The Millennials Challenge: Turning Browsing Into Buying

Retailers are often frustrated by millennials’ browsing habits because while they like to shop online, they don't often result in a sale. This behavior is part of an overall "fauxsumerism" trend which describes millennials avoidance of ownership. The trick for retailers is to leverage this browsing as a positive and use some techniques to extract sales from this group while building your brand.

According to statistics from The Intelligence Group, millennials are increasingly browsing without the intent to make a purchase. Shopping on their mobile device is just another way to pass time, similar to scrolling through Facebook posts or finding a new Pandora station. Many of these users are shopping without any buying intentions, which of course poses a challenge to retailers that want to capture revenue from the highest percentage of visitors.

Here are four tactics retailers can use to leverage millennials’ buying power by moving them from browsers to buyers:

1. Adapt to millennials’ shopping habits. Understand they might just be wasting some time, but are coming to your site for a reason. If you can capture what they're looking at, then you can quickly offer a discount or some other real-time inducement. If you notice that as a group they're looking at certain products, then perhaps you need to improve the product descriptions with more images or video. You also want to be sure the purchase process is as simple as possible (think Amazon.com's 1-Click) since millennials expect to do things quickly and painlessly.

2. Leverage their "wish lists." The study from The Intelligence Group also noted 40 percent of the surveyed millennials are creating wish lists on e-commerce sites, and saving money to make purchases. This provides an opportunity for retailers that can offer personalized communications about specific wish list items in order to encourage buying decisions. Maybe the consumer put an item in the wish list cart that used to be available in just a silver color. If you receive inventory for the same product in red, orange and green, use that variety to your advantage by alerting interested shoppers.

3. Offer them entertainment. Browsing for items has become a form of entertainment for some millennials. Brands can take advantage of these visitors by offering supplementary entertaining content to go along with the product. Making this content easily shareable is important so the browser will be more likely to discuss/promote the brand with their social circle.

4. Shift the product offering. Some have dubbed millennials "Generation Rent" because they prefer short-term usage over owning. For example, they might use Airbnb in various locations instead of owning a home. Or use Uber or Lyft instead of buying and using their own car. Research from Edmunds.com points to a 30 percent drop in the number of cars purchased by millennials from 2007 to 2011. Companies should explore changing business models to allow the "renting" of their product or develop content that shows the benefits of ownership.

A 2013 AOL survey found that 60 percent of those ages 18 to 34 looked at items to purchase every day, but they didn't have plans to actually conduct a transaction. Marketers should take advantage of this frequency of interaction by using other tactics to encourage millennials to buy — or to at least engage with the brand to some extent. Every customer contact holds value, and savvy retailers will encourage social sharing and align their product offerings to millennials’ needs.

Abishek Tiwari is the founder and CEO of Zumur, a comprehensive search engine for shoppers to compare online prices.