Buying vs Selling - the complexity of selling online

If you were to review the common e-Commerce website in New Zealand it appears that selling online is defined as having poor product images displayed with a price, through in a small “add to cart” button indiscriminately hidden at the bottom of the page, only viewable once visitors scroll a meter down the page.  Hey, who cares, New Zealand is selling online!

The concept of buying vs selling refers to the differences in your visitor’s buying process, and your selling process.  The greater the alignment of the buying and selling processes, the greater the success.   The challenge lies in understanding the dichotomy between the two.   

What makes selling complex?

Creating or defining the sales process for your product or service can be hard.  Technical staff usually takes control because they know the products/services the best, resulting in feature driven, jargony sales copy.  

Visitors arrive at your website in various stages of the buying process.  Some have very little information and are looking to be educated, while others have done their homework and are ready to buy.  The buying process for some will be immediate, while others can take months.
 
The buying process is  influenced by personality types.  Different personality types are motivated in different ways, requiring copy to appeal to their own unique buying process.  Ok, that doesn’t sound too complex; just build a website which aligns to the dominant personality trait which fits your target market.  Unfortunately, visitors move in and out of personality types as their buying process evolves.  The buying process is unique to every visitor who comes to your site. 

If you think I am making things worse, and your feeling a little lost!  Do not fear, help is at hand. 

Defining the selling process:

Defining your selling process comes from answering the following questions:

1)  Who is your target market?  Who are you trying to sell to? 

2) What actions do you want them to take?  What action do you want them to take next? How defined is your selling process?  Is your selling process broken down into clear micro steps? 

3) What information is required for your visitors to take the appropriate actions?  What types of words do you use to entice the visitor to take the actions you want them to take?  What are your visitor’s essential needs? 

The combination of knowing who you are trying to talk to and breaking down the selling steps will simplify the process of identifying what information is required.

Defining visitors buying process:

The next step comes from understanding the core factors which define the flow of decisions in the visitor buying process.  Each factor below helps shape the unique buying process of visitors:

1) Knowledge. How difficult is it for people to understand your product or service or procedures for buying it? What do they need to know?

2) Need. How urgent is the need for your product or service? How quickly will people make their decisions to buy? Will the need be satisfied by a one-time purchase, either impulsive or momentous, or is the need ongoing?

3) Risk. How much risk, especially financial, is at stake for the buyer? Price may not be an ultimate decision factor in a purchase. Increased financial risk necessitates a more intricate persuasive structure.

4) Consensus. How many people do you have to persuade? An individual? An individual and her significant other? Several end users and department heads? What information do you need to provide at different levels to promote consensus?

These factors can be greatly affected by the circumstance of the visitor to your site.  For example, think how different the buying process for a new dishwasher would be under these different circumstances:  1) a potential customer is purchasing a new home, and feels a new home deserves a new dishwasher, or 2) the potential customer comes home one day to find the existing dishwasher has “spat the dummy” and calling James the “dishwasher fix-it guy” for the tenth time in 4 weeks is no longer acceptable.
 
In scenario 1, the visitor need is low so time can be taken to gather information.  The Partner would be involved only after comprehensive price comparisons have been made.  While in scenario 2, the need is the dominant factor which lessons the requirement for information gathering.  Though the risk is the same, the inconvenience of not having a dishwasher becomes the overriding factor in the buying process. 

The power of copy

Once you are able to define your sales process and align it to your visitors buying process, the final step is creating sales copy that will answer key questions, and focus on benefits of your product or service (not features).  This is the only way to prompt the desired actions you want visitors to make.
 
I think it is best to conclude this article with a quote from Bryan Eisenberg, from Future Now:

A successful site experience never forces. It persuades and motivates. It offers persuasive opportunity to sustain momentum at every click. Copy that acknowledges the qualitative sales complexity and meets your buying audience’s needs is the workhorse of your persuasive system.

Enough said!