Over 90% of shoppers make impulse purchases. Being an unplanned decision, impulse buying is influenced by various external and internal factors such as traits, motives, consumer resources, and marketing stimuli emerge. It’s a significant sales driver for online stores as well as for physical ones. Even though 79% of these buys take place in brick-and-mortar, 40% of the revenue of eCommerce retailers are represented by impulse purchases. These numbers sound inspiring. In order not to stay away from such a chance to increase the profit of your Shopify store, you should create opportunities for impulse purchases.
Brick-and-mortar stores use smells, sights, and sounds to influence impulse buying. Even though it’s impossible to use such ploys in online stores, there are still a lot of other methods on how to entice customers on impulse buying for Shopify.
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Ways to Encourage Impulse Buying
Display Impulse Buying Items at a Right Place
There is a reason why physical stores have succeeded in encouraging impulse purchases, it’s all because of the thoughtful placement of products. Moreover, all the goods are well lit, thus grabbing customers’ attention and spurring to put them into a shopping cart. As for online stores, the best thing to be done is to place impulsive items properly and make them clearly displayed.
As well as at a brick-and-mortar store, there are three places at your e-store where impulse buys may occur:
- The homepage. When consumers enter your Shopify store, the first items they stick in their minds as potential impulse purchases. Thus, it makes sense to think through the products to be displayed on the homepage.
- Product pages. Strategically placed goods can arouse interest. The more often shoppers see different items when clicking on certain product pages, the more chances that an impulse to buy something unplanned will arise.
- Shopping cart page or store checkout. This is the last opportunity to entice customers to make impulse buying.
So, if you want to increase the average order value with impulsive items pay attention to their placement in your store.
Do Appropriate Product Recommendations
Having displayed impulse buying items, you should carefully select what kind of products it should be. If you want your customers to pay attention to these goods, all of them have to be of great value for buyers and not outprice their initial choice for more than 25%. As there is hardly a shopper who is ready to spend a large sum of money without a second thought.
To improve customers’ shopping experience and entice them on impulse buying, you can recommend products with the help of the following marketing techniques:
- Cross-selling—offering additional products or services that will enhance the quality and use of chosen goods.
- Upselling—suggesting related items with better characteristics.
- Product bundles—recommending to buy product kits or total looks with certain benefits for customers.
When customers click on products or add them to their carts, make appropriate product recommendations that match buyers’ interests, highlight them with colors and appealing tags to attract shoppers. Moreover, it makes sense to experiment with types of products to suggest. As a result, it will help you find out top-selling impulse items.
Make Specific Product Offerings
When customers go shopping online they mostly know what to buy. To encourage shoppers to make impulse buying, you should offer something that they may want to order with a product such as additional services or personalized options. These specific product offerings will help increase your sales and average order value as well as improve customers’ shopping experience.
One of the most powerful offers that can stimulate impulse buys is free shipping. 93% of customers purchase more goods if the free shipping option is provided. At the same time, 58% of shoppers add more items to get free shipping. You can make a conditional free shipping offer in your Shopify store. It means to give your customers a chance to get free shipping in case they make purchases for a certain sum of money. Thus, by setting a minimum order amount for buyers to qualify for free shipping, you stimulate impulse buys in your e-store.
Sephora is very good at special product offerings. Thus, the merchant offers six samples of wonderful for free with an $85 product purchase.
Draw Attention to Impulse Purchases
To encourage consumers for impulse purchases, you should grab their attention to those products. One of the ways to do it on Shopify is to use motivation bars with freebies to entice buyers to top impulse buys.
What should these motivation bars look like? First of all, they should be displayed apart from the rest of your store. Secondly, these bars must be bright with bold colors. And finally, the language you use should create a sense of urgency. Motivation bars inform customers on what benefit can get if they fulfill a certain condition (for example, it’s necessary to spend $50 to get a gift or $100 for free shipping).
When you enter KKW Beauty online store, you see a bar that promises free shipping for orders over $50. Hardly any beauty can pass by such a deal.
Missguided uses motivation bars for full and provides customers with three tempting offers that can lead to impulse purchases at the same time. The retailer takes care of students giving a 20% discount for shopping now, gives an opportunity to pay later, and offers an extra discount with code.
Hold Sales and Promotions
One more way to incentivize consumers is sales and promotions. Just like any kind of freebies, low-cost products are perfect for being bought on impulse in eCommerce stores. To boost impulse buys, you should promote your sales properly not only on your web-page but also with the help of social media and impulse advertisement. Creating a sense of urgency on sales with time or quantity limitations can stimulate your customers even more.
Thus, Old Navy provides buyers with an attractive one-day offer of $5 pajamas. Even if customers have visited the store without intention to buy pajamas, with such a tempting offer, they undoubtedly will click to purchase one or even more.
Provide Easy Mobile Shopping
50% of online users do shopping from mobile devices. And according to the Rackspace survey, one-fifth of online consumers confirm that mobile devices increase their impulse buys. It can be explained by the ease of use and a chance to make purchases from anywhere. It’s a great opportunity for eCommerce retailers to increase the number of impulse buys.
But it’s possible only if your site is easy to use and navigate with mobile devices. It makes sense to structure your mobile design, use category links, provide detailed product information that can be conveniently viewed on hand-held devices so that shoppers can easily make impulse purchases without being distracted.
Bottom Line
Impulse buying is of great importance for all merchants. It helps boost sales and increase the revenue of your online store as well as make your customers satisfied (75% of shoppers feel happy after impulse purchases). That’s why it’s essential to pay special attention to tactics that can awake consumers’ interest in impulse purchases.
Do you know any more methods to entice customers to make impulse buying? Share your ideas with us.