Boost Ecommerce Conversions: Understanding Buyer Motivation

Understanding the motivations behind your buyers, how they interact with your ecommerce site, and where they are in terms of their decision-making process is crucial for any seller.

Here are some eye-opening statistics about today’s digital marketplace:

• 50-90% of the buyer’s journey is complete before a buyer reaches out to sales.
• 67% of the buyer’s journey is now completed digitally.
• 25% of buyers reveal their interest to vendors at the early stages of the journey.

These findings speak volumes about what goes on inside the heads of today’s consumers.

Gaining better insight into what drives them to visit your site and decide to purchase will set you up for more successful interactions with your customers.

What is Buyer Motivation?

Buyer motivation is the set of psychological factors behind a consumer’s decision to make a particular purchase.

That purchase is the end result of a process referred to as the “Buyer’s Journey” — a three-stage process consisting of:

1. Awareness.
2. Consideration.
3. Decision.

Some may define this using a different number of stages, but the underlying concepts are the same.

Let’s take a look at these stages and examine how they relate to a buyer’s purchasing motivation.

1. Awareness.

This is the primary stage of the journey, where a buyer becomes aware of a problem, want, or need.

It could be the need to purchase a smoke detector, or renter’s insurance, or anything for that matter.

The motivation here can be either internal or external (we’ll go into further detail about the differences in the next section), and it’s important that pain-points be addressed to help identify the problem.

2. Consideration.

Once a buyer is aware of their problem (or want or need), they are then motivated to start gathering information.

At this stage buyers are considering their options, so providing any product education resources like product specs, reviews, and other details will be greatly appreciated.

3. Decision.

It’s at this stage where the buyer is motivated to make a final decision and has determined that their needs have been met.

One important note to keep in mind stems from a 2009 study which discovered that two factors can affect final purchasing decisions:

1. Negative feedback from other customers.
2. The level of motivation to comply or accept the feedback.

The study’s authors noted the following example for a customer at the decision stage:

A customer chooses to buy a Nikon D80DSLR camera. However, because his good friend, who is also a photographer, gives him negative feedback, he will then be bound to change his preference.

Motivation itself can be generated either internally or externally – psychologists refer to this as intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation.

Internal motivation is what drives us to make decisions based on our own wants and/or needs.

It steers our behavior and actions toward goals and outcomes that are personally rewarding to us.

A consumer may have a desire — a want — to purchase a new car that’s more luxurious than their current model. By the same token, that same consumer may also be driven by the need to replace an older vehicle in decline.

External motivation, on the other hand, is driven by outside factors in our environment.

This is either the desire to gain something or avoid/mitigate risk and can be based upon rules and regulations or social pressure. While bike helmets are required by law in some places, even in the absence of legal consequences there is a fear of looking reckless in front of peers.

Coming back to the smoke detector reference from earlier, there can be multiple motives based on a buyer’s persona.

Homeowners, landlords, and renters are motivated in different ways in terms of why they purchase one — whether fear of code violations, fines, evictions, or lawsuits.

How to Determine Your Seller Motivation

Before we dive deeper into the motivations of our customers, it’s important to begin with a degree of self-examination and reflect on what your own motivations are as a seller.

The questions below will help to guide you in gaining more insight into your customer’s decision-making process.

1. Where do you want your product to be positioned in the market?

Seller, know thyself! Where — and what — do you want to be?

Some auto manufacturers, such as Lamborghini or Aston Martin, consider themselves to be firmly placed in the high-end luxury market.

Others, such as Hyundai, offer models appealing to different price points, with the Accent, Elantra, and Sonata lines.

For home furniture retailers, you have Walmart positioned on one end and Ethan Allen on the other (with IKEA sitting somewhere in the middle).

2. Who do you want to sell to?

Who do you want your customers to be?

Are they utilitarian, looking for only basic features/functions to accomplish the task, or status and prestige-driven, desiring extras that will make the experience even better?

Are they budget conscious, or is cost not an object?

3. What is your definition of a successful customer?

What is a happy customer to you?

Is it someone who will write glowing product reviews on your site or elsewhere on social media?

What factors do you deem most important that will drive repeat business?

Figure these out for your customer base and you will have a much better insight into both your motivations as well as theirs.