Mental & Physical Availability for E-Commerce

Byron Sharp talks about two types of availability. Physical and mental. When it comes to choosing to buy your product, the decision can be largely influenced by two factors – physical and mental availability.

Physical availability is the actual opportunity to buy it. If you want to buy Coca-Cola and your local shop only sells Pepsi, then Coca-Cola isn't really in with a chance of winning that particular battle. This is why Coca-Cola is sold virtually everywhere, they recognise that one of the most influential things they can do to make more sales is always be available to buy at the moment you need it.

This extends online quite easily. Think about Amazon, the 1 trillion pound gorilla in the room, their version of physical availability is a little more nuanced but just as influential. You can order almost anything you want from Amazon and have it delivered to your house the next day with Amazon Prime. That's a game changer when it comes to making a decision to purchase. You don't have to worry about shipping fees, you don't need to wonder if you can get it more quickly at the local shops. Just order now and get it tomorrow.

Their pursuit of high physical availability doesn't stop there. One-Click checkout made it possible to remove the burden of entering your address and card details whenever you wanted to place an order – just click the button and Amazon uses the details it already holds for you. The breadth of the catalogue means that Amazon is the answer to almost every question of "where can I get a...?".

So what can we take from this? Physical availability is about making it easy for your customer to choose you at the moment they make a buying decision.

Reduce the friction on your website and make it as easy as possible for customers to find and buy exactly what they want.
Reduce the risk to your customer by having clear, well articulated and friendly returns policies.
Give me the fastest and cheapest shipping you can possibly afford to, don't allow me the chance to second guess my purchase decision

Mental availability is the ability of the customer to consider you when they enter the buying decision phase. We can't choose what we don't know and the things we know best, we choose most.

Amazon is a great example here too. For so many people it is hard not to consider Amazon when choosing where to buy something. The monthly reminder of Amazon when you pay for Amazon prime is an increase in their mental availability, that you pay for!

In order for a brand to enter consideration when we start our buying journey we have to readily recall it. We need to understand and recognise the brand readily to be able to do that. If I even said the words Coca-Cola to you, you couldn't help but picture the colour red, the classic white script logo and probably even the shape of the iconic bottle. This high mental availability has been built and reinforced over years. It makes Coca-Cola the number 1 selling soft drink in every country in the world (except one).

How do you increase mental availability? This is what some people would call branding, brand management or brand building. It's no dark art, but it's a game for the patient. Increasing mental availability is not buying up Facebook Ads offering your product at a hefty discount for first time customers, in the hope of snaring them and exploiting their "loyalty". Instead seek to have as many people as possible see and recognise your brand, what it looks like and what it sells. You can associate this with narrative – that's a strategy for advertising – but ultimately how will you enter consideration at the point of purchase? As a website that usually means:

They recognise your brand when they search for the thing they want to buy, that you sell, and choose you to shop with.
They remember your brand when they want to buy what you sell and seek you out
They see an ad, email, social media post or other asset when they are entering the buying phase and recognise and trust you enough to consider and purchase

We instinctively like and trust the things we recognise more than the things we don't. So even if I don't need to buy tyres today, when I do go looking for them (all other things being equal – and I don't mean price!) I'm going to trust the brand I saw advertising to me two years ago more than the one I don't know at all.