According to BigCommerce, 56% of Americans prefer to shop online rather than buying through a physical store. eCommerce is growing 23% year-by-year. Men and Women are spending 5 hours every week to shop online.

Still wondering why understanding the psychology of your consumer is not relevant to your business success? Not to worry, as you are about to discover industry essential factors that affect the buying decision of the modern-day consumers.

Flexible Payment Options

The market is teeming with a plethora of payment options these days. Consumer Payment Study conducted by TSYSin 2016, revealed that credit card is the most favorable payment option while doing online purchase, while PayPal ranks second when it comes to payment options in the most widely developed countries. On the other hand,cash-on-delivery is more the alternate mode of payment in Asia. We Chat and Ali pay are common in India and China.

The key takeaway here is that based on your target market user-base, you need to choose a payment method that is applicable and trustworthy for them. Offering easier payment options to your customers increases the chances of them buying from you.

Customer Reviews 

In a survey organized by brightlocal.com, 85% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Including real Customer reviews, preferably with photos of their received products, is one of the most compelling factors which influences their buying decision. Companies have even resorted to rewarding customers to entice them into posting positive reviews. Constructive reviews naturally stem from solving real-life problems of customers and providing them with exceptional and unparalleled customer experience. Facebook and Yelp are no doubt the most trusted sites for customers who are willing to go for local services, while Google &BBB.org tag along in their wake.

Shopping Cart abandonment

“Abandonment is an ecommerce term used to describe a visitor on a web page who leaves that page before completing the desired action. Examples of abandonment include shopping cart abandonment, referring to visitors who add items to their online shopping cart, but exit without completing the purchase.” ~Webopedia

Normally eCommerce website development agencies do a pretty good job in taking all the right steps, be it taking care of finances, ensuring usability of E-commerce websites, coming up with brilliant products, but their revenue stream starts depleting at some point. What is the reason? It is because of shopping cart abandonment.

Just spare a moment and let the daunting reality sink in. For every 100 potential customers, you are losing almost 67 right before they get around to completing the purchase of the product. Now think, how much revenue you’re losing just because of errors in your shopping cart.

A survey done by Sale cycle global put the average cart abandonment rate at 75.6% across all sectors. And here is the division of reasons for shopping cart abandonment.

Choice Overload

Here’s another food for thought;you visit an e-commerce store to buy an iPhone 4S or iPhone 5. You select the brand Apple and start browsing the category. Here are a few possible search results you will find for your query:

• iPhone 4S 16 GB Wifi White
• iPhone 4S 16 GB Wifi Black
• iPhone 4S 16GB Wifi +3G White
• iPhone 4S 16GB Wifi+3G Black
• iPhone 5 (with 10 more variants)

Now, which one will you buy?

Answer: None!

Why? Because now you are even more confused than before you landed on the site. Before you were bombarded with a deluge of choices, you only had two options in mind to choose from, iPhone 4S or iPhone 5. Now you have 14 different choices within these two options, and as a result, you get frustrated and close the store to buy from a physical shop instead, where you would inevitably see the products for yourself and reach a better decision.

In her TED talk “How to Make Choosing Easier,”Iyengar studied a grocery store in Palo Alto  that boasted 348 varieties of jam.

Iyengar setup a tasting booth outside the store with only six varieties of jam, and people stopped at all the six booths which is 33% higher engagement than when 24 varieties were displayed.

If you’re willing to setup an appealing store, make sure that you focus more on the quality of the products rather than the options available to the customers. Keep fewer products in your store and your sales will escalate in no time.

Related Read: 7 TED Talks Every Social Media Marketer Must Watch

Where is the new product?

Most ecommerce stores make a huge mistake of launching a new product but burying it deep down in their categories, making it difficult for interested customers to know about its existence. A new trend suggests that if you’re launching a newfangled product, make the customers curious about it. Curiosity can add so much value when done the right way.

Although the charm of anew product influences the buying decision of only 10% of your customers, it is still a noticeable percentage for small business owners and Entrepreneurs to do something about it.

To wrap it all up

To open an eCommerce store is easy, but to keep your store running is the real art of business. What makes small brands big, and big brands grand is the way they understand and predict the psychology of their consumers.

If you want to lead in your niche, or at least survive in this digital age, you need to understand your consumers and give them what they want. Understanding the consumer psychology will help you achieve that goal faster.