Fear of Missing Out in e-commerce

By Ghanshyam Jadhav

What is actually FOMO in e-commerce and how are FOMO techniques useful for your store?

Are you looking for a way to get more conversions from your ecommerce store? Have you ever heard the term “FOMO” but never really understood how it can be used to drive sales? Actually, FOMO is one of the best tactic to increase conversions. However, if applied incorrectly, it can go wrong or harm your store. In this article, we will understand FOMO techniques that’ll help your store to use this strategy the right way.

FOMO meaning

FOMO means the fear of missing out. It’s a psychological phenomenon that makes a person more likely to take action immediately for the fear of losing out.

Millennials and FOMO

Millennial Statistics can help you to better understand how important FOMO can be for your e-commerce store. With over 1.8 billion millennials on earth, they are the largest adult cohort, and nearly 7 in 10 millennials experience FOMO. Being the largest adult cohort, they are the cohort with money to buy from your store and with their large numbers, most likely to visit your online store. Hence, it is important to implement tactics targeted to increase conversions from millennial buyers on your store.

As per trustpulse some statistics of FOMO are as follows.

FOMO statistics about Millennial behavior

Why Do FOMO techniques Work?

FOMO techniques mainly combine three powerful psychological things: Social Proof, Urgency, and Scarcity. Many studies have demonstrated how our decisions are influenced by those around us. FOMO uses Scarcity to increase demand for a particular product, and with this effect our instinct for conforming to prioritize imminent deadlines.

Because it applies this psychological phenomenon together, FOMO is a remarkably powerful marketing technique.

Best use of FOMO techniques in an eCommerce store

According to the e-commerce market, FOMO is the most popular and common technique among businesses. Across a study of 1.5 million Shopify stores, we found that almost 60% stores make use of this FOMO technique to improve conversions.

Let’s understand some FOMO tactics.

1. Display your Best-Selling products

When you showcase your best-selling or popular products to buyers, it will give them a positive feeling about your product and store. This is a FOMO technique too.

After all, when you see a good product that other people are purchasing, you’ll want to purchase it for yourself. make sure to display the best-selling and popular products in your store.

2. Show your stock information to customers

The element of scarcity is one of the main sources of the FOMO technique. If something’s about to run out of stock soon, it is better to buy it now.

There are many other ways to generate a feeling of scarcity among buyers. For online store owners, you can display stock items, similar to Amazon marketplace. You can push the FOMO technique with the right details and messaging, that actually suggest your product is about to run out or disappear soon.

3. Importance of timing

When you create a FOMO among your buyers, you can also look into the tactic that tells about loss prevention. Let’s say, when your store buyer knows they’ll miss out on an offer by running out of time, they’re more likely to contact you to make a purchase.

You can do this with appropriate messaging about when an offer ends or by offering them information about different deals on different days.

4. Display Product Views

As you read previously, buyers value the opinions of other buyers. Even just showing how many times a product is viewed is enough to have other buyers attracted to that product to check it out for themselves.

A simple way to take advantage of FOMO through social proof is to show how many others buyers have viewed a certain product on a given day.

FOMO is real

I hope this article helps answer the question is FOMO really useful to increase conversions ? FOMO has been around for a very long time. By using the techniques that you have read from this article, you will have a much higher chance to increase conversions on your online store.

Before applying make sure you do with the correct way. Use them strategically where they are applicable or does not impact the user experience of your store.In a nutshell, FOMO tactics should not harm the buying experience of your store visitors, but should rather improve it by improving product discoverability.