9 Ways to Encourage Impulse Buying

Impulse shopping is something that we all do. It’s when you buy something that you didn’t originally intend to, usually in the spur of the moment. Impulse purchases give you instant gratification and make you feel like you’re treating yourself to an unexpected gift.

As a dropshipper, impulse buying is what you want to encourage your customers to do. You want to give them an incentive for hitting ‘add to cart’ and increasing their order value. 77% of shoppers have said that they make impulse purchases, with a large percentage of this coming from younger demographics. 

Imagine your profit margin if 77% of your customers added just one extra item to their shopping cart. Encouraging impulse buying comes down to a few simple principles. You want to choose the right products for your demographic, especially if you’re creating a niche dropshipping store. Your dropshipping website needs to be easy to navigate with items in the right place, and you must grab your customer’s attention.

At Doba, we help dropshippers scale their business by giving them access to high-quality suppliers and products. Our platform makes it easy for you to add products to your website while syncing orders efficiently. Our service is here to help you find the products that will have your customers clicking ‘add to basket’. 

We’re sharing 9 ways you can encourage impulse buying to boost your order values and help scale up your dropshipping business.

1. Give your customers a path to follow

You want to set your dropshipping business up with impulse shopping in mind. You want to create a path that is easy for your customer to follow. You can lay your website out in a way that brings your customers directly to your best-selling items.

Considering the path that your customer will take can help you decide where the best place is to add incentives for impulse purchases. You might decide that a pop-up should appear on a certain page, offering a discount incentive.

2. Promote add-on and frequently bought items

You can design your dropshipping website to have related or similar items appear at checkout or next to the item that your customer is buying. Amazon is the perfect example of this. On every listing, you’ll see that they feature a ‘frequently bought with’ section, showing other items that customers typically buy alongside that product. 

You can add this to your product listing or checkout to encourage impulse buying by promoting related products that the customer is likely to be interested in. If you’re adding items as a recommended add-on at checkout, it’s a good idea to include some budget-friendly items. Your customers are more likely to make an impulse purchase when the value is lower.

3. Think about the language you use

Impulse purchases usually fall into two categories – essentials and desirables. Picture the typical high street store that you walk into, such a fast fashion store. You’re almost guaranteed to find two items sitting near the checkout area to promote impulse shopping. These two items are candy and socks. The candy is desirable, the socks are essential. They’re the items that you don’t realize you need until they’re right in front of you. Before you know it, they’re in your basic.

You want to play on these two emotions when writing your website copy. You want to promote why an item is desirable and then provide an incentive for why the customer needs to purchase an essential item right away. Using language like “get it before it’s gone” or “limited edition” can help customers pull the trigger and add the item to their online cart.

4. Understand your customer

One of the best things that you can do is to take the time to understand your customers. This step is where your website analytics will come in helpful. How are customers finding your website? How long do they typically spend on your website? Do you have a high percentage of abandoned carts?

If your customers are coming to you from social media platforms or are abandoning their cart, you can reel them back in for an impulse purchase. You can either retarget them through social media advertisements or send them an ‘abandoned cart’ reminder via email.

5. Choose specific impulse purchases

When you’re choosing which products to stock on your dropshipping website, choose a few to be your dedicated impulse purchases. These are the products you want to take extra steps to promote and that you think appeal universally to everyone in your demographic. 

If you’re selling makeup products, items like ring lights, travel bags, and makeup sponges are popular impulse purchases. If you’re selling stationery and paper items, you might decide to choose washi tapes or post-it notes as your dedicated impulse buys. 

Whatever your chosen items are, you want to make sure to draw your customer’s attention towards them. You might do this by permanently putting them on sale or offering them as part of a promotion.

6. Have ‘easy buy’ items on your website

Your dropshipping website should have more affordable items that sit at a comfortable price point. These are items that don’t require too much thought. You might give your customer a few different color options to choose from for products like an iPhone case, but you want to avoid overwhelming them.

Easy buy products are ones that your customer won’t have to spend too long choosing between different color and sizing options. 

7. Promote seasonal items

If there’s anything that will encourage an impulse purchase, it’s seasonal items. Halloween, Christmas, and Easter are all times when impulse shopping starts to take over. Seasonal items are a great choice as they’re a limited-time item that your customer knows they only have a certain window of time to buy. 

Adding seasonal items can also encourage returning customers to make an impulse purchase and provide you with new opportunities for promotions and social media campaigns. Halloween and Christmas items can be easily promoted as limited-edition items that will quickly sell out, adding to the urgency for a customer to make an impulse purchase.

8. Offer a free shipping incentive

If there’s one reason why customers will make an impulse purchase, it’s to avoid paying a shipping fee. Use your analytics to determine what the average customer spends is on your website. This average will depend on what your dropshipping website is. It’s a good idea to place your free shipping incentive slightly higher than this average.

Customers are more likely to buy another item to get them over the free shipping threshold than pay for the shipping cost. You can take advantage of this by recommending products at checkout that are similar in price to your shipping costs or slightly above the threshold. 

9. Run limited-time promotions

As a dropshipping website, you want to be building your social media following and newsletter sign-up. Having an engaged and active community of customers means that you can encourage them to make impulse purchases with limited-time promotions. You want to be incorporating this technique into your social media strategy.

You can run limited-time promotions, such as a discount code or free shipping. A limited-time promotion with a short window of time creates a sense of urgency for your customer, encouraging them to click ‘add to cart’ and make an impulse purchase. It’s also a great way to encourage customers who have previously abandoned their cart to come back and complete their purchase.

If you’re using newsletters, you can incorporate limited-time or limited-edition discount codes that are only active for a short period of time. This method will allow you to target previous customers or those who are interested in making a purchase.

How to encourage impulse purchases

If you want to create a successful dropshipping website, you can’t ignore the potential of impulse purchases to increase your sales and profit margin. You can easily incorporate impulse purchases into your website design and social media strategy to maximize your potential. 

You want to consider the potential of impulse purchases in every aspect of your dropshipping website and planning, including when you’re choosing your products. With these 9 tips, you can choose the right products and tailor your dropshipping website’s design to promote the right products and grab your customer’s attention.

About Doba and our dropshipping service

Doba is a leading dropshipping website that connects you to high-quality dropshipping suppliers, offering integration with top-selling marketplaces and platforms for a seamless experience. We give you the tools to sync orders with suppliers to efficiently fulfill orders and offer your customers products that they’ll instantly click ‘add to cart’ for. With these services in place, you’ll be able to boost the number of products in every transaction.

Our platform makes it easier than ever to launch a successful dropshipping store or to find a dropshipping niche. You can find products that will help you build your dropshipping business and give your customers exactly what they want.

Start your 30-day free trial of Doba here – and take your dropshipping store to new heights.