Ecommerce Personalities: Get to Know Your Customers and Prospects! (PART ONE)

As an e-tailer, it is important to know the behaviour of your prospects and customers in order to offer them the most relevant offers.

For this, Content Square, who specialise in customer experience optimization, has spent the last few months investigating ecommerce personalities and have now come up with 16 representative online shopper behaviours. This is the ultimate opportunity for you get to better know and understand your customers, especially as 80 out of every 100 internet users correspond to at least one of these profiles.

The Thrifty Shopper: 69% of Online Shoppers

The thrifty shopper attaches great importance to good deals (discount codes, vouchers …) and of course pays attention to prices. Very clear with their budget, they tend to display products in ascending price order while scrutinising the total order amount to adjust their shopping basket if necessary. The latter impacts their average basket, as they spend 25% less than the average online shopper. On the lookout for good deals, they don’t wait around when they see an interesting offer.

Tip: Showcase your deals on your home page to attract the frugal as the arrival in your online store.

The Comparison Shopper: 49% of Future Buyers

The comparer is one of the most frequently found profiles on ecommerce sites. They are happy to come back to the e-store several times (10 times on average) to compare products and find the best price, before ordering. They twice as much time looking at the product pages to make sure they are making the right choice.

Tip: Make sure you give shoppers the ability to save their baskets and to put items into wish lists, to make it easier for them to purchase once they have made their minds up.

The Lazy Shopper: 45% of Internauts  don’t Fancy Filling Out Forms

Lazy shoppers don’t like to be hampered with boring tasks during their buying journey. Whether being asked to create an account, fill out a form or fill in fields (password, email address …), lazy shoppers tend to give up at easily. They will therefore click less, scroll less and will be discouraged easily.

Tip: Simplify the buying process by offering the option to order without having to create an account, for example.

The Hurried Shopper: 23% of Internet Users

The pressed spends about 40 seconds per page and quickly interacts within her buying journey, since takes 25 seconds before the first click. The pressed knows what he wants and goes straight to the point, which leads to hesitation almost 2 times less than the general Internet users.

Tip: Make your pages are as clear as possible to meet the rush.

The Opportunistic Shopper: 21% of shoppers

Opportunistic shoppers wait for sales periods before making purchases: private sales, sales, Christmas period deals, flash sales… Keen on finding good deals, they don’t necessarily buy cheaper, but will wait until a discount opportunity arises before purchasing on an online store. Although opportunistic shoppers may revisit sites several times (5 times on average), they will wait until the sales start before purchasing.

Tip: Make sure you send out email campaigns to share upcoming sales with your customers.

The Expert Shopper: 20% of shoppers

The connoisseur knows what they want and have a specific purchasing goals to match their expectations. This allows them to navigate efficiently, spending 7 times less time browsing on average thus, consulting 4 times less pages with a 100% conversion rate.

Tip: If the expert manages to find what they’re looking for quickly on your site, it’s because they know exactly what they are looking for and they know your site well. To encourage them, set up emailing campaigns to offer them a range of products linked to their previous purchases.

The Loyal Shopper: 15% of Customers

Loyal shoppers are particularly fond of the site and know it perfectly, as they visit regularly. Whether they visit to discover the newest items or the latest deals, loyal customers will return to a site about 5 times a month and the average session length is 40 minutes, compared to the average 18 minutes spent by other internauts.

Tip: Invest in and reward loyal shoppers so that they  continue to come to your site and to speak about it to attract other potential customers.

The Casual Browser: 13% of Internet users

The casual browser takes their time on ecommerce sites. They can spend between 30 minutes and two hours on an online store before making an order and takes almost 2 times longer on average to convert. The casual browser is also hesitant, consulting more than 40 pages on average before making a decision.

Tip: Make it easy to find information and highlight reassuring elements to help them decide more quickly.

If you have found the results of this study, conducted by Content Square interesting, then watch out for PART TWO next week.

Note: Two month study (June and July 2015) from 15 pre-defined criteria; studied over 100 ecommerce sites in 11 countries over 6 sectors.