Make sure your e-commerce platform converts as they should. Learn what is the biggest issue for marketplace underperformance and how to overcome it.
E-commerce platforms and any other online selling business are fighting to attract customers to their web stores. The market is cruel and having a perfect web store (marketplace) with a vast number of products exposed to clients doesn't mean they'll be the top-visited or convert as they should.
There are a couple of things that can lead to underperforming of the marketplace. In this blog post, we'll guide you through the biggest issue there is and how to overcome it.
Facing your consumers with a vast number of choices and putting all your products on the first page of your market place can seem like a great idea at the moment. However, is it? Of course, you want to showcase as much of your products as you can immediately. But, giving your customers so many choices can leave them to struggle trying to navigate and find the optimal product for them.
Remember, having lots of choices doesn't mean that the decision-making process will go easier and faster for your customers.
Sometimes the struggle can result in them finding what they wanted but, in most cases, will result in them having a problem with making the right decision. The struggle leads to deprived brand satisfaction, low conversion rates, loss of consumer trust, and at the end of the day loss of the customer. Making a decision is becoming overwhelming due to all potential risks and bad outcomes that may result if making the wrong choice. In his book The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz gave a perfect example of the trouble he had trying to buy a pair of jeans. When going to the store to buy a pair of jeans, there are at least 70 different types that fit the customer, straight, slim fit, skinny, bootcut, relaxed, loose; you get the point. How does the customer choose the right ones? This is a time-consuming process, and in this fast-paced world that we're living in, time is the most valuable currency.
The same you can copy to your web store. If you offer a lot to your clients, they'll take more time to decide, and not always will the decision to finish in a purchase.
For customers, being able to choose has an important positive effect but only to a certain point. Today, choices are unlimited, they give our clients the feel of the power because they are the ones making the decision and choosing what's right for them. At the same time this power can turn into them feeling helpless, annoyed battling with the "choice paralysis" or "choice overload".
The "choice overload problem" is a situation in which a person has a great deal of time and several available options to consider when making a decision. The simplest example is ordering a pizza. On the first, it seems like such an easy task, it's just a pizza. Try to remember how many times it happened that it took more than 20 minutes to decide if you feel more like eating salami or prosciutto, spicy or not. The same happens when you offer customers 20 filtered options. That will result in more time needed for the decision, decisions made in a hurry result in customer's dissatisfaction and guess who's to blame!
Leaving customers dissatisfied with a bad taste of choice overload will, for sure follow with them leaving bad feedback about their purchase process and the feeling they had when visiting your website. Not just they give a bad review on your social media channels, they'll also make sure to tell their friends. According to Salesforce, 74% of people are likely to switch brands if they find the purchasing process too complicated.
Instead of showcasing your customers 70 different types of jeans within a specific price range tell them – Hey, here are the top three jeans we've selected just for you! Make their choice easier and give them the chance to feel happy making the right decision. Customer satisfaction will lead to more purchases, greater satisfaction with the service, and better recommendation of your business by word of mouth.
With an interactive recommendation engine like Preezie's, the customer would see a list of 3,6 or 9 (typically max) products that best match their requirements. Having such specific results offered to clients, giving them exactly what they want and need will result in high conversions, and increased brand satisfaction. It will result in having a returning customer!
If you are interested to learn more about guided selling solutions, reach us, and test the Preezie solution within 24 hours.