To get customers to buy from you, you need to understand how they make their buying decisions. It’s that simple. Consumers always follow specific patterns to make purchases online, with 87% of buying decisions starting with an online search on Google or Amazon.
While you can’t do much to influence customers on other platforms, you have much more control when they visit your website.
By understanding what shapes customers’ behavior and the paths they take to make purchases, you can influence their journey and eventually their buying decisions.
Fortunately, all the insight you need to influence customers’ decisions can be found in the tremendous data your website generates. This article looks at some creative ways you can influence customer buying decisions using web analytics.
How You Can Leverage Web Analytics To Influence Your Customers’ Buying Decisions
When trying to understand customer behavior, you need the right data. Web analytics data can help you find out the following.
- Where your customers are coming from
- The device they are using
- The demographics of your customers
- Their spending behavior and more.
With this information at your fingertips, you can implement the following strategies to influence customers buying decisions.
1. Increase Conversion with Data-fueled recommendations
Accenture research found that 91% of customers are likely to shop with brands that offer relevant recommendations. A similar study found that recommendations account for up to 35% of Amazon’s revenue.
The truth is that just like in offline stores, impulse purchases are also a thing online, and when you recommend the right product, consumers would buy.
Web analytics allows you to track consumers’ activities on your site in real-time and use the information to recommend the best product for each customer. You can also apply recommendations in emails.
For instance, if a customer looks through specific products without buying, you can send them an email to remind them to make the purchase or recommend related products.
2. Build Customers Trust
Customers only buy from brands they trust and one of the best ways to improve customer trust is through personalized services. Beyond purchases, 83% of customers say they would recommend a business they trust. This means that improving trust wouldn’t only make your existing customers buy from you, but can also help you acquire more passive leads.
One way to build customer trust is through personalization. The insight from web analytics will help you learn more about your customers. You’ll know the referring website, their devices, their location, demographics, budget, and more. With this information at your fingertips, you can personalize interactions with your customers and offer them the experience they want.
When done right, personalization can create value for customers while building a more trusted relationship. Once customers trust you, they’ll continue to buy from you.
Almost every successful company today has a personalized customer experience. The likes of Amazon, Spotify, and Netflix stand out.
3. Simplify your funnel
Simplifying your customer journey would naturally increase sales. The purchasing decision process is already quite complex since consumers have to compare products and prices. So your marketing funnel must be straightforward.
Web analytics enables you to pinpoint areas of difficulty in your marketing channel, so you can fix them. Typically, most customers that arrive on your site already know what they want, and you want to make their journey as seamless as possible.
Pay attention to how customers move through your funnel.
If you have lots of traffic and few add to the cart. Then something is preventing your customers from adding products to their carts. It can be the price, weak images, lack of trust, or other user experience issues.
Similarly, if the cart abandonment is high, then you may want to find out the factor causing it. You can audit your website using a web analytics tool to identify and fix any issues.
Also, consider setting up a cart abandonment campaign with special offers to encourage users to come back and complete their purchases.
4. Smarter Customer Journey Paths
Another way you can apply web analytics to influence customers’ buying decisions behavior is to create accurate journey maps. This involves adding messages at strategic touchpoints to trigger them to take action.
Web analytics gives you a clear picture of how customers interact with your website, so you can place these triggers in a way that doesn’t hinder the customer journey flow.
For instance, let’s say a customer on your site checks out a product and leaves without making a purchase. The system can send them a reminder email notifying them of the item or offering great discounts to persuade them to buy.
5. Improve Customers Interactions – Improved Sales
62% of respondents in a recent Gallup poll said social media platforms do not influence their buying decisions. The problem here is that most companies’ approach to customer interaction is ineffective.
Consumers want to have conversations and connections and that’s highly unlikely if all you do is talk about yourself or your products.
Everything you do must be geared to trigger a conversation. Fortunately, you can use web analytics data to learn how to better communicate with your customers. The benefit of improved conversation is that your customers will become more receptive to your messages and grow closer to your brand.
The Time is Now
Your customer’s online behavior reveals valuable insight which you can’t find anywhere else. This is why every successful company including Amazon, Google, Netflix, and others is leveraging web analytics to gain insight on how to influence their customers. That’s the smart play that will help you drive sales.