Optimize Conversion Rates Using Buyer Psychology

Rishi Rawat joins Matt Edmundson on the eCommerce Podcast and offers incredibly valuable insight and creates a compelling argument for why marketers should be focused on converting the first time buyer through their best selling product and not dividing attention over the basic principles of marketing.

Rishi Rawat is a buyer psychology copywriter who has been probing and experimenting to better understand how shoppers choose in a world filled with more choices than ever. Rishi’s company, Frictionless Commerce uses copywriting to optimize conversion rates.

Buyer psychology

Buyer psychology from a marketing perspective is the quest to understand how purchasing decisions get made.

— Rishi Rawat

We all make purchasing decisions and in doing so our brains are computing a host of situational variances that are particular to each individual consumer. Through rigorous testing, Rishi has identified nine principle drivers that take the consumer from being interested in a product to purchasing the product. The nine variables will come into play in varying measure depending on the product.

Situational Variable #1 - Too good to be true

This is the natural state of scepticism of the brain. We have an inherent defense mechanism for being swindled and so it needs convincing.

Situational Variable #2 - Find expertise sexy

We are drawn to experts and we naturally want to know what the experts are doing - ‘How are the smartest people in my herd dealing with this uncertainty?’ We then triangulate towards that because we know that probabilistically it's actually a very good strategy.

Through our copy as marketers we need to communicate that we understand the anxiety and confusion of our audience and as a trusted friend can recommend the specific product.

Situational Variable #3 - Root for people who overcome the odds

We are drawn to people that overcome insurmountable odds and we naturally want to support the person who had to work hard through many setbacks and failures to get to where they are.

Situational Variable #4 - Fascinated by surprising details

We are junkies for new information and we retain that information better when we are given surprising details and fascinating tidbits.

I use interesting details, especially when we're writing long form copy, I look at it as a, you know, it's, it's taking energy away from the reader to some extent, because they're, you know, people have low attention spans. So when you inject in some interesting details, you're giving the reader a boost of energy. And it's a branded boost of energy, because you're giving an interesting detail, not about some random fact. But a fact that relates in some way to what your product is doing.

— Rishi Rawat

Situational Variable #5 - We are visual

50% of our brain is devoted to processing visual information and so visuals are super powerful motivators that can be incorporated in our storytelling.

Situational Variable #6 - People need motivation to break a habit

Rishi believes that one of the biggest mistakes that marketers make is that they focus too heavily on how their product is better than the competition that they fail to realise that they are not competing against the competition, but in fact competing against non consumption.

Situational Variable #7 - We love personalised experiences

When we personalise we have this amazing ability to connect with the audience at a subconscious level.

Situational Variable #8 - Like knowing they've stumbled on something rare

Even though we are buying a commodity, we don't want to feel like you're buying a commodity. Instead, we want to feel like we are getting something exclusive or inaccessible to the masses.

Situational Variable #9 - Must overcome their negative thoughts

This is diametrically opposed to the first variable - too good to be true.

For example, you sell a product and your shipping is $17.95, that instantly creates a negative thought in my mind, because it's like, I don't want to be spending $17.95 for shipping. So now you could build a story around it and explain why that is, you know, is it worth it. So it's a negative thought, it's not too good to be true.

— Rishi Rawat

Conclusion

Using these nine situational variables in our copywriting we can be far more effective in converting our visitors into first times buyers.

My recommendation is considering the fact that 68% of people are completely new to our website and will never come back again, majority of which will never come back again. Why focus on these other things? Why not laser focus on converting first time buyers? Typically, for websites, their first time buyer rate, is conversion rate is no more than 4%. So we have an atrociously low conversion rate. So it just makes sense to focus on converting more first time buyers. And this is something that is really interesting is that if you can improve your conversion rate for first time buyers, you're actually improving all the other metrics as well, because they're all related.

— Rishi Rawat

Rishi is a strong believer that it is on the product page, the product description, where the magic happens. Draw as much attention to the product description as you can and convey a compelling story around the nine situational variables to convert the first time buyer.

Show Transcript

The full show transcript is available for download here.

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