Urgency
It is the use of triggers or scarcity techniques to influence your visitors to act sooner. Urgency techniques in marketing create a psychological trigger by relating to human loss-aversion or fear-of-missing-out (FOMO).
Urgency and scarcity are widely used across campaigns to increase engagement and boost conversions. For instance, a user is browsing a few websites to find a suitable gift for Mother’s day. You can induce the urgency factor for the user by adding a trigger message saying “Mother’s Day: Order now for on-time delivery.”
Other common urgency triggers include offers that expire with a countdown timer, adding limited stock numbers along with products sold, or stating that more people are viewing the deal. A very famous company that has used urgency to its advantage is OnePlus, known for launching an invite-only smartphone sales campaign.
Importance of Urgency in eCommerce business:
In this digital age, customer journeys have become more complex. The buying process is rarely linear and switches between multiple channels and devices. In addition to this, the customer’s journey to purchasing a product is often lengthy. Having a breadth of choice and varied product prices, customers end up taking days, weeks, or even months researching for more options.
The reason why customers feel the urge to grab those deals is psychological. There are two factors at play.
- First, urgent situations push customers to act and prolong positive emotions and reduce negative ones.
- Second, urgency also evokes loss aversion, which we call it as the fear of missing out (FOMO). We don’t want to miss a great opportunity, especially if others are also after it.
Adding elements into the customer experience that creates urgency speeds up things along the purchasing cycle. It pushes customers that are considering purchasing to do so now, in order to avoid missing out. Strategic use of urgency triggers purchase action from impulsive and returning customers. It can even generate demand that leads to sales that may not have otherwise happened.
