Changes In Consumer Behavior Brought On By The Pandemic

Not so long ago, an article was published on the CNBC website that during the pandemic, instead of the usual shopping in shopping centers, people started to add products to the shopping basket of an online store and leaving the site without paying.

For those who aren’t up to the task of reading the full article, here are three main claims:

• People have found a new kind of entertainment that helps kill time during a pandemic.
• Adding goods to the shopping basket of an online store has replaced the usual shopping in malls and shopping centers
• Online shopping is a way to pass the time, people who enter the shop are not going to buy anything, but simply add the product to the basket.

And all this seems to be true because people have always liked to spend time shopping. For many, it is a lifestyle, whilst for others even an addiction. However, the statistics and cases below point to something completely different, more precisely, to the problem of shops because they were not ready for the influx of customers who had not bought things online before. Not only shops, but also other online businesses that — during the pandemic — thought about changing the psychological profile of the customer and acted accordingly, therefore maintaining sales, and even increasing them.

Consumer psychology and retail psychology

The pandemic has completely changed the psychological profile of the consumer. After all, it is precisely because of the pandemic that people who used to buy things offline were forced to place orders online. It is very important here to understand that many of these:

• do not trust online stores
• have a poor command of a computer or a smartphone
• want to hold the item in their hands before making a purchase
• assume that they will receive goods on the same day, or at least the day after

Now, here are the main reasons why people leave the site, with items still in their shopping basket:

• Increase in the value of goods (taxes, shipping, additional costs)
• Registration on the site. To make a purchase, the visitor must register
• Delivery taking too long
• The order form is too long and spread over several pages
• Not wanting to enter credit card details online for security reasons
• The cost of a product on the site increased when proceeded to checkout

I will clarify right away that these are only some of the most popular reasons for refusing purchases.

Next, let’s look at the position of an online store and the reasons not to change anything in the way the site works:

• At the time of a pandemic, all businesses are in difficulty
• We have been working this way for 10 years and everything was fine, why change something now?
• Any changes are risky and entail additional costs, it is easier to wait until the world gets back to normal

And if we were to take all these factors into account for a quick analysis, we can already guess why the percentage of “abandoned baskets” in some stores went up from 85.1% to 94.4%. Getting a little ahead of ourselves, I will say that not only shops had problems with abandoned orders, but more on that further.

The analytics that we have collected show completely different numbers for stores and businesses that were able to navigate, analyze and take appropriate measures.

Consumer behavior analysis and statistics

A little about what we do, what the statistics are based on, and the cases that we will give below. PentryForms allows you to receive data from site forms even if the user has not clicked the “Submit” button. That is, as soon as the user went to the contact page or the order page and began to fill in his data, all information is stored on the server, which allows business owners to quickly contact a potential buyer and attract him to make a purchase in their store, or order their service.

In short, online businesses can return indecisive customers, and online stores can motivate those who added a product to the basket, started the purchasing process or registration, but left. There is another feature that is worth mentioning. For some e-commerce CMS, we have found a solution that allows you to track the path of the visitor on the site and see which particular product he was interested in. This is very important because it is targeted emails and calls that increase conversion. There is no greater motivation to buy than a timely offered discount on the product the buyer needs.

What about other online businesses?

There is nothing strange in the fact that online stores began to talk about lost profits because almost every store has an “abandoned basket email” module installed, which sends automatic emails to users who registered on the site, added an item to the basket, and did not pay in the end. This action is called “lost profit,” although in my understanding it is not a lost profit, but a completely normal behavior of visitors. If a person arrives at a shopping center, tries on a suit, but does not buy it, this is not a lost profit, therefore, sellers should not talk about lost money, but should think about shortcomings in the battle for the love of customers.

Why are ordinary online businesses keep silent about lost profits? It’s simple — most of them do not have statistics that would make it possible to understand what percentage of visitors leave the site by starting to fill out an order or feedback form. And here I will give statistics on some of the most interesting, in my opinion, business areas. I will clarify right away that these are all statistics of B2C businesses, for B2B the data is completely different.

Cybersecurity

Problem: the site has several forms: a feedback form, an order form, a form for sending confidential information. Approximately 80% of abandoned forms are for ordering and sending information. This is due to the fact that a potential customer adds services to the basket on several sites at once and looks at where he can get the best offer. Accordingly, if a competitor automatically adds a discount coupon to a visitor’s basket, then he will most likely go there, even if the cost of services is slightly higher because he can get a more expensive (therefore he thinks, better) service for almost the same money. The sensitive information submission form is another problem we faced. Visitors are very reluctant to share information via web forms even after paying for services.

Solution: to send confidential information, users were sent to a page where data transmission was encrypted, as indicated by a large heading above the data submission form. Thus, the problem of information leakage fear for indecisive customers was defeated. And the number of abandoned forms has dropped significantly.

Plastic surgery and cosmetology

Problem: the site contains feedback forms on each service page. The largest number of unfilled forms was on the pages for intimate cosmetic surgery. This is primarily due to the fact that the feedback forms ask for too much information. Often, clients who seek hymen reconstruction rely on complete anonymity and are very reluctant to share their name and phone number.

Solution: experience has shown that the order and feedback form should be unique for each type of surgery. The same data cannot be requested from patients who came for intimate cosmetic surgery as opposed to rhinoplasty. The form has been simplified to a minimum, all fields except email have become optional. The number of abandoned forms has decreased by 2 times.

Online clothing store

Problem: The most interesting factor and the main problem was that in this store, due to certain features, it was impossible to disable registration. Looking at the analytics, everyone understood that the registration form repels buyers, but without it, it is not possible to gather data either.

Solution: it was decided to make registration after payment. That is, when the visitor paid for the goods and went to the “thank you page”, on it, he was asked to indicate the necessary data. If the user closed the page, the managers contacted him and sent an automatically generated username and password by email, asking him to fill in the necessary data in his personal account.

Before drawing conclusions

We have presented statistics on several interesting cases from the lives of clients (exclusively with their consent), as well as interesting solutions to problems that no one thought about before. We cannot publish graphs of sales growth or graphs of increasing conversions, but we can draw your attention to some aspects of modern online business. It’s no secret that the world is changing rapidly, and with it, so is human psychology. If you keep up with the times, then even with those who visit your store, to simply click on a few buttons and look at the product, it is possible to work with and motivate them to make a purchase. There are no bad leads, there are leads that we just don’t know how to work with yet.

Conclusions

People will always go to shops just to pass the time. For some, shopping is just leisure, while others simply add a product to the basket to get the feeling as if they have already bought it. It has always been this way and it will always be so, only sometimes the degree varies. It is important to be able to act accordingly with the situation and find an effective solution to the problem should it arise. Here are the conclusions that come out of this reasoning:

What worked before will not necessarily work now. Time brings its own changes in all spheres of life, and what worked before may become useless today. When shopkeepers talk about customers misbehaving, I have a few questions:

• What measures have you taken to improve the situation?
• Why were you not ready for this?
• Maybe your store or marketing is outdated or not ready for the new reality?

Each industry has its own specifics, of course, but I can definitely say that in any situation it is worth thinking about how you can earn more in new conditions. In any crisis, there are always people who make money from it. And if you have not learned how to make money from customers who have entered your shop and added a product to the basket, then the question stays with you.