If you have products to sell on the Internet, it makes sense to get customers to buy from your online store. However, it’s not enough to let your product listings stay on your website untouched. Or worse – A customer has second thoughts on clicking the “Checkout” button.
To help combat buyer hesitation, you’ll need to create some urgency. Just keep in mind: This tactic should be implemented wisely so that you don’t mislead customers.
Here are eight strategies to create urgency for your online store:
Display Stock Levels On Product Page
“Urgency is best created when you show customers your stock levels about a certain product,” says Thomas De Vis, a writer at Essayroo and OXEssays. “When you see that an item is close to selling out, you can let customers know, and you’ll reduce the likelihood of cart abandonment. However, to make this strategy work, you’ll need to be consistent with it, or else people will catch on if this ‘scarcity’ has been displayed for more than three days.”
Text Message Alerts
Believe it or not, customers still look at text messages. However, their text messaging preferences vary because many times, they’ll delete messages before they open them.
Be sure to understand your customers’ messaging preferences. Look at digital analytics with some form of digital analytics software, where you’ll learn the following customer data insights:
- When they receive text messages
- Click-through rates (CTRs) on text messages
- Types of successful text messages, etc.
Remember: Keep messages short and sweet to annoy customers with long, wordy text.
Quicker Deliveries In Small Time Frames
Nowadays, online stores have excited their product deliveries. In other words, consumers are now ordering online and receiving their packages within days (instead of weeks).
Since people are more apt to buy things online, why not accommodate this craze by offering faster deliveries within smaller frames? Let’s face it: No one wants to wait weeks for their packages to arrive.
Low-Stock Warnings
Like displaying stock levels on your website, you can also exhibit scarcity on popular items among your customers. By focusing on quantity, customers will find themselves looking to snag the thing before someone else does.
One way to display low-stock warnings (besides text messaging) is with a consumer bulletin, which can be updated every so often to present relevant information and news to consumers. The consumer bulletin can be placed on the product page to your site.
First X Buyers
Treating customers as the “first X buyers” works because it makes people feel special and that if they act now, they’ll be given something for free or at a discounted price. Plus, it’s essential to build unique relationships with customers since being human is necessary. When you learn more about your customers through data (i.e., interactions, preferences, buying behaviors, etc.), you’ll connect with them on a more personal level.
Clearance Pricing
“People are always looking for good bargains,” says Declan Sloman, a tech blogger at the State Of Writing and Paper Fellows. “Just the thrill of shopping the best deals can be exhilarating for buyers. And when online stores create urgency on product scarcity, they feed this thrill and entice buyers to act on a good bargain. In this way, customers don’t want to ‘miss out on a good deal.”
Show Other Buyers
Nowadays, marketers are seeking data that can help their companies get a competitive edge against their rivals. When you use this data to show prospective buyers that other buyers are looking to buy something special, it becomes a competition between buyers.
As you can tell, data is everything in retail and marketing. With the power of data literacy, online stores can simulate an urgency and then spread the word effectively to get customers to react to such an occurrence.
Last-Chance Emails
Finally, email marketing is still a thing, despite the latest developments in technology (i.e., social media). Even better, you can send these types of emails through email automation, in which you can schedule emails that are “Last Chance” so that customers can get excited about scoring the latest deals and products from your online store.
Conclusion
Ultimate, urgency, and conversions in your online store can go hand-in-hand as you consider these eight strategies. Remember: The point of creating urgency is to increase buyer motivation, not just make sales.
Author Bio:
Lauren Groff is a writer and editor at UKWritings and Write My Thesis. She is also a contributing editor at College Paper. As a content writer, she writes about eCommerce, marketing, and social media influencers.
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