Tap into Buyer Behavior and Build a Better Website
In today’s technological environment it has become the norm for website buyers and sellers to invest in domain names, build websites around them and then flip those sites for profit. While this method seems easy on paper, the process of doing so is much more involved than many people might first realize.
Some website brokers have experienced the situation where inventory remains in their possession for weeks or month on end with no opportunity to find the right buyer. Often the reason for this is that the owner is only ever appealing to the ‘buyer’ and not to the ‘consumer,’ and yes, there is a difference.
Redefining the Consumer
Let’s redefine the consumer to mean ‘end user’. You are therefore not selling the websites that make up your portfolio to the highest bidder; you are in fact selling the services of that website to the end users – the people who will be coming to the website for product information and to follow through with purchase decisions motivated by marketing iniatives.
Essentially what this means is that when developing your portfolio for sale you need to be focusing your efforts on those factors that appeal to the intended target audience, and this has everything to do with consumer psychology.
What makes a Consumer Convert?
There are a whole host of contributing factors that affect the buying decision process of potential end users and they can be clearly observed as they go about their daily lives.
In essence, these critical tipping points influence buyer behavior each and every day. They are those intangible properties that make end users:
- Associate particular color schemes with feelings and emotions
- Navigate away from websites because they don’t find the layout appealing, or
- Opt into buying an item on sale even though they could hardly find a use for it
These factors affect how far end users make it through the buying decision process and ultimately determine whether or not an end user will convert.
Harnessing the Power of Split Testing
If you want to maximize the potential of your website you will need to invest some time and energy into A/B split testing. This is a process by which you would select two objects for comparison – the homepage for example – and then change one aspect on one of the pages while keeping the other as a control.
You would then present each layout to an assortment of end users that belong somewhere within your target audience. Then you would measure their responses to each item and compare performance results.
This information can then be used to tailor that webpage and may even be applicable to some of the other sites in your investment portfolio.
Placing Effective Price Points
This is an area that affects both the buyer and the end user as previously defined in this article. Buyers and end users alike now have more power over the negotiations that can take place when they consider parting with their hard-earned money.
If you advertize your entire portfolio on Flippa for instance, you will need to specify with statistical information to support your claims, how your site effectively earns its revenue and how this influences or justifies the price you’re selling it at. As such, it’s of vital importance that your prices accurately reflect how well your websites tap into buyer behavior.
Catering to the End User Experience
The degree to which you’ll be able to do this ultimately depends on how seamless you can make the sales process. Conversion rates are key and to improve them you’ll need to build a website that is well-designed, utilizes appropriate colors, displays prices clearly and lives up to any of its promises.
Unfortunately, doing this is not always easy and it isn’t an exact science. But that doesn’t mean that the term ‘buyer behavior’ loses any of its significance. Remember that when developing your inventory, you aren’t designing your sites for the buyer anywhere near as much as you are for the end user.
If you keep this in mind, you will end up attracting the right buyers for your portfolio and you will turn a profit.
