What Makes People Buy Online

Discovering what triggers people to buy goods and services online can be one of the most powerful revelations you will ever experience in your internet marketing career. Once an understanding of purchasing decisions has been achieved, your whole approach to marketing may need a little tweaking, or even a complete overhaul. Read below to find out what makes most people click the Add To Cart button on a regular basis.

It’s no deep, dark secret, and the reason people buy things online is pretty much the same as in the offline world. I can sum it all up in one word.

Emotion.

That’s right, the biggest factor that figures into most buying done both online and offline is emotion. You can examine your sales stats every which way, do split test after split test, and tweak your sales copy until your eyeballs fall out, but until you understand that basic fact, you won’t have much data to analyze.

Consumers may start out looking for something that will fill a need, but chances are, online or off, there are many goods and services that will satisfy what they’re looking for. Picking one of the widgets out of all the widget sales pages online will mean that they have made some sort of emotional connection with the sales page. People buy things that make them feel good and emotionally secure. Armed with this knowledge, how do you think that we, as internet marketers, can appeal to this emotional side of our customers?

If you’re thinking that forming relationships with your visitors is one of the keys, you are right on target. People are much more apt to buy something from you after they’ve formed a relationship. In fact, the majority of the time people will not act on an offer the first time they see it. Instead, it may take 5 or 6 or even more contacts to convince people that you are trustworthy and real. Unless you enter into the bargain with the idea of creating an atmosphere of trust and friendship, you don’t stand much of a chance of making a sale.

The best way to get people to feel comfortable with you is to be a real person. Show them you’ve got a human side by telling them a story instead of reeling off facts and stats that prove to them that they need your product. Make your sales copy and emails something they can relate to instead of listing feature after feature.

Your number one priority when someone visits your sales page should be to engage your audience on an emotional level. Appeal to their human side, the one that has needs and feelings. They arrived at your page because they have a need to fill, and that’s a very rational thought, but that’s where the rationality ends. Once they have decided they need something, their decision making process will shift gears, and they’ll buy from a person that they feel they know and can trust, someone they feel an emotional attachment to.

Always remember, when a person decides they need to buy something, that’s probably the last time they’ll rationalize their thought process. When they actually pull the purchasing trigger, they’re doing so because buying the product has made them feel good emotionally. They’ve made a connection, and that’s why people buy online.

Ted Begnoche is writer and online marketer. You can visit is blog at http://netprofitpersuasion.com