8 Types of Shoppers and How to Convert Them
The first step to achieving sales success is to get to know your target audience well. However, even when you know your target audience well, it still doesn’t have to mean that you understand what types of shoppers they are. Two consumers who buy the same product often come to the same purchasing decision following completely different paths. In addition to the need for a specific product, customers often strive to use shopping itself as a means for satisfying a whole set of different needs, which do not always necessarily have to do much with the product they purchase. The better you understand the different motivations that bring your customers to you, the more opportunities you will have to create more effective sales approaches.
It is amazing how many different things shopping means to different people. And while it is not possible to provide each customer with fully personalized service, it is possible to distinguish certain behavior patterns among customers and create data-based, tailored experiences for all these different types of shoppers.
In this article, we’ll have a closer look at the most prominent types of shoppers, analyze their motivation and offer approaches that can help you design more fine-tuned shopping experiences for them. Keep reading to learn more about:
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Discount hunters are the price-sensitive type of shoppers who are only looking for the best deals. A large percent of your shoppers will actually be price-sensitive and they will not hesitate to browse other stores just to compare the prices. This tendency to go for the best deal often doesn’t have a lot to do with the budget that the shopper has for the purchase – but more with the feeling that they outsmarted the market by finding the most affordable solution. The thing is prices between products of the same quality are often not that much different, so these shoppers essentially just need to feel that they made the best choice compared to other offers.
So, apart from keeping your prices competitive, let’s see what else you can do to attract and convert this type of shopper:
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Create special offers – this is an excellent solution if you are not ready to offer a real discount. People love free stuff, coupons, vouchers, etc, but for discount-seekers offers like “buy one get one” and similar are simply irresistible. You can easily create coupons and these kinds of offers for your store all by yourself, without any particular knowledge as a prerequisite.
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Emphasize the quality and additional benefits of the product. Price-sensitive shoppers often focus so much on numbers that they forget how much more they can actually get for just a slightly different price. Once they understand that they get more from you even if your price is not any lower than your competitor’s, they will perceive your offer as the more attractive one.
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Offer additional benefits – set up free shipping, offer prolonged customer support, and similar to add more value to your product so that the price is not the only thing that holds the customer’s attention.
Shopaholics are those impulsive and compulsive buyers whose purchasing decisions are ruled by emotions rather than any other factor. Although both impulsive and compulsive shopaholic types are quite addicted to shopping, the difference between them is that the impulsive one never plans shopping in advance, whereas the compulsive one plans it a lot in advance but both end up with much more than what they really need.
However, the real need that lurks behind the motivation of every shopaholic’s shopping spree is the urge to feel good, relieve anxiety, find excitement, have fun, stave off the stress, and all kinds of unpleasant feelings.
Generally speaking, these people use shopping as therapy and typically buy either small items that attract their attention but don’t affect their budget too much, or they just go in all and spend huge amounts on things that seem just perfect at the moment.
Since they are not motivated by reason, it is not easy to anticipate their needs. There are things you can do to encourage them to click the “Buy” button:
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Create a story around the product – shopaholics buy on a whim and stories are a great way to trigger their emotions. Using visual storytelling tactics like Google web stories is also a great way to appeal to a shopaholic.
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Offer attractive items on the cart page – you know the type of shopper in the market who places a bar of chocolate to the cart right before the counter just because it was at the right place at the right time.
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Create one-time offers – these types of shoppers are particularly sensitive to one-time deals, they will perceive your offer as a one-time chance for them to be happy.
These shoppers are often called the list shoppers as they typically make a need-based list and stick to it. They are often also referred to as reluctant shoppers because, for them, shopping is business, not fun. Their main concern is to find what they need quickly and easily. Comparing prices and offers is a waste of time for them and they will hardly buy anything other than what they really need.
To appeal to them, you don’t need any complex marketing strategy, just keep the purchasing process as smooth and simple as possible.
This type of shopper has the potential to become your loyal customer if you manage to create a streamlined, distraction-free shopping experience for them. To encourage them to come back to you, try these tactics:
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Offer quick shipment or pick-up in-store option – these customers want to get the shopping done as fast as possible.
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Make sure your store is easy to navigate – a shopper on a mission will easily give up shopping unless he finds what he needs quickly.
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Offer cross-sells. Ready-made sets of products that naturally go together may shorten the shopping time even more for these customers, and that’s exactly what they are hoping for.
Brand lovers are the loyal customers every brand owner is wishing for. They come back to your store regularly, make purchases, and don’t need any convincing. You already earned their trust and your brand probably has a high emotional value to them. Therefore, they are naturally prone to recommending it to others. All this makes brand lovers very important for you.
It is vital to recognize brand lovers and reward them for their loyalty. There is a number of tools that will help you determine the customers who keep coming back to you – use them to create your loyal customer base, and foster their loyalty.
You can encourage brand lovers to keep coming back to your store in a variety of ways:
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Exclusive offers for loyal customers are great to make brand lovers feel appreciated and valued.
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Referral program – for those who know and love your products well it will feel natural to recommend them to their friends and family through a referral program.
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Surveys – ask for their opinion and suggestions about new products via custom-made email surveys. This way not only will they feel valued, but you will also get the chance to get to know them better through their answers.
The modern age and internet allow the customer much more access to product information than ever before. It is no wonder that the number of shoppers who perform thorough research before shopping is on the rise.
The researchers typically read product reviews, explore all the important info about the product, consult other users via different forums, social media, and other online platforms so the moment they come to your online store they already have a pretty precise idea of what they want. But, unlike the list shoppers, they are not in a hurry, they would actually appreciate it if you could provide even more education about the product they want or about a similar product. These are the shoppers that you could inspire to buy more if you play well. Some useful approaches include:
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Having a blog full of top-quality content – you don’t even have to direct researchers to blog pages, they will explore them anyway. Keep your blog updated and make sure you publish new posts on a regular basis.
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Investing in SEO and search marketing is the most direct, proven way to reach this type of shoppers.
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Provide a favorable shopping experience – since these shoppers already know a lot about your brand and products, and they’ve already come to your store, make sure their shopping experience is smooth.
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Keep your website and all the product info updated – these shoppers will not forgive your sloppiness in this regard.
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Encourage all the customers to give you reviews, the more reviews you have and the more detailed they are, the better are your chances to convert researchers.
The indecisive shopper will stay on your pages for a longer period of time, he will put the items in the cart, then remove them, then replace them with similar items, and the process could go on and on and still often end with cart abandonment. For this type of shopper, it is important you are familiar with some of the most effective strategies for reducing cart abandonment. Their struggle to make a decision is really burdening for them, and the reasons why they struggle so much can range from the lack of money to the lack of information about the product. While you may naturally feel the urge to push them harder to make the purchase, this approach easily backfires and only makes them question their decisions even more. What does work with indecisive shoppers is a more tactful and kind approach that includes:
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Flexible refund policy – it is important for the indecisive shopper to feel safe, to feel like the decision he makes is not irreversible. Highlighting on the cart page that it is possible to change his mind even after the purchase is made is like an “open-end” for this type of customer.
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Lots of visuals to present product info – visuals appeal directly to emotions and since this kind of shopper is already too much in his head constantly weighing the pros and cons, an attractive infographic, table of benefits, and similar elements may engage him in a more intuitive manner and encourage him to take some initiative.
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Reviews and ratings can also be very helpful for this type of customer since they are often quite suspicious of claims made by the salesman. You can easily set a star rating system using a plugin.
The wanderer may have just accidentally stumbled upon your online store. This type of shopper is not looking for anything in particular but a splash of color, a good deal, a headline that targets some of their needs may easily prompt them to think about turning their wanderlust into shopping. They may easily choose to go for a good deal just as they could come and go to your pages for a few days until finding a good enough reason to spend money in your store. To convert this type of shopper you’ll need to apply smart tactics like:
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Retargeting campaigns – you need to get this type of shopper out of their fantasy world and you’ll do that by displaying deals and sales related to the products they showed interest for. Inform them via an email notification each time the price goes down on a product they explored or may be added to their wishlist.
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Make your website visually irresistible – an image will linger in the mind of a wanderer for days before he comes back to it. Although all types of shoppers react well to great visuals, for wanderers visuals may be what initially gets them to consider shopping. Also, make sure your images are optimized for search engines too so that the wonder could stumble upon your store more easily.
Perfectionist is also a shopper on a mission, but his mission is not to get things done as fast as possible but to get things done perfectly, and he will take as much time as he can to do that. This type of shopper will also do all the research just like the researcher type but with the aim of finding the utmost quality. Prices do not concern him, the item needs to fit his abstract criteria that may include a variety of pretty unrealistic demands. How do you make a perfectionist choose you – there are some basics you need to have taken care of to start:
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Your website needs to be updated, well organized, neat and all the info you share must be relevant, true, and precise. These shoppers take everything into account, and one sloppy mistake may make them doubt everything about the product. Therefore it is important to regularly check your site’s performance and there are plenty of tools that can help you do that easily.
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Create a sublime user experience – a page that loads slowly, a popup that is hard to remove and similar distractions are a huge turn-off for a perfectionist.
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Find a unique advantage for your product/service and make sure they are presented with all the relevant details. More than anything, the perfectionist loves to feel like he is special and one of a kind, and so the product he goes for needs to be just as special too.
In Conclusion
Retaining your loyal customers requires a lot less effort compared to acquiring new ones. Therefore, understanding all the different types of shoppers and the consumer behavior that goes with it may be a real game-changer for any online business. Many analytics tools will surely be of great use in this regard, and you should not hesitate to employ them. There are also some things that all shoppers appreciate regardless of their type – sublime user experience, distraction-free website, and transparent pricing policy. Bear in mind that every niche also has its own unique traits that dictate shopping habits and make sure you know them well too.
