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Marketers have a hard, really hard job. Just look at what we’re up against:
- Site visitors aren’t sticking around. In 2020 Wolfgang Digital analyzed 130 million ecommerce site sessions and calculated the average session duration (time on site) was 2 minutes and 32 seconds.
- Less than 3% of our ad traffic makes a purchase.
- There is more and more regulation around cookie tracking which means remarketing is getting harder.
All of this means the marketer has one shot to convert the shopper and they need to communicate their whole pitch really fast.
Unfortunately, when try and do so much to drive conversions we can often make the experience even worse.
The challenge for the marketer is this, “where should I focus my attention?”
Your product detail page– the location where the buy/no-buy decision is made– is visited by three types of prospects:
Your current conversion rate is generated by the Believers. Our goal is to not touch this group since they are doing exactly what we want them to do.
At the other end of the spectrum sit Cynics. Cynics are impossible to please. No matter what we say, they’ll come back with “I’m not buying what your selling”. They simply aren’t open to being persuaded. You can try and convert cynics but it’s not a good idea.
Then come Skeptics. I like Skeptics and we marketers can learn a lot from them. Skeptics are posing questions that other shoppers– a large group of other shoppers– are also wondering. By addressing these questions we can meaningfully drive conversions. But I don’t want you to focus on this group until you’ve fully optimized the most important group: Healthy Skeptics.
Healthy Skeptics are defined by four qualities:
Thinking Like Healthy Skeptics
To understand the questions that may bubble in the mind of a Healthy Skeptic I read each line of the product description and ask:
- Why would this detail matter?
- Can this statement be backed up with evidence?
- Is this statement coming off as marketing speak? How can it be phrased as something a subject matter expert would say?
Proof
As a conversion agency our entire focus is on converting these Healthy Skeptics. Here are 3 case studies that show how to construct a sales pitch to influence this audience.
- Tiege.com When we develop test concepts we’re trying to not disturb the shoppers who are converting currently while adding new– previously unrealized conversion– by targeting Healthy Skeptics. This is done using two techniques. First, micro-improvements were added to the page, next came the long-form sales pitch, and this resulted in a 19% conversion rate bump.
P.S. There is also a testimonial video 📹 inside of the case study!
- Stix.golf: Once the long-form sales pitch has been created our goal is to maximize its discovery rate because if people don’t see it how can we know if the pitch is working? This case study shows how you can increase the discovery rate to 40%, which is 10x more than normal. It had a 26% impact on sales.
- PillowCube.com: Here is another case study that uses our micro-improvements and long-form sales pitch combo technique for maximizing conversions.
Digging Deeper
The purpose of this article was to shine a light on this narrow audience. I’m sure the moment you saw the explanation you had a bunch of ideas for your site. Good, go make those changes.
But if you feel stuck and need a little inspiration on the things to talk to Healthy Skeptics about we have the perfect cheatsheet: The 9 Truths About Online Shoppers.
~ Rishi Rawat
For the last 13 years, Rishi Rawat has been studying and experimenting with conversion optimization (CRO) to understand the minds of shoppers. His company, Frictionless Commerce specializes in helping Shopify sites improve product page conversions by 20% in 90 days.\
