4 Steps in Defining eCommerce Buying Experience

eCommerce is all about Conversion.

If we efficiently convert our traffic to dollars, we thrive.

A good eCommerce platform should guide its users throughout the purchasing process by helping them to answer two main questions:

1. Which product supports my needs? Which leads to the second question -
2. Which seller should I buy it from?

Many eCommerce sites, and in particular the giant marketplaces (i.e. Amazon and eBay) focus mostly on the second question by working constantly to increase their inventory and improving search and browsing on site. However, from various reasons they hardly make efforts in helping buyers to really understand which product answers their needs. Therefore they neglect a critical element in the buying funnel and open the door to other sites that can fill the gap.

In this article, I propose a solution for the first question, which to me is the most important one - how to help buyers to decide which products they need.

Any buying experience in eCommerce sites should follow these 4 steps:

1. Define the buyer's sector that is being served
2. Understand which aspects are critical for this sector
3. Define the aspects importance order
4. Give guidance to 3 most suitable products

By doing that, eCommerce sites can build much better experiences, thus increase conversations, sales and returning customers rate.

Step 1 - Defining The Right Buyer's Sector

The way we buy Fashion is different from the way we buy car parts and is different from the way we by a cellphone. Even the way we buy athletic shoes is different from the way we buy fashion shoes.

Having a single buying process that serves all industries must do tough compromises and does not guide the buyer on his shopping quest. It usually comprised of a search engine and generic filtering options which are rarely used. Without a suitable guidance, and the ability to properly differentiate between the offered products, buyers can just give up.

Having a designated buying process that is perfect for specific sectors (even the main ones) is where all big marketplaces lack, and opens the door to niche eCommerce sites that give a superior buying experience, like "Zappos" in shoes, "Next" in fashion, and many other niche eCommerce sites.

Therefore before we even try answering the buyers needs, we must understand which sector is relevant to the buyer and how buyers think in this specific sector.

 Step 2 - Understanding Which Aspects Are Critical

After defining the specific sector that is relevant to our buying experience, its time to understand which aspects are used by the buyer to take a decision.

For example, on Cellphone buying experience, such major aspects can be "Brand", "Model", "Color", "Storage Capacity", "Lock status" (mainly in US) and "Price". Other aspects like "Special Features" "Screen Size", "Camera Resolution" are less important since in most buying sessions the buyer doesn't need to answer them to define what he needs.

Having said that, if we are in countries where cellphone cannot be locked legally, and we are running a site that specializes in photography, in that case the "Camera Resolution" is important to the buyers and "Lock Status" isn't. Therefore there is no one answer, and it varies between sites and countries.

It is crucial to define the least amount of aspects possible, so that on our buying experience we will not confuse the buyer with too much data that mostly is irreverent for defining what he needs.

 Step 3 - Defining The Aspects Importance Order

The next question is, "Which aspects are most important to the buyers that we are serving?", is it the Price? the Brand? the Camera Resolution?

In our Cellphone example, if we would like to serve customers that look for low cost cellphone, Price is probably the most important aspect since it narrows down the options, such that brands like Apple/Samsung may be irrelevant.

Another example is in the "Parts and Accessories" categories- when we buy a car part, or a cellphone battery, the most important aspect is "Compatibility", meaning buyer needs to know the parts are compatible with his car or cellphone before moving forward to aspects like Brand, Price, Size etc.

By defining the aspects order, we need to get the answers from the buyers accordingly. It can be a direct question asking him about "Price range", or "Brand" that he prefers. There are also indirect methods in which we can get the answers using the buyer's past behavior and Artificial Intelligence algorithms. These answers help us to filter the amount of relevant options.

 Step 4 - Giving Guidance to 3 Most Suitable Products

This is where the buyers want our assistance the most. Even after filtering the relevant products, there are may still be many options to choose from. The buyer needs us to give him several options to chose from, like any other reviews site (like Cnet.com), or "Top X products" web pages do. It shouldn't be more than 3 since it will confuse him.

These suggestions we give the buyers should be accompanied by reviews on the products written by other buyers and preferably of an expert review.

Here are where most eCommerce sites choose not to do any effort since it means they promote one brand over the other, and it also requires expertise in each and every sub sector that they don't have.

 The Opportunity For eCommerce Sites

In this article I highlight a major gap in eCommerce websites today, and suggest a framework planning process for buying experiences.

It doesn't make any sense that today buyers take decisions of what they need outside of eCommerce sites and is mainly done on review sites or brick and mortar stores. In particular when every eCommerce site knows his buyers and inventory best.

There are no shortcuts, each buyer must get exactly the experience that is relevant to make a fast decision. The opportunity to give a full end to end solution on eCommerce is still open to new competitors, and not long from now it will be a vital ingredient in any eCommerce site.

Today, buyers are willing to work hard searching what they need, not for long!

If you've read this far, I'd love it if you can leave a feedback - either enter a comment, or just press Like.

Ori Feldstein