When companies look at converting consumers, they often overlook the psychological process that helps drive customers to purchase products or services. Sometimes companies don’t have the time to dig in the data and see the effects of psychology and instead will focus their attention on high performing campaigns. Delving deeper into the psychological process behind consumer purchases should be something that you should consider. Especially now with vaccines being released and a renewed optimism that society can start getting back to normal.
Getting insight on consumer behavior is a strong focal point for driving successful conversions. In 2021 we will see some shifts in behavior. So let’s dive deeper into understanding the psychology of consumer behavior and why it’s important.
Why Consumer Psychology is Important
2020 has been a difficult year for most. Due to the virus, there have been changes in consumer personality traits. One important thing to note is that marketing is built and developed on understanding brands and their consumers. With everything that has happened this year marketers might want to reassess how their consumers view things and consider how that will affect marketing your products and services.
If you own an online store then you know that data about your consumer’s behavior is one of the most impactful things you can utilize. With behavioral analysis you can gain further insight into your customers and ensure a more personalized experience on your website.
Browsing Behavior for Online Marketing
One important online tool that provides strong insight into how customers interact with your online store is browsing behavior. Browsing behavior can be tracked by web analytics tools that can consider factors like how a consumer is attracted to a specific online store and what products they like or look at frequently. This can also be used to see how consumers interact with your landing page.
Purchasing Behavior for Online Marketing
Tracking your consumer purchasing behavior can provide great advantages. This will give you insight on the psychological makeup of consumers based on buying patterns and responses to promotional campaigns. This is a great tool for marketers that are trying to figure out how seasonal, or discounted promotions are working. Or, if you want to see how a specific product is selling, this can be great to use as well.
Consumer Perception Changes Online Marketing During COVID
The effects of COVID-19 had a catastrophic effect on companies worldwide. This pandemic changed our businesses, work, lifestyles and the way our customers shop. People over the past year have spent their money on lifestyle changes that are specific to their new routines. Examples of these lifestyle changes include people transitioning to working from home and social distancing. The new health and safety codes people need to abide by have rapidly increased social media and ecommerce marketing trends compared to the last couple of years. According to the US Census, in Q2 2020 retail ecommerce reached $211.5 billion. This is an increase of 31.8% compared to Q1 and 44.5% year over year.
Considerate Consumption
Consumers are also being mindful of what they are buying. They are consciously working on limiting food waste and are focusing their shopping on sustainable products. Brands will need to adapt to this new trend and possibly change their business models to accommodate and increase their opportunities for sales.
A/B Testing to Gauge Consumer Perception
To gauge if you are adapting to consumers' new perceptions you can use a/b testing on your landing pages and websites. A/B testing is a great way to present your consumers with two different landing pages containing the same information. These two pages will have different optimizations. After gathering an amount of data you can compare bounce rates and conversions of these pages to see which page is more effective. If you want to try multiple pages feel free, but keep track of what the changes are. If you have more pages tested at once you might want to get a larger data pool to make the most accurate decision regarding the winning page. Once finding your winning page, create another A/B test to further test and optimize your page so you can to continuously improve your conversion rate. The tests can be as simple as a different call to action, or as big as a new description or formatting change.
With all of the changes to the marketing world during the last year and vaccines starting to be rolled out, it is clear you need to analyze how you consumers have been behaving during and post pandemic. Normally this process would be easy to predict, but with these drastic changes you might need to change your methods. Extensive A/B testing and understanding consumer psychology will help you gain an advantage with both new and existing changes to the market.