# Triggering a Purchase with Storytelling
*Published: 2014-02-27*
*Tags: marketing-communications*
*Source: https://chrislema.com/purchase-with-storytelling*
---## Let's say you want to sell an eBook.

What do you do?

Well first, you spend $4 on this eBook that tells you how to set up your store - in detail.

But your objective wasn't to set up a store, right? It was to sell the eBook. And even after you had everything installed, you noticed sales weren't really working as you hoped.

So the next thing you do is you [read my post on pricing experiments to see if you need to adjust your price](https://chrislema.com/pricing-experiments/). Right?

And in there, you read about the power of story. And so you go back and rework your product details page - which is easy to do because you're using [WordPress](https://wordpress.org/) and [Easy Digital Downloads](https://chrislema.com/edd).

## Telling a great story

The last time I wrote about selling, I told you that you wanted to focus not on features, and not even on benefits. [I told you to focus on destinations.](https://chrislema.com/sell-selling-less/)

The best way to do that is to leverage the power of great stories. [Check out this example to see what I'm talking about.](https://www.fiftythree.com/pencil)

I loved the destination they were taking me to. I loved how they shared it. And you'll notice I'm not talking about story as in, "once upon a time." I'm talking about the story I find myself in when I read the page and it transports me into being an incredible artist, or designer, or sketcher.

It was so powerful a story, that in November I bought one, and bought more for my friends.

But there's one part of the fiftythree experience I didn't love.

## Five Clicks to Purchase

Because the story they were telling, and the destination they took me to was so awesome, I was willing to sustain my eagerness as I moved thru their checkout process.

But it was five clicks.

FIVE!

It tells you how compelling their story was. But even if a few people fall off that process, it's a frustrating loss for the company that worked so hard to get us motivated to buy.

## Three tips to help you trigger a purchase with storytelling

**1. Help people imagine the future.**

The power of a great and compelling story is that it transports you. It does that by helping you imagine a different world.

This, by the way, is the same way people sell timeshares. Because while you're on vacation, it's easy to envision a lot more vacationing.

So if you're selling an eBook, don't focus on the content of your eBook. Instead, focus on the result of a changed life after reading the eBook.

**2. Remove distractions and roadblocks.**

The second thing you want to focus on is limiting the number of roadblocks to collecting money. Once you've transported someone to a destination they want, you don't want to have them spend the next twenty minutes forgetting about it while clicking thru your site. So streamline everything.

**3. Check out this new EDD extension.**

Lastly, if you've indeed bought the [eBook](https://store.halfelf.org/ebooks/wordpress-bookstore/) I told you about, and you got your [WordPress](https://wordpress.org/) and [EDD](https://chrislema.com/edd) site up, like I suggested, and you know how easy it is to use [Gravity Forms](https://chrislema.com/getgravityforms) - then you have to check out this **new EDD extension.**

Why?

Because you no longer need to have people click from one screen to the next. Instead, you can let people check out directly from the product / story page.

That's how you leverage the story while removing all the roadblocks. Check out this video.

Now, with a few plugins (and that eBook), you can set yourself up to earning money while you sleep. And if you're going to do that, maybe you should pick a new destination to sleep, like Hawaii, or my personal favorite, Cabo San Lucas.