selling, of any kind, one of the things you have to consider is what actually makes your visitors buy.

It’s not always obvious and in many cases it’s not even logical.

An advert for a new car got me thinking about this yesterday. The car looks great and it’s got all the gadgets a gadget freak like me could want. I’m not even looking for a new car, by the way, but the advert still got my attention.

When I next change, I’d like that car.

That was my reaction through 85% of the advert. And then it happened: the deal breaker.

They showed the hi-tec looking dashboard with enough information panels to rival a fighter jet. But the backlighting on the panels was orange.

Orange.

If they offered me that car at half retail I’d still walk away. I couldn’t drive a car with that color information panel. Yeuch!

Sitting thinking about it afterward I thought it was strange that that color alone was enough to make me discount an otherwise excellent car.

Then I realized that there was a big lesson in there for me. The actual trigger that converts my visitors into customers might not be the product value, or the contents, or even proven benefits. It could be anything – even something as simple as the color of the background on my ecover.

I don’t propose to split test 128 different color combos to see which works best, but I do intend to be more aware of the point at which people make a decision not to buy. I know there is software out there that can track where on the page a visitor abandons the page so I’m going to look into using that on my own pages.

The point, of course, isn’t specifically that your ebook background color might lose you sales. It’s that the real trigger for – or against – your sales may not always be the most obvious, or logical factor. If you put yourself in the shoes of the potential customer you might be able to feel what really matters to them.

For someone looking for a weight loss product, for example, what they really want might be to feel invisible so that they ‘fit in’ and don’t stand out from the crowd. If your product focuses on how much people will notice them, they’re not that likely to buy from you. Someone looking to lose weight is doing so for complex reasons, usually.

Surveys are also a good way to find out why your visitors did buy – or didn’t. I know of lots of sites that present a survey if you don’t buy from them. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a site that asks why you did buy from them. I’m thinking it would be useful to know exactly why, from people who’ve voted with their wallet.

So if you see a survey on my thank you pages in future, you’ll know exactly why I’m asking you. Won’t you?

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