The internet presents tangible advantages to smart marketers who understand the people and organizations that purchase their products and services. It’s a case of getting to know who and why eCommerce buyers are motivated to click the purchase button. To add to the challenge, eCommerce buyers demand a higher level of service from businesses while seeking to control contact with those businesses.
Essentially, the better known the target audience is, the better the message will be delivered and the better the response will be. So, researching your buyers and creating eCommerce buyer personas can pay off dramatically in terms of customer loyalty and revenue.
Create a digital buyer persona
Taking the time to learn about your buyers creates additional value for your sales cycle. Not only does it create closer and stronger ties between you and your potential client, but it also provides an important opportunity for feedback loops that help streamline and improve efficiency in your sales processes.
Creating eCommerce buyer personas helps focus marketing efforts to achieve a higher conversion rate. However, creating digital buyer personas involves more than names, addresses, and phone numbers.
Old methods, new ways
The process of creating buyer personas isn’t new. It’s just been updated to utilize modern protocols. You already know the data categories, but the order in which they’re determined is the new aspect that makes creating eCommerce buyer personas easier:
- What – The product or service you’re offering. Get as much detail as possible.
- Where – Which regions, countries, or continents the product or service will appeal to
- When – The timing of availability, schedules for delivery, the season for selling, and other important time-sensitive factors
- How –eCommerce buyers want to know exactly what will transpire with order processing protocols
- Why – The reasoning behind why your product or service is applicable to the buyer persona
- Who – A compilation of the previous data to determine who the digital buyer persona is
Traditional versus modern
By building eCommerce buyer personas based on these models, it will be easier for your sales and marketing teams to identify more specific traits that reveal what your customers want, need, and search for. This information can then influence the direction of other marketing initiatives, such as website design, to make those projects and strategies more successful.
Common traits for conversion rates
One thing all eCommerce buyers share is a desire to get what they need as quickly as possible from a reliable resource. Websites are a vital part of this process as they determine the amount of effort the buyer will have to take to complete a sale.
Thus, the easier your website is to navigate, the higher the conversion rate and the better dialed-in the website becomes. And don’t forget that many buyers take care of business using smartphone apps, so your website needs to be accessible to them as well.
The right tools in the right toolbox
eCommerce buyers are more sophisticated than most purchasers who are using the internet to acquire goods and services. Price comparisons are a built-in feature of many search engines and online extension applications. No longer is it possible to be the only seller under consideration when budgets are tight and profits are important.
Buyers are loyal to businesses that provide updated pricing, shipping terms, special discounts, and other cost-saving features that help them succeed at their jobs. Thus, identifying what resources and features your audience wants most can help you secure sales and build stronger client relationships.
Open-source or SaaS or what?
Software available today makes it possible for an organization to conduct its eCommerce marketing efforts more easily. However, if you’re looking for a partner to help you with eCommerce buyer personas, contact the EXTEND GROUP. For over a decade, EXTEND GROUP has supported dozens of organizations’ marketing efforts with insight, expertise, experience, and confidence. We can help you too.