Psychology of Conversions: Building a timeless website conversions system

The thing about human psychology is that it never changes. Smart marketers understand this and try to take advantage of it.                                             

Dr. Robert B. Cialdini, author of “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” was one of the first few people to investigate the psychological principles sales people apply to influence their customers to say YES. He observed that there are several fundamental psychological principles that direct human behavior when it comes to making a buying decision.

Online business, internet marketing, website optimization and SEO might have been alien terms by the time Cialdini was publishing the book, but his marketing psychology principles haven’t changed. In other words, no matter how much the marketing world changes, marketers can be sure that certain aspects of human behaviors aren’t going away.

You may run several A/B tests to test your assumptions, but understanding people’s inherent motivation and behavior—the science of persuasion—is the key; it is the winning variation.

Let’s investigate some of the irresistible psychological hooks you can integrate in your website that will make visitors open your page and convert with a bang.

1. The Hallo Effect

(Good first impression is your first weapon)

Have you heard of the ‘Hallo Effect?’ The term Hallo Effect was coined way back in 1920 by psychologist Edward Thorndike, in his paper A Constant Error in Psychological Ratings. He found that police officers either labelled men as being either bad or good; rarely did they say that a person is either bad or good in one respect. Either one was good or bad.

Essentially, this is how your visitors label your website the first time they visit it. Either the visitors perceives it as good and the visitor stays or sees it as bad and the visitor bounces off. Rarely will you find visitors giving you the benefit of doubt. According to Nielsen Norman Group, your web visitors will make a snap decision within 10-20 secondson whether to stay or leave.

“People are stubborn about doing anything,” says owner of TWIG Development & Renovation, Michael Davis. The first thing you need to do is to make sure that your prospect stays on the page.

Once a visitor opens your page, it should be like a strong, irresistible magnate that compels them to read the first line and the next line…and the next line and so on.

At a glance, your visitors should be able to tell that your website can offer them something they desire and you are an expert. There are two ways in which you can create a good first impression.

•  Your website boldly shows them what they can get.

Every human being who visits your website is only doing so for one purpose: to benefit out of it. Human beings are selfish by nature. All they ever think about is, “what is in it for me? Anything that offers your visitors a brighter future will always draw their attention and worth a gander.

Your headlines should clearly state the benefits due your readers if they continue reading or take the next action. Examples include:

• Make $200 per day and quite your 9-5 job
• Achieve awesome heath
• Become a better parent
• Learn to become a Photoshop expert in six weeks
• What if I showed you the secrets of online success in three easy steps?

You can also pinpoint their pain points and offer solutions. If solutions already exist, show them that you offer the best solution in a unique way. 
Examples include:

• Have you tried all weight loss advice and still nothing to show for it? This is for you
• Are you facing bankruptcy? Here is how to get back up on your feet and achieve financial freedom
• We understand the pains of going through divorce. Our expert divorce counsellor will hold your hand and walk with you back to happiness
• Are you having a hectic day filtering spam? Let us take care of that

• You are an expert

One of the biggest mistakes that brands make is spreading their expertise too thinly.

If you give an impression that you are a jack of all trades, your customer will most likely bounce away thinking you are a master of none. When creating content, you need to stick to the core of what your business does.

According to a study commissioned by inPowered and conducted by Nielsen, expert content is most preferred by consumers. This makes sense since expert content is more likely to generate trust than thin content. Needless to say, producing rich, engaging and informative content is a must.

Boldly proclaiming that you are an expert is not enough. The consumers must see that in the content. The content should be written in such a way that an expert voice converts complex concepts into subjects that are easier to understand. This trait is the most sought after in marketers.

2. Psychology of Social proof

Social proof isn’t just an abstract psychological concept that big marketers use. It is a marketing tool that works for almost any kind of business.

According to Wikipedia, social proof is a psychological phenomenon where people assume that other people’s actions and behavior reflect the correct behavior for a given situation. Perhaps this is driven by the assumption that others have already done the homework and arrived at the correct conclusion.

An experiment conducted by psychologists Leornard Bickman and Stanley Milgram in 1968 demonstrated the fact that many people are willing to do something or behave in a certain manner if other people are already doing that. The logic behind it is that if many others are doing it, then there must be a good reason why. That is why the crowd becomes more influential as it becomes bigger.

In marketing, psychology of social proof is applied in many instances. You too can use social proof to convince potential customers that your product or service is already working for others. Here are some social proof strategies you can apply:

• Expert social proof: an approval from industry expert like a well-known blogger, magazine or website can have a tremendous effect.  Studies show that visitors driven to an online store from an expert blogger or popular magazine are twice as likely to make a purchase compared to those driven through paid search.
• Celebrity social proof: celebrity endorsements are quite common in television commercials. However, more and more online businesses are embracing this form of social proof by getting celebrities to help them launch products, appear on their websites or simply publicly endorse their products.
• User social proof: this can be in the form of testimonials, customer reviews and social media comments and user generated videos. An experiment conducted by ShoeDazzle showed that YouTube testimonials increased conversions by 300% compared to sales generated from organic views.  You can also display the number of people who have bought your products or the number of subscribers as a social proof that your product or service works for many people. By creating a budget that says, “over 1 million copies sold”, it simply tells the prospects that over one million people couldn’t possibly be wrong. Similarly, try to keep negative social proof on the minimum. It has been demonstrated by eBay that the first negative review on your product will reduce sales by between 5-8%. However, some expert marketers believe that those figures are quite conservative. It could be more.
• Wisdom of the crowd: highlighting the popularity of your product simply shows that others have correctly rated the product. For example, if your blog appears in the top 100 all-time influential blogs, be sure you will experience an upsurge in the number of people who visit your blog. Just work hard and keep producing quality services and products and you will soon receive endorsement of the crowd.
• Peer influence: the more you produce engaging, informative and interesting content, the more it will be shared on social media and other blogs. Once the friends of your readers see that they like the content, they are likely to follow suit. Zynga grew its daily users from 3 million to 41 million between 2008 and 2009 as a result of friends inviting friends to play through Facebook. In other words, friends referred by other friends become better customers.

Usually, when a lot of people are doing something, it is the right thing to do.

3. Balancing Logic and Emotions

Savy marketers are turning into neurology to understand the mind of the customer when it comes to making buying decisions. Understanding what goes on in customers' minds allows marketers to stop wasting time and money on an ineffective website or ecommerce store.

Most of the time, marketers assume that people buy or would want to buy from them purely on logic. Well, here is the shocker: even the most rational, learned, or scholarly people don’t base their buying decisions purely on logic. Most of the time, the intuitive mind is more involved.

However, I don’t mean to say that you shouldn’t give your prospects very good reasons why they should buy. On the contrary, if you fail to do so, your sales will dip. In other words, you website design must balance logic and emotion if you want to convert more leads. 

Apart from logic (reasons why the product or service works and why the customer needs it—functionality), savvy marketers should ensure the following is evident in their web design.

• Personal connection: build emotional connections with your customers. Choosing to go beyond merely the rational and transaction is the key to winning your customers heart. As a matter of fact, if you win your customer’s heart, you will win their wallet as well.
• Regular contact: regular contact with your customers increases sales. The key is to personalize your branding strategy and increase the touch points.
• Loyalty and trust: understand your customer needs, give them an ear, help them solve their problems, provide them with quality products, be authentic and provide customized products and services. Build emotional connection. All these things inspire loyalty and this is the game changer.
• The feel-good factor: even the most rational shopper will buy something that makes them feel good. It is good to ensure that you provide a positive, rewarding and cohesive shopping experience for your customer. All the social proof in the world won’t matter if your customer has bad experience with your product either during the buying process or when using it. They will simply cut off ties with you.
• What does the customer want? Understanding your prospects is important when it comes to converting them. If for instance your prospects are detail oriented, provide detailed facts about the product. If the visitor is undecided, then be his/her adviser. Simply watch your prospects signals and offer them what they want. There are several behavioral analytic tools that can help you track your web visitors.
• Use memories to connect: have you ever been touched by a commercial or story that reminded you of something? It could be your childhood, your honeymoon, a great vacation, graduation, family reunion or anything. Speaking directly to your customer’s previously stored memories can be a powerful way of connecting with them.

4. Principle of Reciprocity

The principle of reciprocity happens all the time. If one person does something good to you or offers you a free, valuable thing, you feel indebted to the person.

If that person comes to you for a favor in future, you would gladly attend to him without a second thought.

The rule is simple: give something valuable free—it could be a book, ticket, 30-day free software etc—and your customers will not need much persuasion when you ask them to convert. It doesn’t have to be immediate though.

    5. Persuasive pricing

Neuromarketing is becoming popular with each passing day. One of the experts in neuromarketing is Roger Dooley who penned a bestselling book called

Brainfluence: 100 Ways to Persuade and Convince Consumers with Neuromarketing

He argues that customers use irrational and weird reasons to judge a price.

Here are the highlights of the book.

First, let us just mention here that the customer will accept any price that appears to be a fair deal.

• Reduced price Vs increase in quality/quantity

According to Rogers, the customers’ brain interprets numbers irrationally and subjectively as opposed to exercising rational choice.

Here is a scenario: you venture into a store and decide to purchase a detergent. You are met with different prices but you notice two similar products but distinct offers. Bottle A says “30% off” (in price) and bottle B says “40% extra free” (in quantity). Which one do you choose?

If your instinct tells you to go for bottle B, then you are not alone. Many people will go for MORE instead of LESS. It feels better to get more out of your money than to pay less. In fact, reduced price is not a strong indicator that the product is of superior quality. According to Rogers, Bottle B will experience 71% more in sales than Bottle A if they are both sold in the same store.

• Price anchoring

Typically, customers store a certain price (anchor price) in their brain and then use it to determine whether a given price is fair.

Let’s assume the current price of gasoline is $4. If you walk into a gas station and you see something like $5, your brain automatically registers pain. You feel like you are being ripped off despite the fact that the price might have increased nationwide.

If the prices remain at $5, you begin to feel comfortable with $5 and as time goes, $5 becomes your new anchor price. So you become comfortable paying $5, $5.02, $5.19 etc. If, however, you walk into a station and see $4.99, you immediately become happy and want to take advantage of the ‘bargain.’

This is how price anchoring work. Marketers use this principle to trick maketheir customers believe that they are getting a deal, which is why you will walk into a store and see a cancelled $51 price tag replaced with a new $49 price tag. What the shopper wants you to do is to take the $51 as your price anchor and view $49 as a ‘bargain’.

Two different prices, same product

You can boost sales of one product by increasing the price of another product. For instance, if you are selling two similar refrigerators, but different colors you can increase demand of one by making the other more expensive. Even a price difference of few cents or a couple of dollars can make a big difference. One possible reason this works is that it helps the customer to make a quicker decision.

6.       Sense of urgency

One of the key aspect of activating human action is by invoking a sense of urgency. If given a chance, human beings would postpone action indefinitely.

Create a strong sense of urgency on your landing page or website and you will see people converting. If you give people room to think too hard or wait too long, then you lose the opportunity to convert them. Cut the delays and increase conversion rates.

Here are a few tips:

• Create scarcity: the message you are sending is that if they delay making a buying decision, then they will miss the opportunity to test your wonderful product. If you produce the item, you can simply limit the quantity you produce at a time. If your customer goes home believing they will still find the product next year, well, they will wait till next year. Unfortunately, by that time, either they will have found an alternative or they will have forgotten you.
• Countdown: remind your users that time is passing and the limited window offered for discounts will soon elapse. This will raise their anxiety and act fast. For this to work, there must be a real advantage to acting now than waiting for the time to elapse.
• Loss aversion:  human beings have a tendency to avoid losses. In your marketing pitch, create the impression that the user is going to lose something by failing to act.
• Threaten to take the offer away: say something like “this is the last time we are displaying this information” and you will have a voracious readership.
• Act now: urge them to take action now. Appeal to their promptness and responsiveness side by making them believe they are part of a community of proactive users who take action. Many people prefer being seen as action-oriented.