5 Strategies to Overcome Choice Paralysis: Waterfall Consumer Financing and More Tips

Consumers make many decisions when shopping online. From deciding which eCommerce platform to shop with to choosing between an array of different products, customers can quickly become overwhelmed and suffer from choice paralysis. This choice paralysis can hinder the success of online stores as customers may eventually leave a platform as they hope to reconcile their decision. As a result, the buying process is stalled and businesses may lose out on new customers. In this article, we explore 5 strategies to overcome choice paralysis, including waterfall consumer financing and other important tips. 

1. Support Checkout With Waterfall Consumer Financing

While customers are likely ready to buy when they arrive at checkout, choice paralysis can still set in and stall a sale. Therefore, eCommerce platforms must support the consumer checkout process with novel integrations like ChargeAfter’s waterfall consumer financing solution. This platform provides customers with comprehensive financing coverage at the push of a button, without them having to leave the online store. The instant access to financing eliminates the need for consumers to make difficult financial choices, such as whether or not they can repay extensive loans from third-party financial service providers. Furthermore, ChargeAfter’s waterfall consumer financing includes low APR repayment solutions that make this choice even easier.

2. Reduce the Number of Choices

Choice paralysis comes down to consumers having too many choices available to them. Therefore, eCommerce platforms should limit the number of choices available to the consumer. Whether this means minimizing the stock or catalog, removing extensive product ranges, or reducing the number of navigational tabs on the website, eCommerce brands that provide fewer quality choices are likely to be more successful than those that have an array of cumbersome choices and tasks for consumers to make before they arrive at the checkout. 

3. Differentiate Product Options

It is very important to clearly define the product options available to consumers to reduce their experiences with choice paralysis. This could involve creating clear categories and subcategories that separate items, similar to the separation of items based on industry or requirement in traditional brick-and-mortar stores. This differentiation will help your customers navigate your online store easier, minimizing choice paralysis and encouraging sales. 

4. Simplify the Sales Funnel

Many online stores suffer from having a complicated sales funnel. It is in an eCommerce platform’s best interest to simplify the sales funnel so that customers have fewer choices to make between browsing and buying products from an online store. A simple sales funnel involves a clear consumer journey from arriving on the website to checking out, and waterfall consumer financing can ensure the checkout process is easy and efficient. This will reduce the risk of customers experiencing choice paralysis, and thus increase your average monthly sales metrics. 

5. Use Automation to Support Decision Making

Automation remains critical in the modern age of marketing as it cuts down operational costs, facilitates quicker purchasing processes, and improves customer decision-making. Companies can utilize an array of automation tools at all consumer touchpoints to ensure a seamless delivery of choices. Chatbots allow customers to find answers to all of their questions on the fly, cross-selling plugins provide clarity on related products to save consumers time making decisions, and waterfall consumer financing automates the online financing process at the push of a button so customers can continue shopping without having to seek support from their financial service providers. 

To overcome choice paralysis and make more sales, eCommerce platforms should ensure that waterfall consumer financing supports checkout, customers have limited choices to make when shopping, product options are clearly differentiated, the sales funnel is simple, and automation drives most operational processes. 

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