Let’s set the scene…
Imagine you're on the hunt for a new dining table. You've got a budget, a vision – modern, seats 6, perfect for a family gathering this weekend. With time ticking, you browse through options, slightly rushed but determined to wrap up the purchase today. A few tables catch your eye in the provided images. It seems like they'll fit the space and vibe of your dining room. Without much hesitation, you enter your credit card details and hit purchase.
Now the waiting game begins.
As you wait, worry creeps in:
“I forgot to check the dimensions; will it fit?”
“The chairs are pine, but my dining room bookshelf is darker... well, the images aren't always accurate, right?”
“It was pricey; I hope the quality justifies it...”
“Delivery in a week? What's the point?”
These thoughts reflect the reality of buyers remorse (also known as post-purchase dissonance) – a phenomenon where customers experience uncertainty, regret, or dissatisfaction after making an online purchase. It's a common hurdle for both shoppers and retailers, leading to high return rates, negative reviews, and a dent in customer loyalty.
In this post we explore the visual aspects contributing to this phenomenon and offer some solutions to the problem (after all we are a Visual Commerce company).
Things such as specifications, dimensions, use cases and descriptions should be easily found and understood. In an ideal world information such as dimensions should be visually depicted so a customer can easily understand them (WxDxH can be very confusing).
Even better, investing in modern technology can be a winner. Features like Augmented Reality can place a product accurately into the customers home, that way they can try it out and see if it fits without finding a rusty tape measure from under the stairs.
Our Explorer tool covers 3D Visualisation, dimensions, Augmented Reality and even configuration - check it out here.
If your products don’t accurately reflect how products look in reality, how can a customer buy them confidently? If the product looks darker or lighter on the photos than in reality, this leads to purchase regret when it’s delivered.
Lifestyle images are key to solving this problem, by placing products in a realistic room setting with accurate lighting a customer can get a true idea of the product in a setting similar to theirs.
Investing in CGI is a good way to bring realistic visuals to your customers at speed. Using consistent scenes and imagery also help customers understand scale and colour better (it's easier to determine the difference between products if all products are in the same scene/room)
If you’re struggling with imagery or are still using physical setups and photoshoots for your product visuals, why not check out our Studio service where we’ll partner you with our in-house CGI team to help you produce better visual assets at speed.
Product comparisons are a great way to understand the specification of products and find out which one you like best, but they are poor at visually depicting items together to see how they will look aesthetically. Sure you can see everything combined during checkout, but is that really enough for you to confidently purchase?
If you're a home retailer, a good investment could be a room planner. Room planners are great for customers who are planning a renovation of a full room, but they are also really good for simply trying our products together to see if they match (and fit) within the confines of a customer's space.
Additional features like painting and decorating help customers visualise products alongside their current room style making purchasing easier whilst also providing a more engaging and creative shopping journey.
If you're a fashion retailer, consider something like a moodboard. Moodboards are wildly popular with tools such as Miro and Figjam growing in popularity. Apple recently added their own moodboard tool to Mac and iOS called Freeform. These tools are incredibly powerful due to their ease of use, visual features and familiarity to users old and new. On the downside, standalone apps are not a great user experience, copy > pasting images from your retail website onto another app can be cumbersome.
If room planning or moodboard seems like something that will suit your website, we offer solutions for both. Our space tool is designed to let customers design rooms with ease and our moodboard tool is great for curating styles and matching products together using your current 2D asset library.
We believe overcoming post-purchase dissonance requires more than just a great product description. It demands a visual experience that aligns with customer expectations. By providing clear information, realistic imagery, and tools for seamless visualisation and comparison, retailers can offer a truly immersive shopping experience that answers the questions a customer has so they can hit purchase with no regrets.
In turn you can see a reduction in returns, a wealth of positive reviews and high customer satisfaction which leads to brand loyalty ensuring the same customers return again and again.
If you’re looking to bid farewell post-purchase dissonance and usher in a new era of confident, informed purchases and satisfied customers - why not book a discovery call with us today? We’ll be happy to run through our software and see how it can work for you and your customers.
Ready to start solving buyer's remorse? We're here to help!
