Part 3 | Reverse Engineering Your Customer
Understanding Sales Intention Types
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rad! more of this stuff please
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not useful or interesting
8 minute read
Learn the three SITs and define your primary SIT.
Use SITs to remove friction and optimize the funnel.
Note: this guide is part of a three-part series on reverse-engineering your customer. To start from the beginning click here.
Introduction
The better you know your buyer, the greater your window into their psychology. And if you know why they convert, it’s much easier to reverse-engineer more conversions. Learn your shopper, and you’ll understand exactly how to get more of them, faster, with lower acquisition costs.
In digital sales, everything we do begins with intelligence. Knowing who the buyer is, why they buy, and under what circumstances, make up the key ingredients for a high-converting funnel. After that, it's just a numbers game. From the first moments of awareness stage, you’ll want to group shoppers into “Personas”, and we have a great interactive workshop for defining those here. But once the Personas are nailed, there are two equally important considerations:
- Why shoppers convert. We call these Shopper Decision Questions.
- Under what circumstances shoppers convert. We call these Sales Intention Types (SITs), and this blog will show you how to use them to increase revenue.
What are SITs?
Sales Intention Types (SITs) are signals that help tune the shopping experience around a specific shopper's mindset. The basic theory is this: your buyer considers a product with 1 of 3 intentions: Impulse Want, Considered Want, or Forced Need.
Ultimately, our goal is to convert new customers as fast as possible, and SITs provide a valuable roadmap to guide landing page designs, dialogue boxes, email flows, cadence, and creative.
Some SITs go straight from storefront to checkout, while others require education and nurture in your re-marketing program. As you can see, different SITs will interact with different touch points in the customer journey. When you define your SITs and begin to build collateral with them in mind, you’ll deliver exactly what the buyer wants, where they want it, and when they want it.
Every piece of information you place in front of shoppers is either value or friction in their journey. Building your funnel around one “Primary SIT”, and two “Sub-SITs” will give you an organized framework to tune the length of the buyer journey for each of the 3 considerations. It will help you prioritize some information over others, and inform what kinds of creative ad messaging you choose to use. Make the journey too long, and you are adding unnecessary friction; too short, and you may lose the buyer.
Know your SITs
Some brands have one primary SIT, and can structure the entire funnel around this intention only – that’s always best case scenario. Most brands have at least two and thus need to consider the customer experience from the vantage point of each.
Impulse Want
Considered Want
Forced Need
“I want to solve a simple problem with minimal risk and cost”
This buyer is driven by emotion and will convert immediately so long as the product solves a known need and the cost/risk factor is low.
“I want the best possible product for my personal goal”
This buyer is actively researching solutions to an objective. They don’t need your product, but will convert if convinced it’s the best option of many.
“I need the product now: easy, fast and as cheap as possible”
This buyer is trying to solve a bottleneck in their life right now. When they find the right solution, they will convert immediately.
Top Buyer Considerations:
- Product Price
Top Buyer Considerations:
- Meeting their objective
- Technical specifications
- Brand alignment
Top Buyer Considerations:
- Product Price
- Shipping time
- Compatibility
Your Approach: Speed
- Incentivize the sale
- Demonstrate the product outcome in the fewest possible steps
- Remove risk
Your Approach: Educate
- Incentivize the sale
- Demonstrate the product outcome in the fewest possible steps
- Remove risk
Your Approach: Simplicity
- Incentivize the sale
- Communicate basic product information
Product Types
- Low Cost
- Low – High Impact
Product Types
- Mid-High Cost
- High Impact
Product Types
- Low-High Cost
- High Impact
An example, let’s look at two brands in the endurance sport space: Form Swim Goggles and Hoka Shoes.
- Form Goggles: A first-to-market tech product requires understanding, education, and price validation. The buyer will likely research the product in depth, and won’t convert until they are sure it will improve their training experience and race times. But at the end of the day, the athlete does not actually require the goggles to compete. Thus, this is a Considered Want. Form has a depth of educational materials on their storefront, and intricate welcome flow emails to educate and nurture prospective buyers while they consider.
- Hoka Shoes: Training shoes are a barrier to entry for the activity: when old shoes wear out, the athlete needs new ones immediately or they cannot keep training. The athlete may still consider different shoe brands, but this is a decision they need to make. Thus, this SIT is a Forced Need.
We can see, digital goggles improve the training experience, vs shoes which are required to train in the first place.
Here’s a case study from the automotive space:
Let’s say you’re a DIY home mechanic searching for a specific replacement part on Google. PartsGeek.com buys your click via a Google ad. Parts Geek visitors need to solve a problem right now, and have only three considerations: ”Is this the best price?”, “Does this fit my vehicle?”, and “When will it arrive?”. This buyer needs a solution now – thus they are a Forced Need. The customer must get their vehicle back on the road quickly, so the entire website is structured around this outcome.
Now, imagine you’re looking to improve the performance of your vehicle, rather than fix an issue. CobbTuning.com is laid out for enthusiasts seeking performance upgrades. These are high dollar, and require more consideration. This shopper will compare multiple products and consider their purchase over a period of days, weeks, or months – thus they are a Considered Want. As a result, Cobb’s buyer journey demonstrates value propositions, technical functions, and product outcomes.
Using SITs
The purpose of SITs is to help understand the buyer mindset at the time of purchase. Once you have your SITs defined, it’s time to select your Primary SIT. For PartsGeek and Hoka, this is the Forced Need SIT. For Cobb Tuning and Form Swim, this is the Considered Want. For a brand like Course Phone Mounts, this is the Impulse Want.
As you optimize each touchpoint of the buyer journey around SITs, carefully observe your conversion rates for each change. Remember – SITs are all about converting new customers as quickly as possible, so you’ll also want to track the prospect's time to conversion, too. Ultimately, SITs should become a fundamental checklist, each and every time you update a landing page, email, or consideration-phase collateral.
If the buyer is a Forced Need, prioritize communication of only their most pressing Shopper Decision Questions. Don’t bother with education materials, welcome flows, or paid retargeting since they need to make a decision right now. Make the consideration phase as short and simple as possible.
If the buyer is a Considered Want, you can assume they’re researching and evaluating several different products. It's most important to capture this lead immediately and prioritize nurture through emails, blogs, and other education material. That process takes time, and it’s possible the shopper is still weighing the cost/benefit of this purchase in the interim. Thus, you should invest more time in optimizing the consideration phase – this means additional marketing tools to close the sale, such as paid re-targeting ads, and automated welcome flows.
Now what?
SITs remove unnecessary friction and ensure the most qualified shoppers find exactly what they’re looking for as quickly as possible – that means more revenue!
If you have questions about using SITs to optimize your sales funnel, don’t hesitate to reach out! If you need help implementing them, you’re in the right place. SITs are a foundational component Zulu Core – our hands off optimization program of eCommerce. Click here to get started.
Learn how Zulu Core leverages customer insights to enhance funnel efficiency and recapture lost revenue. Understand the importance of Shopper Decision Questions (SDQs), Sales Intention Types (SITs), and Cart Abandonment Rationales (CARs) in crafting a high-converting funnel. Discover how these foundational elements can transform your marketing strategy and drive sustained growth.
