Do you feel overwhelmed when shopping online and deciding what’s the right product for you? If yes, then don’t worry you are not the only one in the eCommerce sphere.
At our every virtual shopping trip, we come across hundreds of options for shoes, purses, lotions, watches, TVs, speakers, etc. Those hundreds of choices get us baffled.
A research report released on trends discovered that around sixty-four percent of the customers tend to feel a little overwhelmed by the number of choices available. Moreover, a very recent customer report also showed that around fifty-four percent of the customers encounter such a substantial amount of frustration that they prefer leaving eCommerce websites without deciding what to purchase.
But why does that happen? Don’t customers love choices? Do they have any problem with that?
As a company, retailer or brand, you at least have more than two products at all costs, so your customer could be entitled to choose what he/she likes.
So, where does the problem lie? Well, the only issue with choice is that although it could be offering freedom, it is also heavily linked to feeling of loss. This means that whenever your customer opts for one thing, he/she has to sacrifice the other. At times, making trade-offs can lead to decision aversion and anxiety, more so if there are possible risks and reactions connected to one’s decision.
The customer will only make a purchase after he has reached a final decision.
In today’s rapidly growing market, a choice has emerged as a huge problem for massive brands and retailers. It is without a doubt a problem that needs to be acknowledged and encountered.
And in order to assist as to how choice could also negatively impact your business. We will deeply examine the root cause of choice overwhelming and explore ways of making the buying/choosing experience of your customers much simpler and smoother.
How to resolve Customer choice overload?
The crucial timeline of decision-making
Over the years, various scholars and people have made researches on the psychological effects of choice overwhelming. But what those researches showed was a little confusing. The results mentioned that people want choices, in fact, they love choices, but this forever expanding range of choices, at times, discourages them from making any purchase decisions at all. So, while the brands out there are trying their 100% to provide as much variety as possible to their customers, they’re in fact making purchasing decisions more challenging.
Concise eCommerce product titles
A lot of brand owners and brand retailers don’t pay much attention to their lengthy titles. But little do they know that lengthy and complicated product titles could also pose a real threat to their sales. This happens because product titles are extremely crucial conversion drivers. In fact, they play a major role in helping the customer decide what to choose. So, before uploading product descriptions on your eCommerce websites, make sure they’re clear, concise and to the point. In simpler words, your product description should be formatted and named keeping in mind the appropriate length.
Once you start implementing this strategy, you will see a significant boost in your sales, because more and more buyers will be able to locate your product now. While, there may be no ‘perfect limit’ for the wordcount of the title, but just being brief and to-the-point would probably be enough. Though, it may sound like a cakewalk but it is surely not. This puts you in a position where you have to be as descriptive as possible but with the least amount of words.
A study showed that if your product’s title is optimized with the perfect length, it’ll get you around 50% more views/clicks. To make sure you’re keeping things brief, you could use a policy of using maximum 50 characters for product descriptions. And if you want your product descriptions to reach anywhere near the perfect the length, use less than 30% of the 50 characters.
Fewer Discounts
If you are looking to generate immediate conversions, then sale promotion could come in a lot handy. You must’ve seen that most of the eCommerce stores offer several discounted products at once. If not, then open your inbox right now and have a look at how many online brands are offering various products right now at the same discount. Now, what happens is, because shoppers are confronted with plenty of similar discounts, they not only encounter over-choice, but the discounts also don’t remain valuable to them.
The point of telling all that, is not to scare you away from offering discounts but to tell you: If you want to offer discounts, provide significant ones, so that it catches the attention of the customer and he/she is compelled to buy your product. In simpler words, a 50% discount on one product is much much more attractive than 20% off on 10 different products.
Conclusion
A lot of eCommerce websites have been trying to combat the major issue of ‘Customer choice overload’ because they feel that this issue could badly affect their conversion rates. Customers when confronted with too many options at once, tend to get baffled and confused, which results in pushing them further away from purchasing. Sadly, no one has found exact solution to this major problem. However, all is not lost because there are some simple tweaks that you can try on your eCommerce website in order to eradicate the overload of choices, like: simplifying your website and limiting the choice alternatives.
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