The User Mindsets that Underlie Every Online Purchase

Much like the businesses it fuels, marketing is not a get-rich-quick scheme. It takes keen strategy and pointed experimentation to drive effective marketing conversions. One framework that can help marketers understand the complexity of influencing online behavior is explained in the three stages of customers’ mindset formation. 

Initially, when customers discover your brand or interact with one of your online surfaces, they enter the “awareness” stage. This coincides with the customer just realizing they have a problem to solve or a purchase they need to make. When trying to engage customers at this stage, brands should target their content to be educational, helpful, and human. Convey to them that they don’t need to go on living with the problem and that they can rely on you to help.

Next, a customer enters the “consideration” phase, a period of more active solution-seeking. Customers in this phase are more likely to be on the hunt for different options, weighing their pros and cons. While it can be detrimental to overwhelm a customer in the “awareness” phase with too much information, once they enter the “consideration” phase, it’s a great time to give them everything they need to know to make an informed decision. 

Which brings us to the final stage, the “decision” moment. When reaching a customer in this phase, brands should be laser-focused on closing a sale. 

To complicate matters further, different customers will move through these three phrases at different speeds. Depending on their circumstances, there may be even more variation or more phases between them. Still, recognizing these phases as the scaffolding of a customer’s journey helps you create a balanced content strategy. If you are an e-commerce brand seeking ways to improve your conversion strategy, ASTRALCOM is here to help. Learn more about how we help brands cultivate lasting relationships with online customers.