What Most Influences You to Buy Product Online

Other than price, what’s the next most important factor that influences people to buy clothing and accessories?

Product images. More than 60% of consumers surveyed rated pictures of clothing and accessories as a top influence. That’s 1.5 times higher than the average importance of images for all product categories.

The answer comes courtesy of an insightful white paper, “Online Browsing Behaviors of the Apparel Shopper,” by HookLogic, a global leader in commerce search advertising. The white paper is based on a shopping-behavior survey of 500 consumers and an analysis of more than 11 million online transactions representing more than $1.2 billion in sales.

“Clearly consumers want detailed images that show exactly what the items look like, and potentially on them…for apparel, a picture really is worth a thousands word,” according to HookLogic.

“It seems obvious, but many retailers and brands still have a long way to go here. Multiple, high-res shots of items should be included…”

Central to Embodee’s virtual product experiences for business are vivid 3D images rendered on demand in the cloud and seamlessly delivered to clients’ websites. The images, used by some of the world’s most prominent sports apparel brands, aren’t photographs but virtual 3D replicas of products such as apparel and footwear.

About 86% rated price as the biggest influence when shopping for clothing and accessories, compared to 83% for all categories. Ranking behind price and product images as top purchase influence factors are product description (about 56%), product ratings and reviews (about 41%), product materials and ingredients (about 35%), and product name (about 14%).

The whitepaper also explores the most-used search terms for apparel and accessories, pre-purchase browsing habits, impulse buying, rates of online vs offline shopping, and much more.