I recently failed to buy an item because of the frustrating post click-through procedure of a company whose email marketing list I am subscribed to. It’s not as bad as it might first of all appear. I went back to the buying page a day or two later once I had got my act together. My unevidenced opinion is that most people would not return.
Customers have become more or less experts at buying products online due to Covid restrictions, death of the high street and, especially in these straightened times, more competitive prices in marketing emails. Take your pick as to the importance of which. They come with desires, money and expectations.
Most of us no longer concentrate as much as we did when buying products because of muscle memory ingrained over hundreds of purchases. It should be remembered that the likes of Amazon have a sophisticated and well-tested set of procedures from landing page onwards, all of which encourages us to buy at speed. You’ve got to hand it to them, your money that is.
It’s tempting to suggest you should copy Amazon’s methods, without infringing copyright of course. After all they’ve spent £millions on testing. However, what’s to say their procedures are the best for us? As you know, certain subscribers on your email marketing list act one way and others act another, for reasons which are obscure. One size does not fit all.
The only reason I became a little frustrated with the system I was forced to use was that it was unusual. I had to think.
Pausing for thought is the death of purchasing and if you put your customers under pressure, your completion rate will fall. In essence, we have to provide what our customers respond to with regards to page design. If those on your email marketing list expect a system which is similar, but obviously not identical, to that of major online companies, to drift from that path for no particular reason is likely to hit profits.
These massive international companies prescribe the route we should follow. By all means test, but don’t go against customer expectation.
