Where Friction Drives Purchases: Navigating The Messy Middle Of The Customer Journey

Let’s take a quick walk down internet street. It’s open 24/7. It’s the largest shopping district you’ve ever seen. And you can get to any part of it in the time it takes to blink.

If you can’t decide on what to buy, there are places you can go that will rank and compare every product in every imaginable way, sorting and filtering until you see something you like. And if you still can’t decide, you can ask a friend, expert, or celebrity for advice. They’re all here too.

“Sounds complicated, right? And yet, here on internet street it doesn’t really feel that way. The messy middle is a complex space for marketers, where customers are won or lost but, from the consumer perspective, people are doing what they’ve always done – perceiving a need and trying to answer it with a purchase. The fundamental mechanics of shopping may have changed beyond recognition on the web, but we’ve adapted. Mental modes and behavioural biases that served our early ancestors turn out to be just as useful for cutting through the complexity of shopping on the internet.” – Google’s consumer insights team 

Navigate the messy middle.

For marketers, the story is a little different. They need to show up at key moments of exploration and evaluation to convert purchases. They need to understand customer triggers even when customers themselves may not understand them or need to.

Consumers look for information about a category’s products and brands and then weigh all the options. According to Alistair Rennie and Jonny Protheroe, Google’s consumer insights team, this equates to two different mental modes in the messy middle: exploration, an expansive activity, and evaluation, a reductive activity.

Whatever a person is doing, across a huge array of online sources, such as search engines, social media, aggregators, and review websites can be classified into one of these two mental modes. They loop through them repeatedly until they arrive at a purchasing decision. Their research shows that more times than not, the purchasing decision is none at all.

The question for marketers has always been how to reduce friction to drive purchases. But what if it’s less about reducing effort and more about giving consumers back control? Jon Picoult, author of FROM IMPRESSED TO OBSESSED, Founder & Principal of Watermark Consulting, certainly thinks so.

Build complexity into the decision process.

The goal isn’t necessarily to force people to exit the loop of recognition and evaluation, but to provide them with the information and reassurance they need to make a decision.

Although the messy middle is a complicated place, it’s important to remember that to consumers it just feels like normal shopping. Part of normal shopping is making a decision and then justifying to yourself that it was the right one. So how can marketers tell consumers they made the right one? By adding one no-brainer question into the journey.

Amazon – the company that’s famous for its effortless customer experience – is curiously making it just one click harder for people to buy products through their platform.

As Jon Picoult said in a recent Forbes article:

“On numerous product pages, the online retailer now displays a checkbox that the user has to click on in order to apply an available coupon.”

“Let’s remember, this is a retailing legend that has been relentless in removing friction from the purchase experience. This is the company that pioneered (and patented) the 1-Click Purchase Button, introduced voice-activated purchases (through Alexa), and launched a sensor-outfitted grocery store (Amazon Go) that completely eliminates the need for customers to checkout.”

So, why on Earth would Amazon want to inject more effort into the purchase process with these coupon checkboxes? Why don’t they just automatically include the coupon in the posted price?

While reducing effort in purchasing decisions is an important factor for marketers to consider, it’s not the only one. Understanding consumers’ desire for control is important too.

“It’s human nature that we are control freaks. We like to have command over what’s going on around us (or at least the perception that we’re in command). And, so, when you make a customer feel as though they are in control of an experience – that they can influence it, shape it – then they’re much more likely to feel good about the whole encounter.”

“The mere act of checking a box to apply a coupon provides that sense of control to the Amazon consumer, creating a more engaging purchase experience that helps turn browsers into buyers (thereby avoiding the bane of all online retailers – cart abandonment).”

Through the coupon checkbox, Amazon is encouraging its customers to feel more invested in the purchasing experience by giving them greater perceived influence over it, even when the decision is one that any customer would make.

Stir emotion.

“Get closer than ever to your customers. So close, in fact, that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves.” – Steve Jobs.

When a shopper feels like they’ve somehow stumbled upon a great deal, it triggers an emotional reaction. And that emotional reaction is enforced when the consumer must invest the right level of effort to earn the reward. Capturing a sweet deal on a product feels a lot more exhilarating when you have to earn it.

When you have a great idea to present to your CEO, manager, or team, what do you do? Do you immediately start with “here’s what we should do.”? Of course not. You make the information as mind-numbingly obvious as possible and let them come to the conclusion you intended. After all, CEO’s are more likely to receive ideas when they think they came up with them themselves, just like your customers.