Make it easy.  As a part of any employee orientation there should be time spent on noticing and reacting to the opportunities on when and how to make purchasing easier for the consumer.  Executive retreats would benefit from spending a day (or more) on evaluating the ease for the consumer to do business with their company.  The world of consumer purchasing has changed, and some companies are more in tune to these changes than others.  Consumers today are web-educated, mobile app data explorers who react to the best deal that they can understand.  Marketing messaging has, in many cases, overwhelmed the consumer.  So what's the answer?  Keep it simple/easy.

An article in Harvard Business Review, To Keep Your Customers, Keep It Simple, by Patrick Spenner and Karen Freeman, talks about a study on what makes consumers "sticky"; how likely they are to follow through on an intended purchase, repeat the purchase, and recommend it to others. They looked at the impact of what they call "consumer stickiness" of more than 40 variables, which included price, perceptions of the brand, how often the consumers used the brand, and more.  The single biggest driver of this "stickiness" was the ease for the consumer to gather trustworthy information on the product so that they could confidently and efficiently make an informed decision.  Simplicity. 

Spenner and Freeman developed a "decision simplicity index" to measure consumer engagement. This index gauges the ease of gathering and understanding the information about the brand, consumers feeling they can trust the information they find, and how readily they can weigh their purchase options. They found that the easier a brand made the purchasing decision, the higher their index score was. For example, here are statistics their study found: 

• Brands that scored in the top quarter of the study were 86% more likely to be purchased by consumers looking to buy than those brands in the bottom quarter. 9% were more likely to repurchase, and 115% were more likely to recommend to others.  

Some companies are taking a closer look at their marketing messages and processes, helping the consumers navigate their purchasing decisions with simpler options. One online company that has shown this ease of purchase for me personally is Zappos.  This company has mastered "easy."  Searching their site is informative and is easy to navigate with videos, brand names, and itemized by specific colors, and your order usually arrives within 24 hours. Their return process, which usually intimidates online shoppers, is very well thought out, keeping it extremely easy for the consumer to return merchandise. 

Stated by Spenner and Freeman, "Shifting the orientation toward decision simplicity and helping consumers confidently complete the purchase journey is a profound change, one that typically requires marketers to flex new muscles and rethink how they craft their communications."

The challenge to simplify is out there.  It's just time for the vast majority to catch the wave.  Need help catching that wave?  Just let us know.