Reducing Or Eliminating Barriers Of Purchase

Now that customers understand your product and want it, your job is to answer all the questions and reduce any uncertainty they have. If they can't overcome these barriers, they are unlikely to buy.

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Some of the common questions customers have at this stage:

• Will the product look like the one in photos?
• Can I trust this shop?
• Do they have the expertise?
• Do other people like this product?
• Does the product actually do what it’s promised to do?
• How fast will it work? (for result-based products)
• What if it breaks in the future? Is it difficult to ask for a refund?
• This product is perfect for my niece’s birthday, I wonder if it will arrive on time…

Let's look at the ways to answer these questions to make their purchase decision easier:

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Accurate Product Photos

Make sure your photos look as close to the real product as possible. Check them across multiple screens to double check.

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For some simple photo editing, I would recommend using Lightroom or Canva.

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Differentiating Your Product

There are many ways you can differentiate your craft. It can be from the product itself, like the quality of material, ease of use, unique design, etc. Or it can be in the form of “soft product”, like the impeccable after-sale service or the beautiful gift wrapping.

Let’s look at a few ways to differentiate your product. 

Establishing Trust For Your Shop

Position yourself as an experienced and trusted advisor in your niche. Knowing your product well is important. 

When you are crafting your listing, sprinkle in some behind the scenes photos and even technical details of how you make your product is good. Just make sure you say it in an easy-to-understand way.

If you have a long experience in what you do or you have a related education, stating that can improve your trustworthiness.

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If Customers Love Your Product, Show It Off

If you have many followers on social media, show them as social proof is a powerful way to establish trust (and also tap into customers’ FOMO mentality).

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Another way to do that is to extract some of your best customer reviews and put them in the product description and product photo (a photo with 3-5 related quotes from customer reviews).

Guarantees Makes It Easier For Customers To Commit

Guarantees can be a powerful tool that can turn skeptical shoppers into happy customers.

Customers are sometimes worried about the risk of a purchase: What if the color is not right? What if it doesn’t fit? What if it breaks? Those situations are best to counter with a guarantee.

An effective guarantee can cancel out or greatly reduce the risk of purchase. Some characteristics of an effective guarantee:

• Enough time is given for customer to test the product
• Easy to be initiated by the customer
• Not too limiting
• Clear and transparent

There can be different types of guarantees. If you are selling something that is more mechanical or electronic, a guarantee that it will work properly will be effective. For clothing, jewelry or stylish products, a satisfaction guarantee will be good. Or for seasonal products, a shipping date guarantee (only if you can) will be very useful.

Yes, guarantees increase your costs, but in reality and in my experience, there aren’t as many customers using the guarantee as you think. To test out how much the cost will increase for you. Set out a period of time (like 2 weeks) or a certain number of orders (like 20 orders), and see how many customers actually invoke the guarantee offer after your promised period. After that, go back and calculate the increase in cost. You may realise that you can even make a bigger, more powerful guarantee without increasing the cost.

Let’s look at some examples of product guarantees.

Bad example of guarantee

From Hilton Hotel:

Time frame is too short: Only 24 hours to initiate

Highly restrictive: For example, even if the check-out time is different, the guarantee doesn’t qualify.

The guarantee is bad enough that customers complain about it in a reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Hilton/comments/gyiw72/the_hilton_price_match_guarantee_is_fake/

Good example of guarantee

From Body Shop:

“We believe strongly in our products and their quality and want you to be completely happy with your purchase. If you are disappointed in any way please contact us within 30 days of purchase.”

From Warby Parker:

Warby Parker lets you try glasses at home before customers need to decide which pair to go with. They make the return process simple to follow as well.

Have Clear Shop Policy

Etsy has made a shop policy template where it’s easy to customise to your shop. The sections include shipping, return policy and more. If you have extra information you’d like to cover, putting them in the FAQ section could be an option, but keep in mind that the info in FAQ is not considered shop policy in case of dispute.

Be careful not to make the return process too difficult or the return time frame too short. You need the customers to say “Yes, I will have enough time to try and decide. And it’s ok to buy now because the return process seems reasonably easy.”

If you choose to write your own shop policy, here are some of the questions to prompt you:

• What's the shipping/delivery time frame?
• What's the return/refund time frame after customers received their product?
• What’s the details of the return process?
• Who pays for return shipping?
• Is there a restocking fee?
• Is there a resizing service?
• What if the customer doesn’t receive the item (lost mail/substantially delayed mail)?
  

Pricing Your Shipping

Etsy has been pushing all sellers to offer free shipping by prioritising shops in search ranking. Check out this guide on how to offer free shipping and not lose money.

The gist is, if your shipping cost is lower enough (around or under US$5) or your product is selling at a decent price (higher than $40), you are able to add the shipping cost to your product and charge a higher price.

But if you are selling a low price item (like supplies) or the shipping cost is high (around or above US$10), then it may not be a good idea to put the shipping in the product price.

Clear Shipping & Delivery Time Frame

Customers want to know when they will get the product if they decide to buy. Clear communication without over-promising is key here.

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Set the shipping profile of your product listings to reflect accurate time frame of creating, shipping and delivering the product. You can also offer express shipping as an add-on.

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During holiday seasons like Christmas, many customers shop with a specific time frame in mind. Make sure to communicate your shipping cut-off date clearly (e.g. Order before 18th December to receive by Christmas).

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