What is the Buying Cycle?

A Web site attracts many potential customers who are at different stages of the buying process. This paradigm, known as the "Buying Cycle," explains why different customers who ultimately purchase the same item will search for it in a variety of ways.

The Buying Cycle has three stages. To illustrate their differences, let's assume you sell DVD players:

  1. Research: Users are gathering information about products, as well as the key retailers or service providers that offer the products. Searchers in this stage use more general search terms. Thus, to attract this customer, you only need small number of fairly general terms, such as "DVD players."
  2. Shop: Users are tracking and comparing purchase criteria, including availability, price, shipping charges, etc. Buyers in this stage reveal their preferences, so more specific keywords (for example, "Panasonic DVD") are needed to cover all possible search terms.
  3. Buy: Users show a commitment to buy through their choice of keywords. The keywords you use to attract buyers at this stage are the most specific; for example, "Panasonic DVD-RP91K black".

It's important to select words across all three stages of the Buying Cycle, so that all types of search users can find your site.

What is meant by Same Session?

Same session refers to searches and clicks conducted in the "same session" as the purchase. Depending on the type of product being purchased the length of time from the initial search to same session varies. Users searching for holidays, for example have a buying cycle of around 12 weeks. The higher the ticket price and the greater the consequence of "getting it wrong" tends to extend the buying cycle.

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