Behavioral psychology is an important part of marketing psychology. Here are eight ways behavioral psychology can improve online conversion rates.
Behavioral psychology can be used to increase sales by understanding and influencing customer behavior. By understanding how customers think, feel, and behave, businesses can design messages and experiences that encourage customers to buy. This means that if you know what subconsciously makes people take certain actions, your marketing will be much more successful. Behavioral psychology can be applied to both online and offline marketing, but the implementation is different.
Here are eight ways to leverage psychology to sell more online, with concrete examples you can implement instantly.
Three Ways to Get That Button Clicked
The way you word your call to action can have a big impact on how successful it is. There is a behavioral psychology strategy that can make your call to action more effective by making it more visible. This can be mainly done using three techniques:
1. Use Vivid Colors
A yellow or red button will stand out more than a darker color. People will be drawn to the bright colors on your website and understand in three seconds or less what they are supposed to do.
2. Use Visual Aids
Make the call to action button more noticeable by pointing it out. Behavioral psychologists believe that it is more instinctive to click on a button when it is obvious that is what you are supposed to do. The button appears less isolated when something is placed close to it, making it more likely to be clicked.
3. People in Images Need to Look at the Call to Action
People are naturally drawn to look at what the people in photos are looking at. The best photos are the ones that look at the call to action button.
Viewers often skip over other content and go straight to the photos. To ensure that people will see your photos, place them on the side where people will start reading. If you want people to read your text from left to right, you should put the photo on the left. If you are reading from right to left, the photos should be on the right.
Tactics to Boost Your Online Business
Make It Feel Like a Deal
Studies in behavioral psychology have shown that the way the price is presented on a landing page can have a significant impact on the conversion rate. A good way to make your product seem like a good deal is to offer alternative solutions that are not actually meant to sell.
Upsell Before the Checkout
Make the most of the fact that people have chosen to buy from your website. The barrier between your product/service and the customer has been successfully broken down. People tend to agree to something new when they’ve already agreed to something else beforehand. This means that it is easier to sell more products to existing customers than to find new ones.
The timing of the upsell is crucial because if it is done after the checkout the customer is less likely to be interested. It is best to do it just before the end of the checkout process.
Effective up-selling strategies are:
- “Customers who ordered this item also bought:”
- “Add product xyz and get free shipping”
- “Add product xyz to get a one time discount of X%”
GoDaddy is the perfect example regarding upselling. For example, when you look up the availability of a domain, you will be offered to buy domains with different endings to secure the name you just found.
Create a Sense Of Urgency
The less time people have to take action on your promotion, the more likely they are to do so. Although people may not be sure whether a promotion will actually expire, creating a sense of urgency can still lead to quicker decision-making.
There are several ways to create a sense of urgency:
- Limited availability
- Having a countdown on the website saying when the promotion is going to end
- Upcoming price increase
- Helping readers understand the importance of receiving a piece of information sooner rather than later
There are many ways to create a sense of urgency, and testing different methods can help you find the most profitable option. This concept can be applied to marketing material both online and offline, and can be tested by comparing results from both.
Take Advantage of the Power of the Word ‘FREE’
A behavioral psychology experiment was run by Duke University’s Dan Ariely. There were two types of chocolate on display at the counter: Hershey kisses for 1 cent and Lindt chocolate truffles for 15 cents. The store manager announced that there was a discount on both types of chocolate and that customers could have one or the other. Seventy percent of customers still bought Lindt chocolate when the price was increased by a cent for each chocolate.
Despite the initial price difference, 69% of customers chose the free Hershey kisses when they were offered.
This study has shown that free products are more appealing to people than products that they have to pay for, even if the paid product is better quality.
If you want people to use or read something, give it away for free. Offering something paid at the same time will make people feel like they’re getting a freebie.
Give User the Option to Learn More About an Upsell
If you would prefer not to be up-sold in an aggressive manner, you can simply offer the option to learn more about an additional product or service during the checkout process.
For example, you could have a checkbox on your checkout button that says “Yes, I want to learn more about how to save 30% on my next purchase.” If people check the box, the offer page opens and they are more receptive to it because of the psychological effect discussed earlier: if someone agrees to someone once, it is more likely that they will say yes again in the future.
Watch the Way You Speak!
Assuming that the reader has already decided to go through with the purchase, the content should be written in a way that informs them of what to expect and what they need to do. This might include providing instructions, outlining the steps of the process, or highlighting key information. For instance, replace phrases mentioning “if you buy” with “when you will be using”, “the advantage of our product” with “You will love our product right from the first time you use it” . Make sure your website uses phrases that make your readers feel sure about buying your product.
This concept also applies to live demos and videos. You should make users feel like they own the product to increase conversion rates.
Ways to Make Small Commitments Work
If you get someone to make small commitments first, it will be easier to get a larger commitment from them at some later point in time.
This is another example of human psychology that is used by everyone – from your child to some of the world’s largest businesses. We all have separate personalities that we express in different situations. When one of these personalities is activated, we behave in a certain way.
It is more likely that you will stick to a commitment if it is written down, and even more likely if you share it with others. Difficulties make us committed.
How Making Small Commitments Can Help Your Online Business?
Buying Experience
Even if your product is great, if your customers can’t experience it right away it’s hard to get them to make a commitment. Giving your customers a great first experience is important.
Signup for Beta
If you want to launch a new product or expand it to a new market, consider signing up your prospects for a beta.
Inviting prospects to participate in beta programs is a great way to get them to commit. If you want your customers to make long-lasting commitments, you can use social validation techniques like featuring them on your product homepage with a testimonial or video.
Freemium Pricing
Offer your products for free with a limited number of users or accounts to create strong customer commitments.
Paid products may cause customers to break their agreements when they do not renew their subscriptions or licenses, while freemium products only help customers make stronger agreements.
Marketing Copy
Having strong marketing copy is essential to making successful sales because it helps potential customers see how your product can meet their needs.
Focusing on the problem in marketing copies, describing the terrible experience of having to deal with the problem, and then introducing the product as the solution to the problem can help make small commitments.
Quick Wins
Good marketing copies, good products are one thing. Instant results are a whole different thing.
How can you get your customers a quick win with your product in the next 30 minutes? Customers are more likely to commit to products that can be validated quickly.
Ways to Use the Need To Relate
How Your Online Business can Leverage the Need to Relate?
Entrepreneurs and creators of products or services are always interacting with people – their stakeholders. It’s important that our stakeholders can relate to us and our product. You need to make sure this happens all the time.
Captivating Presentations
Your presentation should be tailored to your audience. You would present to the board of directors differently than you would to a customer or an engineering team. The things that investors would find appealing in a potential investment are different from what engineers would find appealing in a potential project. Using pictures, videos and narratives is a good start.
Body Language
Body language is an underrated and under-discussed aspect of entrepreneurship, product management, and design.
As the creators and owners of online businesses, we sometimes have to influence people who we don’t manage. If you want to get the attention of a large group of people, whether it be engineers, customers, or a board of directors, good body language is key. The Science Of People website has a lot of useful tips on body language from Vanessa Van Edwards.
Product Story
The success of any product-based business relies heavily on the story behind the product. The mission of your product is to change the lives of people by solving a problem they have.
The way you tell your story is key to how your audience would be able to connect with your product. Your customers will be more attracted to your product if you tell a good story. To create a good product roadmap, start by telling a story about the product.
Market Research
It is important to use market research in order to understand changing trends in the market, positioning changes by competitors, and changing market demand. Additionally, it is helpful to understand users’ emotions.
There are a few things you can do to improve your product or online business, such as revisiting your strengths and weaknesses, course-correcting your priorities, and enhancing marketing outreach. It is important to communicate with customers and users, and sometimes your observations of the market can help them relate to it more and find it more appealing.
Ways to Leverage Loss Aversion
How You can Leverage Loss Aversion?
As business owners, we should always focus on our users and customers, and see how our product is helping them do something better. Conducting thorough design research is an effective way to determine the concerns of your customers and users.
There are some things you can do to take advantage of people’s fear of losing something in order to grow your product.
Try Platinum for 3-Months
You should give your top tier offering for free to every new signup if you have a product with a tiered offering model.
Free trials of a product create a fear of loss in customers, leading them to buy the product to avoid losing access.
Price Lock-in
If you offer a lower price for a longer subscription, your customers will be more likely to buy it.
This creates a feeling of fear in your customers about losing something – in this case, money. This is an effective strategy if you need to keep customers committed to your business for an extended period.
Conclusion
You will not be successful in boosting online sales through behavioral psychology if you only implement strategies once and never optimize them again. A common mistake is to make a button red without taking any further action. The button’s color can have an impact and should be experimented with to get the most out of using behavioral psychology.
