How many shopping journeys have we all seen that start with the customer identifying a product need, navigating to the retailer’s site to search for it, and making a prompt purchase? After many, many hours spent studying people shop, we’re here to say that that’s often not how it works.
Sure, if it’s Sunday afternoon and you need #2 pencils for school the next day, you’ll search for them by name and buy them immediately with overnight delivery.
But what retailers don’t often account for is how many customers are shopping because they enjoy the process itself, how different the behaviors in a desire-driven journey are, and how ill-suited their digital experience is for what customers are there to do.
But what retailers don’t often account for is how many customers are shopping because they enjoy the process itself ... and how ill-suited their digital experience is for what customers are there to do.
The desire-driven customer journey can be long and non-linear, and influenced by outside inspiration and triggers rather than an internal need. Customers move in an out of digital channels, but for most of the process, the customer may not be interacting with the retailer with the intent to buy.
The triggers that are most effective in encouraging customers to start browsing, act on inspiration, and finally complete a purchase are those that raise their interest level - interactions that pique excitement, urgency and confidence.
Unfortunately, the digital experience is often optimized for specific product search and conversion, which is a small slice of the purchase journey and digital traffic.
TLDR: Here are three things to know about the messy, desire-driven shopping journey:
Takeaway #1: The journey is much longer than you realize
Customers can spend up to a year curating a mental list of needs or wants. Shoppers told us they have a loose calendar of events, milestones or seasons in mind when they see product inspiration - for instance, a wedding in the Fall, a birthday gift, or patio furniture for Spring. If the inspiration matches an event in the mental calendar, it may trigger browsing, but the customer wouldn’t have searched for it otherwise.
But just as often, they bookmark ideas that don’t match an event or shopping need, and are purely things that inspire them. For instance, seeing a new style of jeans again and again and noting what they like and don’t like, or which retailers carry them, for when they might be ready to shop.
It’s important to keep in mind that this is a passive phase when they are ‘noting’ items they see, not actively searching for items they want to buy. They find inspiration in what they see other people wear in daily life, products they see in stores while shopping for other things, and in their social feeds.
Takeaway #2: Most eComm traffic is not there to buy, and conversion is not the right goal
The customer may enter the retailer’s digital and physical ecosystem many times during the beginning, middle or end of this journey, but conversion may not always be the right goal.
During casual landscaping, they are looking to understand the broad category - they haven’t decided they want the product yet. During focused research, they have decided they want the product but are comparing products across retailers. In both cases, they are not on the PDP to buy, but to gather information.
Takeaway #3: Three levers can move desire-driven shoppers through the funnel
- Excitement: feeling excited and inspired by product photography can convert it from a mental note to a shopping need to pursue.
- Confidence: A major reason customers fall out of the funnel after they have researched and chosen a specific product is a lack of confidence in fit and style. Giving customers fit tools and style guides to reassure them they’ve found the right version of the product.
- Urgency: FOMO itself is a reason to buy. The joy of shopping includes the thrill of getting the best deal, and leaning into the urgency of maximizing a promotion delivers extra emotional value to customers who wait to convert.
About Ann
Ann is the founder of Amplify and has a background in product innovation and service design. She is experienced in leading research and strategy projects on complex questions, designing data-driven experiences, and developing user-centered mindsets and skills within organizations.
Ann is the founder of Bird, a coaching platform for everyday runners, that was a member of TechStars 2020 and acquired in 2023. Ann lives in Chicago with her family and their two dogs, Ruthie Bader Ginsburg and Cosimo de' Medici.
