How to Sell Digital Products: Use Digital Wallets

If you’re selling digital products online, you’re doing it wrong.  Probably.

Don’t worry; nearly everyone is in the same boat.   Everyone sells digital products the same way: as physical products.   Digital and physical products are different and shouldn’t be sold similarly.

The one exception to this is app stores.   App stores sell digital products with the most frictionless process possible.

If you sell exclusively digital products, you should operate like an app store. Here’s why and how.

How are online products sold today?

Products sold online—either physical or digital—are sold like in a grocery store. You go around a ‘store’ and put the items you want to buy into a ‘shopping cart.’ When you’re done, you go to a ‘checkout’ and pay with a credit card.

Just like a grocery store in the 1930s.   Fun fact: grocery store shopping carts were generally hated when they were first invented.

So why do we use this analogy online?

Why do we use shopping carts for online purchases?

The shopping cart concept was created to manage inventory and shipping. Initially, most products sold online were physical, often requiring multiple selections and the user to input a lot of data.   

Sellers needed information like size, color, or quantity, plus shipping information to know how to deliver the products to their customers. Finally, users had to enter credit card information to buy the product. It made sense to have the user do this only once.

This was all before 1-click checkout and digital wallets.

Not-so-fun fact: more than 60% of shopping carts are abandoned online.

How should digital products be sold?

Digital products should be sold with as few clicks as possible. 

This seems obvious, but it isn’t how digital products are sold today.   Instead, users are forced to go through the same laborious process as physical products, even though it’s completely unnecessary. 

Digital wallets can significantly streamline the process, making it quick and easy to buy your products.   

Using digital wallets, you can sell products:

• Requiring only 1-3 clicks depending upon the wallet setup
• Likely without entering any information.
• With the user staying on the page.

Make buying a digital product as easy as an impulse purchase.

Here’s a screenshot of an example.

When selling a particular product, friction in the sales process is a significant factor leading to cart abandonment.  Increased sales friction leads to lower conversion rates.   Simply put, friction loses you money.

What about other factors when buying a digital product?

Short answer: they don’t matter.  The most important goal is to convert the user into a customer.  That’s not only revenue but another user to market to.

Coupons and promotions codes.

Users who have coupons or promotion codes have significantly higher buyer intent, so they will happily click through to the standard checkout screen to get the discount.

The ‘Pay with a Credit Card’ link in the above screenshot leads to a traditional checkout screen where coupons can be used.  Clicking through to the checkout page works the same way for the user as buying products usually does today.

Upsells.

Once a user is a customer, you can try to sell them other products.   They can become part of your email campaign.   They will have your product, so there are often chances to market it to them there.   Nothing matters more than customer acquisition.

Of course, you’ll still have that standard checkout page, so you can upsell users there too.

Additional Product Information Required.

What if your product needs more information than what the digital wallet provides? That’s a problem with your product onboarding.  

If you need more information than just an email and what the user bought, then make that part of customer onboarding.   Collect that information afterward.   You shouldn’t need any more information during purchase than a) who the user is and b) how much to charge them.

Final thoughts on how to sell digital products.

Don’t make the mistake of treating digital products like they’re physical products.   Instead, use their unique nature to make them dead simple to buy and increase your conversion rates accordingly.   Your bank account will thank you 😀