What is immediate need fulfillment?
Online commerce is developing rapidly. Consumers are increasingly turning to online solutions to meet their shopping needs, so companies have adapted and offered their products online.
Today’s businesses can no longer wait for people to search and buy. Digital experiences now need to create demand, not just satisfy demand. Through e-commerce, people find products, but through Facebook Discovery Commerce, products find people
Consumers nowadays expect convenience, immediacy, and simplicity that were not possible a few years ago. When they shop, they hope to discover the products they like, buy them quickly, and easily re-interact with these merchants after purchase.
Friction in the purchase path
Consumers now interact with brands through multiple channels before making a purchase. They also want a quick and convenient way to get what they want or need. Once they make up their minds, they will want products and services immediately. Anything that prevents people from getting what they want immediately is friction.
What is friction?
Friction is any extra effort, steps or inconvenience experienced by the shopper. Friction can make buying difficult and ultimately cause the company to lose customers.
Why does friction matter?
Friction makes it difficult for customers to get what they want on time, which can lead to customers spending their money elsewhere.
Friction can be costly, but by identifying the sticking points and implementing effective strategies, you can create a flawless customer experience.
What are points of friction?
It’s critical to always find ways to resolve the points of friction and make the purchase as smooth as possible.
Common points of friction happen during three stages of the consumer journey:
- Discovery
- Purchase
- Post-purchase
Discovery friction
Friction in the discovery phase can be traced to three different sources:
- Awareness Phase: Lack of relevant and targeted advertising that connects consumers to new brands, products, services, or store locations.
- Information gap: No product ratings, testimonials, or reviews to help people make informed buying decisions.
- Technology Optimization: Weak landing page experience, lengthy loading time, and content that is not optimized for mobile devices.
Purchase friction
This point is where the purchasing occurs, and when shoppers struggle to complete their transactions because of:
- Availability:Items that are out of stock, and not enough information about the product or service, or store locations.
- Support: Lack of customer support when the shopper needs help or needs answers for certain questions.
- Buying: Not enough information about shipping costs and time, too many clicks for the customer to checkout, too many pop-up banners that let the customer leave the store unsatisfied.
- Payment: Providing Limited payment options, a checkout page that is not optimized for mobile, asking too many details in the checkout phase also provide friction
Post-purchase friction
This happens when the customer has already purchased but encounter set-backs due to:
- Fulfillment: Delivery times that are delayed or slow, no or weak tracking system, and products that are not as described.
- Support: Not a good post-purchase support for order returns, exchanges, or other matters. Also the lack of channels for feedback and service
- Re-purchase: No Loyalty programs, lack of re-engagement or re-targeting strategies, and no upgrade options
Tips to reduce friction
Unresolved friction may cause buyers to pay attention to offers from other companies for accessible experiences. Most buyers said that after a bad experience, they are more likely to stop buying from businesses.
The following steps can help you identify and eliminate possible friction. If you want to create a personalized and convenient customer experience, consider how to apply them to your business.
Awareness
Analyse and evaluate the ad campaigns structure and funnels you are creating and map out how the customer is seeing or enteracting with your ads. This will make you understand the obstacles the potential buyers might encounter
Consideration
Check the points of friction, evaluate them and identify which ones that are causing the biggest missed opportunities, for example you can check the Bounce Rate of your pages and why people are dropping off from that page specifically.
Conversion
Implement some changes and test how is the customer journey after. Develop a new strategy to lower the points of friction to conversion. Always map and analyse the pain points of the customer’s journey to elimate friction.
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