You're not quite sure how it happened. One minute you're surfing the Web, the next you're opening a credit card bill for $100 in goodies you hadn't bargained on or budgeted for.
What makes you pull the trigger when there's nothing you absolutely have to buy? Online retailers have spent a lot of time figuring that out.
One thing's clear. People do tend to spend more on the Web, says Sucharita Mulpuru, senior retailing analyst with Forrester Research. The average online shopping transaction now runs as much as 15% more than the average brick-and-mortar purchase, she says.
Here are five of the top strategies that online retailers, who know that online customers tend to be more affluent, use to get you to fork over that hard-earned cash, and do it more frequently.
You don't have time to think
After years of making shoppers troll through page after boring Web page to get what they want, retailers have begun to fast track the whole experience.Search functions allow consumers to scan for products by size, color and attribute, giving them everything they most want to see gathered on one page. And these days, you don't even have to click on a product to see its details. You just move your mouse over it. All the while, a brightly colored button at the top urges you to "Add to Cart: You can always remove it later."
"Part of it is about speed," says Patti Freeman Evans, a senior analyst with JupiterResearch. "If you have to click on another page, you may forget what you were looking at before," she says. "It may allow you more time to discover two things instead of just one thing."
Once you have items in your cart, retailers want to move you through the checkout line before you can reconsider. If you've already entered your credit card or shipping information with a particular retailer, you're out the electronic door with a mere twitch of the mouse.
"If it's a smoother process and doesn't take as much time, there's more chance consumers will complete the process," says Edward Kountz, a senior analyst who studies online payments for Jupiter.
Increasingly, you don't even have to pay if you've set up the popular "Bill Me Later" feature with a merchant. And many merchants are starting to accept payments from debit cards so that customers don't have to be reminded by a credit card bill of how much they have shelled out for impulse buys each month.
One online shopping consultant, Bryan Eisenberg of Future Now, says his client's sales went up dramatically just by making the checkout page look shorter and therefore less intimidating.
Pioneering Web merchant Amazon.com knows the value of getting customers in and out quickly. For years it has allowed customers to bundle addresses and billing information together so customers can check out with one click.
"Customers can go from wanting something to buying something as quickly as possible, without thinking about it," says Amazon spokeswoman Patricia Smith.
They guarantee you won't regret it
People hate to make a mistake on a purchase, whether it's on an MP3 player or a bag of dog food for their pooch. This indecision has traditionally kept many shoppers on the fence for days, if not weeks, before buying.Enter the online customer review. We don't trust our own instincts when it comes to buying, but as it turns out, we put a lot of stock in what people just like us think. More than 40% of all online shoppers say product reviews are important to them, according to Jupiter.
However, 80% of online reviews are generally positive, according to Sam Decker, vice president of Bazaarvoice, a company that helps retailers add and administer reviews. So there's lots of incentive to buy and keep on buying as we look at lists of top-rated, must-have items.
"The reviews give people a reason to up-sell themselves," Decker says. "It's what you call an excuse to buy."
After Petco instituted its five-paw rating system and rolled out a list of top-rated products on its home page, people who viewed the list made a purchase 35% more often than those who didn't view the list. And they spent an average of 40% more per order, according to data from Bazaarvoice.
The irony is that for once it's not the big retail giants urging us to spend; it's our peers who probably can't afford it any more than we can.
Of course, it's easy to get buyer's remorse, especially if you are purchasing more stuff than you had bargained on. So, successful retailers remember to hit you with lots of promises and guarantees at the checkout.
Here you're reminded that a site is "hacker-safe," has a 110% price guarantee and free return shipping just in case a purchase doesn't work out, Eisenberg says.
"Sales are always about the transfer of confidence," Eisenberg says. People will shop with the site that "makes them most feel confident that they are making the right choice with their purchase."
Mary Sit, a transportation blogger from Houston with two young daughters, says the free shipping and returns at shoe site Zappos.com makes her feel comfortable buying more pairs than she normally would.
"There's no risk, and you can send everything back if you want," she says.
On a typical transaction with Zappos, she will buy the five pairs of shoes she's most interested in, or a couple of pairs in different sizes so she can get a good fit. Most of the time, she says, she returns four of the five items as planned, before the charge hits her credit card bill.
However, a couple of times, she says, she's kept an extra pair of pumps or boots because she's chased her daughter down the driveway with them, or because she just can't bear to part with them once she walks around her house in them.
They won't let you forget
Much like the local boutique owner knows your name and preferences, online retailers know your tastes and use it to keep reminding you of your wish list. Your local Target superstore couldn't tell what shirt or CD you looked at on your last visit, but Amazon can. It uses this information to make recommendations for new items and remind you that you didn't pick up that item you wanted before. Sometimes it will even knock a couple of bucks off the price if you buy two of your favorite items instead of only one."They're always trying to get you to buy something else," says Roger King, an art director from Los Angeles who shops Amazon.com frequently.
For many of us, these recommendations spur a purchase we had never banked on making.
Outdoor retailer Patagonia, for instance, can now recommend shirts and pants for a customer to buy that will go with that anorak you bought a few months ago. It's kind of like getting unsolicited advice from an electronics salesperson; some people hate it and some people like it.
"I like the ones that push content to me that's relevant to what I've bought before," says Amy Carr, a La Jolla, Calif., stay-at-home mother and co-owner of an Internet marketing firm. Carr says she often will make another purchase if she knows the item is something others ultimately bought after looking at the same things she did.
For other retailers, getting browsers to buy is as easy as storing their shopping cart for months on end. E-commerce analysts say many shoppers place things in their cart as a form of window shopping, only to leave them there when they run out of time or interest. Retailers like Drugstore.com remind you with e-mails that you have some unfinished business; other sites just leave the items there so you are confronted with them again when you visit the site.
"A lot of people come back months later and buy the products that are still in their carts," said Andy Kurlander, senior marketing manager for Zappos.com.
They'll throw in free shipping
Two more potent words were never spoken in the world of online shopping, experts say. The lure of free shipping is an important tool in getting customers to spend more on each visit. Even if shipping only costs $4 or $5, shoppers will put extra items in their basket that cost several times that much just to qualify."I think it's pretty important," Mulpuru says. "If there's a threshold, it can increase the order value."
Especially, she says, when shoppers are confronted with electronic reminders that they are only $5, $10 or $15 away from free shipping.
Shopper Carr says she often finds herself searching out other items to put in her cart, so she can meet free-shipping minimums.
"I do spend a little bit more," she says. "I'll find another book that I like, or a toy for my son," she says.
At Amazon, some customers are even willing to pay a $79 annual fee just for the privilege of getting free two-day Prime shipping on many items. While this is still a big expense for Amazon, customers who have this privilege come back more often for the almost immediate gratification and to justify the expense of the fee.
"It really makes a huge difference," says Smith, the Amazon spokeswoman. "Prime customers do shop more heavily with us." And they do it, she acknowledges, partly because "they want to get their money's worth."
They'll reward their best customers
Of course, most of the rewards that retailers shell out are just incentives thrown in to get you to buy more, such as a 20% off coupon or free upgrade to shipping.Often, retailers will send these perks out to you right after a purchase, so if there was anything you didn't get the first time around, you're motivated to pick it up now.
Others, such as Victoria's Secret and the Gap, entice you to get one of their credit cards so you can receive regular discounts and breaks on shipping.
"When you have a private-label credit card, you are able to collect a lot of information about your customers, and understand what their preferences are and what they may be more likely to buy. Then you can make more relevant suggestions," says Scott Silverman, executive director of Shop.org, an online retail trade group.
Some retailers are even making money off your purchases with others. Amazon, for one, has its own branded Visa card, which rewards you with points toward Amazon gift certificates when you shop.
King, who has an Amazon credit card, says the card has made him much more loyal to Amazon. He'll even order supplies from work on the card, knowing he will be reimbursed.
"I've been pretty faithful to them," he says.
How to resist
- Keep a wish list and stick to it. One frugal shopper on the Everyday Cheapskate Web site says he dates each entry on his wish list and only lets himself purchase an item when three months are up.
- Make paying for it a real hassle. Don't store your address or credit card data. Shop online but use snail mail for the actual transaction, advises Mary Hunt, founder of the EverydayCheapskate site. Stuff a check in an envelope with an order form. Wait a week before you send it and see how much the item appeals to you then.
- Stick to your budget. Don't let free-shipping minimums and one-time-only coupon codes make you spend more than you had budgeted. Write down how much you are prepared to spend and put it on a Post-it note on the side of your monitor as a reminder.
- Get off retailers' mailing lists. While you might miss out on some good deals, you will probably spend less because you're not constantly bombarded with offers.
