How to Encourage Ethical Impulse Purchase & Still Satisfy Your Customers?

Businesses like you are always looking for ways to increase their sales. And one of the tricks for increasing sales is encouraging people to make impulse purchases!

However, that can be a double-edged sword! While you might be increasing your earnings in the short term, you could shoot yourself in the foot in the long term. That’s because if your customers don’t enjoy your products, then you won’t be doing any business with them in the future.

This article discussed how to encourage impulse buying while still satisfying your customers.

Why Do People Impulse Buy?

Before we get into finding ways of encouraging your customers to impulse buy, we need to understand why people do it in the first place. There are many potential reasons for it, but there’s one key thing: emotion.

Usually, people buy because of emotions, not logic. There’s a reason why people buy a luxurious Mercedes instead of a humble Toyota. That’s because they want to feel special and like they are part of something.

And impulse buying works the same way, but for a different reason! Usually, a person impulse buys something because they are interested in buying it, and they’re given a great deal for a limited time!

That makes people act like they don’t want to lose out on such a great deal!

There’s one more thing I want to tell you before we go over the different strategies for encouraging people to make impulse purchases. And that’s how to do it ethically!

It is straightforward to understand but hard to implement – give people as much value as possible. The thing is, people buy from you because they feel like they are getting more value out of your product than having the money in their wallet.

But when you’re unable to give that, people will feel as if they’ve been cheated! They think that you’ve overpromised, and they won’t probably do any business with you. Or worse, they might tell the world how bad your products are.

So make sure that when you’re encouraging impulse purchases, your customers get more value out of them than they take out of their pockets!

Encouraging Ethical Impulse Purchases

Now that you understand why people impulse buy and how to make it ethical. Let’s talk about the strategies for encouraging impulse purchases. That way, you can start growing orders.

#1 - Offer a Complimentary Product on Checkout

If your customer has already convinced themselves to buy from you, then the easiest way to get a little bit more out of them is by offering a complimentary product!

However, you need to keep one thing in mind. Make sure that your offer is under $20. Anything over that, and it’s hard for your potential customer to justify spending more.

For example, let’s say you own a Shopify or Shoplazza store where you sell watches. For this example, you could upsell some bands so your customers can mix and match them to suit their outfits better.

#2 - Offer Conditional Free Upgrades

Another way to encourage them to spend a little more is by giving them free upgrades when they meet some conditions. There are two offers you could make:

• Free shipping on orders over a certain threshold;
• Free gift on orders over a certain point.

However, you’ll have to make sure of one thing when creating a conditional free upgrade! It has to be straightforward and realistic for your customers to reach! You don’t want to make the order so high that your customer needs to spend hundreds of dollars just to get that upgrade. Most people cannot justify spending that much money!

So how do you make it realistic? The best way to do it is by first looking at your average order value. Then add a bit more money to the number, and you’re done! For example, if your order value is $45, you can offer free shipping to those who spend $60.

Conclusion

And that’s how you ethically encourage customers to impulse buy. So to recap, remember to give as much value to your customers as possible. If you don’t, you’ll just be manipulating people to purchase from you!

(Contributed by Andreas Ojala & Hermes Fang)