In this article, we’re going to discuss why marketers need to focus on skeptical first-time buyers.

The data on this is clear– most visitors to your site are newand a shocking number of them will never return.

To better understand skeptical first-time buyers let’s break this group into two elements– skeptics and first-time buyers.

Why Focus on Skeptics?

The buyers you are currently converting are people who are reading your pitch and thinking “yes, that sounds good, I can go with that.”

You don’t need help with this group because they are already buying.

But there is this other group, people who are thinking, “this stuff is fascinating, I’m really digging part of it but I’m not totally sold.”

These are the people we obsess over.

Most brands don’t focus on skeptics because they are hard to covert. And this is exactly why you need to focus on them. If you can convert a skeptic you can convert anyone!

Why Focus on First-time Buyers?

First-time buyers are a special group– these are people who are interested in what you are selling but haven’t bought from you. They have a lot of thoughts firing in their heads. Mostly their brain is trying to protect them from buying from a site it’s never bought from before.

Brands make the mistake of immediately getting into describing how awesome their product is. Imagine going to a party and walking up to something and just jumping into a funny story. The person will not even pay attention if they don’t recognize you. This is why, when we meet new people at a party we first built rapport and then share stories.

The same is true when you pitch your product to a first-time buyer. First, you need to help this person get over the unfamiliarity barrier:

The Hidden Benefit of Optimizing First-Time Buyer Conversions

Converting first-time buyers is the tide that raises all boats. You see, if you can improve the percentage of people who place their first order you are also increasing the percentage of people who would be doing word-of-mouth marketing for you, and you would also have a larger pool of shoppers to reactivate.

Converting first-time buyers increases the size of the whole pie.

Next Steps

In the article, we talked about the 9 truths about online shoppers. That critical topic is covered here.