Haven’t you ever shopped in an E-commerce site? You must have. If you have, then I can bet that you must have fallen in their traps for at least once! The marketing techniques they use has us in a delusion of being lucky enough to get them. But the back story is something everyone’s oblivious of. They’ve used your emotions against you and made some good bucks with it. Yes, that’s the truth. So, it’s not you who has the last laugh. It’s the seller you bought it from. If you still don’t believe what I said, let’s delve further into this.

Time running out:

This is one frequent technique used by the giants like Amazon to take advantage of our fears, the fear of missing out on an opportunity. First, they reduce the prices to a certain amount where their profits would come down to a certain amount but hey, they’ll still be in profits. Then these e-commerce sites create this situation of urgency where your fear starts to kick in! Then you wouldn’t want to wait anymore and click that purchase button right away. This is how you are being tricked into purchasing this.

Only x left in stock:

This is one another trick like the previous one. Similar to the “time running out” situation, even here a sense of urgency is created and that emotion in you is taken advantage of. When you look at an item you like and you can’t find it on any other sites, what would you do? You would wait for other websites to introduce the product or for this site to reduce its price. But when they say that it’s just the last one in their stock list, what would you do? You’d purchase it without a second thought. There you go, you’ve been tricked again!

Sales day:

This is one of those times where the company’s profits would take a massive hike. No matter which country you belong to, I’m sure you would have come across these events. You must have heard people naming a fancy title for a few days where all their products are provided at a cheaper cost. This is when you get a feel of walking in a sale market. The days like Thanksgiving, even though the items are sold for almost the same price, but still a reduction in a few bucks seems like a huge discount that you could get even on the ordinary days. The only difference is you need to search it right. But nope! You inculcate a feeling of missing out on an opportunity and start investing on this one day.

Coupon code provided from different products:

This is one other way in which these markets captivate you. First, they send out personalized information on these codes through different means. Later, they say this is an exclusive offer and won’t last long. Then you get all jubilant and quickly use your code to make the purchase, though almost everyone gets these codes. This is one another way you are trapped in their ploy. The trick is, you won’t feel like purchasing something on discount as much as you would like to, with a coupon code.

X% and additional Y%:

This one’s their favourite. This is one of those additional exciting offers that make you go exultant with an additional offer over the pre-existing ones. You must have seen the offer says a 40% discount and an additional 20% discount. For those, who still think it’s a 40+20=60, you’re not supposed to add it people! It’s a 52% and that’s how they legally take advantage of that 8%. So from this time onwards don’t be fooled by these tricks which can’t be called to be a deception but it actually is.

Premium member sales:

This one you might have seen while shopping with Amazon. If you are a prime member, you can get additional benefits when compared to the non-prime members. The deals start for these guys a few moments earlier to the others and these members have access to additional discounts as well. To be honest, these things are less tricky than others but still, for countries like India where the prime membership is quite less, this is worth going for, though they get some huge profits on those subscriptions. That’s because there would be close to 50% of those who don’t take advantage of their memberships.

“Only for you” Sales:

Sometimes some of the offers are offered to you in a personalized email or a text. These are said to be exclusively offered for you. But on the backstage what happens is, these sites send out these offers at a different time to almost everyone. This way these brands start building a relationship with their customers. This also gives you an impression that you have a good connection with this particular e-commerce site. So, before you ever start thinking in that perspective, understand that there are a million others who have been purchasing from them and you, in particular, are not an exception.

Siva saikumar

Working as Digital Marketing Manager at Softscripts