The 3 “Pre-Sells” Required to Make Every Ecommerce Sale

Looking for ways to increase your ecommerce sales? It’s time to take a hard look at the psychology behind selling your product.

A lot of ecommerce brands don’t think much about how they can maximize their interactions with every visitor that comes to their site. Since websites are thought to be easy to set up, many just follow a template, show off their product and hope people buy.

But if you really want to increase your conversion rate and maximize all your traffic, you’ll want to dig deeper and understand WHAT it is that makes people purchase.

There are actually three psychological barriers that are present in every buyer’s mind. If you understand what those are and how to unlock them, then you’ll be much more likely to get the sale. Overcoming each of those three barriers are like “pre-sells” you have to make before winning the actual sale.

In this post, we’re going to outline what those three “pre-sells” are and how to make them in order to increase your ecommerce sales.

How to Sell to Different Parts of Your Customer’s Mind

Marketing is essentially behavioral psychology applied to business. If you can understand the psychology of your customers (their mindset), you can unlock massive opportunities for your business.

Have you ever thought about what actually makes people take action to purchase your products?

Sure, you can set up a beautiful website, catchy emails, or trendy ads. But in order to get customers to buy your product, those elements need to sell different parts of your customer’s mind on several things. These different parts make up the “pre-sells” you must make before someone will hit “buy”. If these three things are in line, your sales will improve.

Pre-Sell #1: Emotional — Sell the Heart.

What is the emotional sell?
We know emotions drive actions. Just think about the irrational things people buy in the moment and regret later. With this in mind, emotion is like the fuel for the purchase. If you can elicit a strong emotion, the customer has the energy needed to buy.

This makes it the most powerful ingredient. A strong emotional response can technically grab the sale without anything else. But if it’s all that exists, buyers remorse and other things will set in.

It’s also important to note that some customer types are more emotional than others. Always be sure to dig into your customer avatars and understand their values in order to sell them effectively.

How do you create an emotional sell?
Your brand’s story and its purpose is the groundwork for creating an emotional sell. They are the ingredients you can use to build your company into a real brand that elicits strong customer emotions, and then that can be leveraged within your individual products.

Branding can be purpose-driven (for example, some companies are created based on a give-back model), but they don’t have to be. The best brands decide what emotions they want to create in their customers and then intentionally create those feelings in their website experience and in their marketing. For example, you might want your customers to feel excitement, confidence, adventurous, or inspiration. Decide the feeling you want to create and build your brand and marketing around it. Then, when it comes to your product, make sure the emotional sell continues to shine through. Remind customers of your brand’s “why”, and paint a picture for them of how your product will change their life.

Pre-Sell #2: Logical— Sell the Mind.

What is the logical sell?
Emotion may drive action, but logic is what drives decisions. It backs up the action someone is wanting to take. We’re all familiar with the feeling of wanting something and then analyzing the product details and customer reviews to rationalize the desire for making the purchase. The logical sell is bringing that information forward to make this step easy for the customer.

How do you create a logical sell?
This is where your product’s features and benefits, trust-building factors (such as customer reviews and your warranty and guarantee), and your irresistible offer (your value stack) come into play. All of this sells to the logical side of your customers’ minds.

Note that the way you lay out this information is important. Your product detail page needs to be set up in a way that’s intuitive, not distracting, and not overwhelming. If you’re looking for guidance, be sure to check out our guide, The Perfect Product Detail Page.

Pre-Sell #3: Time-Based— Create urgency.

What is the time-based sell?
The time-based sell is important simply because most visitors won’t hit “add to cart”. Customers’ lives are full of distractions, and most humans are procrastinators. That means that even if you nail the emotional and logical sell, you will still lose people. So we need to create deadlines and communicate to customers that they need to make this purchase asap.

This does not mean you have to be dishonest; it just means you need to be transparent. Ask yourself, “If I believe this product is important to a customer who has a need for it, how can I help them get past themselves and click purchase?”

How do you create a time-based sell?
Some of the best ways to create urgency may be timed offers, limited time discounts on certain products, or a sitewide sale or promotion. But you don’t always have to use discounts.

Time-based urgency might also look like “Limited Quantities” or “Going Fast”. You could use a countdown timer or deadline to create a sense of urgency and encourage customers to make a purchase before time runs out. You might also just use creative, persuasive messaging to communicate urgency. For example, for a skincare product, say, “Don’t spend another day wishing you had a clearer complexion”. For amazing drinkware, remind them, “Life is too short to drink your coffee cold”.

How Do These 3 Pre-Sells Add Up to the Actual Sale of the Product?

It’s important to understand what’s happening in your customers’ minds as they’re deciding whether or not to purchase your product. When you understand these factors and speak to what each side of the brain needs to hear, you can be much more effective at increasing your sales and healthy profits.

If you want to make sure each of these three sells are presented well on your ecommerce store and in the proper balance, don’t miss our guide to the Perfect Ecommerce Website. We’ve taken over a decade of experience building high-converting ecommerce stores and created strategic templates for the most important pages on your site. Get all these guides for free here, for a limited time: The Perfect Ecommerce Website Series.

 

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