The results of a recent study that identified the paths online shoppers take to purchases could have noteworthy implications for marketers, and the decisions they make regarding content delivery.
Published by GroupM Next alongside Catalyst, the study highlighted the pathways that digital customers take to the final purchase and identified six kinds of shoppers: retail scouts, brand scouts, eternal shoppers, digitally driven consumers, calculated shoppers and basic digital shoppers.
The research found that shoppers who are digitally driven go through fewer steps before the purchase. They take an average of five steps before converting compared to the 35 steps taken by eternal shoppers, who don’t require products or services immediately and so can afford to spend longer shopping around.
It was also surmised that content SEO could be more effective with the eternal shopper category, because they are more likely to search broadly during their buying experiences.
Conversely, since digitally driven shoppers typically use all the channels at their fingertips, to reach them marketers must run campaigns that seamlessly connect a number of touchpoints, such as site homepages, search results and social networks.
The study also showed that calls to action in written content could convince those falling in the retail and brand scout categories to make purchases, pointing to the importance of quality blog content from professional news writing services. Both are more likely than the other consumer types to navigate between specific company websites when shopping.
Calculated shoppers took an average of 14 steps and were the most likely to watch video content from brands, highlighting the importance for marketers to employ a diverse content strategy.
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