If you run an ecommerce business, you shouldn’t be too surprised to hear that around 67% of those who hang around your site and add a product to their carts will end up abandoning their cart without completing the checkout process.
Whether you’re a freelancer that wants to get more paying clients or you’re a startup that wants to double revenue without having to increase your marketing budget, understanding the most common objections customers have when paying for your products or services and effectively addressing these concerns will give you a deserved revenue boost.
In this article, I’ll be sharing 7 ways you can overcome customer objections and get your customers to pay for your products or services.
The objections your customers might have about paying for your products or services can be grouped into two categories:
Risks and Fears
You can get more sales by overcoming these risks and fears your customers have.
1. Offer to Help Them Effectively Use Your Product: When it comes to paying for your product or service, the number one fear potential customers will have is “will it work for me?” because, ultimately, no matter how great or impressive your product is it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t work for the person that will be buying it.
You can help your customers overcome the fear they have about your product working for them or not by offering to offer them help with using your product; it could be a form of walk-through, unlimited customer support or even personally helping them configure/implementing what you offer.
2. Provide a Money-back Guarantee: You can take things to the next level by offering to return your customers’ money if they’re not satisfied with the product you offer.
A lot of businesses are afraid of offering a money-back guarantee because they’re afraid that some people will take advantage of it; now, the fact is that almost all those who will ask for a refund will do so even if you don’t offer a guarantee. If you don’t offer a refund, they’ll most likely do it via a chargeback that will cost you more money than they paid you.
Now imagine what will happen if you offer a money-back guarantee and sales double or even triple; a great case study that proves the effectiveness of this is Charlie’s in which he explains how his client increased sales every time he became more liberal with his money-back guarantee.
You could offer 30-days money back guarantee, 3-months or even a year; some people will even take things further and offer to pay double the amount a customer pays for a product. It depends on your level of assurance in your product/service, the risk involved and how liberal you want to be with your guarantee.
3. Use Social Proof: It is human nature to do what everyone else is doing and we all know that nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd.
Two major studies that prove this are this study from Google and this one from CompUSA; the Google study revealed that 70% of Americans now look at product ratings and reviews before buying a product online while the CompUSA study reveals that 63% of customers are more likely to buy from a site that has product ratings and reviews.
In other words, when most people look for signals on whether a product is right for them or not they try to find validation from other people using the product; if you effectively use social proof in your copy to let your customers realize that other people like them are using and enjoying your product, you’ll be able to get more sales.
4. Assure them of their Security: Recent data from Unisys Security Index has revealed that the number one fear Americans have is that of being a victim of credit card fraud. With all the reports about hacking and network breaches lately, people are becoming increasingly careful when they buy online.
By using a reliable payment processor and letting your customers know this, and by taking extra measures to ensure your customers’ security and letting them know about it, you’ll be able to see a lot more sales on your website.
Lack of Time and Patience
The next few objections stems from the increasing lack of time and patience customers have in today’s world. Here are a few tips on that.
5. Reduce the Number of Required Payment Fields: The more fields your customers have to fill before they can buy, the more likely they won’t buy from you.
A great way to get more people to pay for your products and services is by limiting the number of fields they have to fill or the number of questions they need to answer; the effectiveness of this was demonstrated recently by Expedia when a single field they removed from their payment form resulted in additional $12 million in yearly revenue for them.
6. Simplify the Checkout Process: How many checkout pages do customers have to view before they can finally really checkout or how many “Yes” do they have to answer? If it is more than one, then it might be costing you sales.
A recent Webcredible survey revealed that 10% of online buyers hate having to deal with lengthy checkout processes and as a result decide to move to another website; by simplifying the checkout process on your website, you’ll be able to get a lot more people to buy your products.
7. Make Your Website Insanely Fast: Slow websites alone cost the US economy over $500 billion yearly and recent data has shown that most people expect a site to load in under 2 seconds and that a one second delay in site loading speed could cost up to 7% in conversions.
What’s even more is the fact that most users would never return to a site they had bad experience with; so making your website is faster won’t only help you make more sales, it’ll help you gain more lifelong customers.
This guest post is written by Joseph; when he’s not studying the psychology behind why people buy and how payments work, he’s busy handling marketing for ACH-Payments.
Image Credit: Shutterstock.com
