Beyond the aesthetics, many products that are on sale through competing eCommerce vendors are very similar. In fact, they may even be the same product white-labelled as their own. Something we’re seeing more of on sites such as Amazon.
So if you are selling the same product as your competitors, how do you make yours more desirable, without creating a race to the bottom by lowering prices?
Understand your customers with behavioural psychology
To make your product stand out, you need an edge. To achieve this we recommend giving attention to the three main psychological motivation triggers:
- Rational Motivation: Driven by Competency & Facts
- Contextual Motivation: Driven by recognition and purpose.
- Emotional Motivation: Driven by affiliation & authenticity
TIP: Don’t just focus on the rational facts
According to behavioural economists, consumer decision-making is 30% rational and 70% emotional.
It’s all too easy to get caught up in the rational factors when the product description is clear; the spec will detail dimensions, material, colour, weight etc. And while these are all good points, it’s the same as every other seller, making price the decision-making quality for potential buyers.
Even if there are several rational reasons to buy your product: humans aren’t rational animals. We like to think that we weigh up the options in advance, but studies show that isn’t the case. We make decisions based on gut feelings, underlying fears and biases - and then we assign rational reasons for those actions after the event.
Give our behavioural test a whirl to see which rationale drives your thinking.
SO, how do you stand out?
As we mentioned earlier, multiple factors drive purchase decisions and tapping into a user’s need at any given time will help your product to stand out. These fall into the categories of emotional and contextual drivers.
Example: let’s take an oak dining room table
The rational factors we already spoke about are addressed in the specifications and cost of the item. These cover if an item is fit for a user's purpose.
- Will this dining table fit in my available space?
- Is it made from the material I want?
- What does it cost?
By layering contextual and emotional descriptions we can really differentiate this table from that sold by your competitors.
These examples should give you a better idea of how we can tap into these additional drivers. Now let’s put that into practice;
You can see that the example on the right builds upon the very matter-of-fact rational description that we see on the left. The addition of contextual and emotional triggers gives you more chances to hook a user's behavioural drivers, thus making the product more desirable, despite being the same product. These are the gut feelings, underlying fears and biases we spoke of earlier.
The power of behavioural on your results
You could be surprised how powerful even small changes based on Behavioural Psychology can be. At Reflect Digital we regularly push the boundaries of what our clients can achieve by testing these techniques on their adverts, landing pages, product pages and more.
Take one example. We simply changed the header and two introductory sentences to one of our clients’ main landing pages. We changed that messaging from their standard brand message to emotional messaging based on our bespoke human behaviour framework. The difference in conversion rate surprised even us:
What happens now?
Understanding your audience is the first step in being able to craft product descriptions that stand out from your competitors and resonate with users to drive conversions. You need to learn what drives them, why are they looking at your product? How can you make the price not the sole differentiating factor for shoppers?
Consider how the language you use resonates with your market, for example, if you’re targeting trend-conscious millennials, then phrases such as ‘classic’ or ‘unique’ may not have the desired impact while ‘as seen in XYZ celebrities home’ and ‘this seasons must have’ would drive more of an interest.
Checklist:
- Determine who your target audience for this product or service is.
- Review your product description. Does this resonate with your chosen audience?
- Review the language used - have you used emotive language or have you focused on facts and figures? Make sure you have a mix of rational, emotional and contextual drivers as described above to make the description memorable.
- Split test - if you are targeting multiple age groups separately via paid media, for example, the drivers you use to inspire them may be different.
Not sure what drives your audience? Speak to our paid media team at Reflect Digital who can help you to uncover what works and what doesn’t.
