How to know consumer behavior within your eCommerce?

One of the benefits of identifying your ideal client or buyer persona is that as a business owner, you can create an idea of what kind of consumer will be more inclined to engage with your eCommerce only by analyzing their demographic information, interests, and goals. 

 

As a result, it will be easier to tailor your strategies to attract more of these ideal clients and increase your profit. However, this is not the only step you can take to better understand your customers and ensure the positive development of your business. It is also possible by knowing your consumer behavior within your eCommerce. 

 

To familiarize yourself with this concept and how to apply it, it is necessary to first understand what consumer behavior is, its types, factors and importance, and then what market strategies you can implement. 

What is consumer behavior?

Consumer behavior is the decision-making process that an individual or group follows when buying or using products from a store, whether physically or online.  

 

Studying this behavior provides businesses with valuable information that allows them to answer the questions: How are my consumers shopping in my eCommerce? How can I improve their experience and increase the satisfaction rate and retention of my current and future clients? 

Factors that influence consumer behavior 

When a business seeks to understand its consumers or any consumer behavior, it must first comprehend what factors influence its decision-making. We can identify at least four:

• Personal: Elements such as age, occupation and income, as well as interests, hobbies, diet, needs, and lifestyle, can determine whether or not a customer decides to buy a certain product.  

• Social: This factor includes more cultural and family-centered aspects like religion, traditions, network, education, and ethnic background. 

• Ecommerce: For many customers, the website speed, accessibility, multiple payment methods, fast delivery, and overall the entire distribution of content on your eCommerce play a decisive role in their decisions. 

• Psychological: On a more deeper and abstract level, psychological factors such as motivation, perception, and personality can influence customer behavior. 

 

Types of consumer behavior

Given the variety of factors influencing why a customer decides to buy a product, it's understandable that there are just as many types of consumer behaviors. However, these behaviors have been categorized into four general types.  

Complex 

A complex behavior appears in a highly involved customer who will need to research multiple platforms in order to compare prices, catalog information, and make a pro and con list until they reach a purchasing decision. 

Habitual 

This customer presents the opposite of a complex behavior: they don't need to conduct extensive research to buy something, their decision-making process is effortless due to prior experience, habits, and personality. 

Dissonance-reducing

A person who struggles to make decisions and overthinks way too much may present a kind of dissonance-reducing shopping behavior, and for that, they will need constant reassurance from family members, friends, and customer support.

Variety-seeking

At first, this customer may appear as a dissonance-reducing type because they jump from one eCommerce to another. However, their motivation isn't driven by feelings of uncertainty but rather a preference for variety. They will seek any product that catches their attention without favoring a particular brand. 

Apply market research methods  

Knowing the factors and types of consumer behavior is key to better understanding your clients. However, you'll still need to put this new knowledge into practice and identify these elements in your current customers. 

 

So you can know for sure what improvements you'll need to make in your eCommerce, like hiring a mexican fulfillment solutions provider and upgrading the quality and presentation of your products. To ease the process, we recommend the following methods. 

1.- Data analysis 

By using specialized tools and techniques such as website analytics it's possible to track your clients behavior every time they interact with your eCommerce. This allows you to acquire valuable insights like browsing habits, purchase history, cart abandonment percentage, top-selling items, and much more. 

 

When you analyze this data, you can identify areas of opportunity to better meet your customers' needs and preferences. 

2.- Monitor trends 

An important part of why a client chooses to buy something is their preference, which can easily change due to fluctuations in current trends. If you want to know and understand part of your client's behavior, you need to monitor the type of trends they are exposed to according to their demographic, especially on social media.  

 

Pay attention to trending topics, hashtags, global events, and viral content so you can anticipate any change in your client's conduct by adapting some part of your eCommerce, without forgetting the core of your business, to this new trend. 

3.- Feedback 

Open a communication channel with your clients through online surveys, reviews or phone calls, allowing them to share with your customer service team their reasons for buying or not buying a product on your eCommerce site. 

 

This feedback can also include their personal opinion on what they like to see next in your eCommerce. By actively soliciting and listening to customer feedback, you demonstrate a commitment to meeting their needs and preferences as well as gaining valuable information that goes beyond any quantitative data.  

4.- Marketing experiments 

An even more radical option that would help you collect information on why your customer behaves in a certain way when interacting with your eCommerce is through controlled experiments focused on introducing specific variables to your platform. 

 

For example, what would happen if you change the colors of your website, reduce the amount of text, make the call to action buttons bigger, offer a variety of payment methods, change your packaging, offer a new kind of discount, or a limited edition product? 

 

These temporary modifications could make more evident the type of behavior that your customers have. And if the reception of the changes are positive you can consider making them a permanent part of your business. 

 

In this case you will need the help of a fulfillment center mexico if you want someone who can take care of the logistics aspects while you focus your efforts on monitoring these strategies. 

Why is it important to understand consumer behavior?

 

Overall the purpose of investing time and resources in better understanding your customer behavior is so that both your business and your clients can prosper. On one hand, knowing how they interact with your eCommerce will make it easier to identify their needs and what they expect from you. This will allow you to offer them convenience and exceptional customer service, which translate into long-term customer loyalty.

 

On the other hand, for your business, it means a boost in sales but, above all, the opportunity to enhance the quality of your website, products and marketing strategies, increasing your own satisfaction as a business owner. 

 

If you need more resources to achieve these goals, we encourage you to seek the help of our team and check our blog for extra content.