People take the easy path. If buying from you takes one obvious step, plenty will take it; if it takes three, or if they have to work out how, most quietly give up. So the job of a selling post is not only to make them want the thing. It is to make buying it the easiest move on the screen.
The usability expert Steve Krug summed it up in three words: don’t make me think. Every extra step, every moment of “wait, how do I do this?”, quietly loses people. And the pull of the easy option is bigger than it looks. When researchers made one choice the effortless default, take-up leapt several times over, simply because people go with whatever needs no extra work (Johnson and Goldstein, Do Defaults Save Lives?, Science).
Cyber Monday is the day this matters most, because the whole country is buying on a phone. The shop that wins is not the cleverest, it is the one where buying takes a single obvious tap. You can see this on the Cyber Monday run-up: strip out every step you can, and make the next move unmistakable.
So look hard at what you actually ask people to do. “Message us to enquire” is three steps: open messages, think what to say, wait for a reply. “Call to book, 01234 567890, we answer till six” is one step, and the number is right there. “Order by 4pm, collect from 5, here is the link” tells them exactly what to do and when. Say the step plainly, and remove the thinking.
Give one instruction, not several. A post that says “call, or message, or pop in, or check the website” scatters people. A post that says “reply YES and we’ll hold one for you” gives them a single, tiny action. The clearer and smaller the ask, the more people complete it.
Take the friction out before they hit it, too. If people always ask the same question before buying, opening times, parking, whether you deliver, answer it in the post so nothing stops them mid-decision. Every question you answer in advance is one fewer reason to put it off, and “I’ll do it later” almost always means never.
A hairdresser feels this daily. “DM to book” means the customer has to open messages, work out what to write, and wait for a reply, and half of them never come back to it. “Book online here, or call and we’ll pick up, open till six” gives them a step they can finish on the spot. The want was the same; the difference was how many little hurdles stood between wanting and doing.
A caution. Easy must not mean pushy or sneaky. Do not hide the price to get the tap, do not sign people up to things they did not choose, and do not make the “no” harder than the “yes”. The aim is to remove pointless effort for someone who already wants to buy, not to trick someone who does not.
The short version: decide the one action you want, and make it the easiest thing on the screen. Say it plainly, say it once, put the number or the link right there, and answer the obvious question before it is asked. People will do the simple thing far more often than the fiddly one, so make buying from you the simple thing.
Decide the one action you want, and say it plainly and early. Open What should I post?, tell it what you are selling and exactly how you want people to buy, and put up the caption and the words for your picture it gives back, with that one easy step where nobody can miss it.