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Showing posts with label building your business. Show all posts
Showing posts with label building your business. Show all posts

Saturday, 20 September 2014

10 Creative Online Business Opportunities

Maintaining a steady flow of revenues as a web worker is a major challenge. Whether you’re freelancing for an ever-changing group of clients or selling products to consumers, it can be tough to know whether you’re going to make ends meet month to month. Business comes in waves, so anything you can do to make your earnings more dependable will help you sleep better at night.
We’ve already shared lists of ways you can grow your income with creative online business opportunity ideas (check our posts from April and last January), and we’re happy to present a new list of ideas to help you on your journey for scoring more online gigs.
So much of what’s touted around the web as opportunities to make money online ends up with the opposite effect. We’ve done the hard part for you and checked out the reputations of these sites and business models for you. (We still recommend keeping your guard up and watching out for scammers interacting with users on these platforms, though.) Whether you want to offer your services using a niche online marketplace or monetize your existing assets, there’s plenty you can try!

1. Sell Your Own Swag

Are you an artist, designer, illustrator or doodler? Are you working with a brand that has a strong visual identity? Got ideas for clever imagery or witty words?
All you need is an image file with decent resolution, and you can easily make it available for purchase on the internet as a tee shirt, tote bag, mug, iPhone case or whatever else you can think of. CafePress is the most famous of the sites that’ll handle the printing, processing and shipping on your behalf, but there are plenty of others that have good reputations too, including MySoti, Printfection and Zazzle.
Cafe Press
You don’t need to pay any fees at all to the platform you choose, since they only print when there’s an order – and you’ll earn commissions on every sale. So you can get creative and promote your products on your website, with a dedicated microsite, with ads on other sites, on social media, or wherever else you think you can generate sales.

2. Menial Clicks During Spare Time

Do you enjoy mindlessly scrolling, finding images, clicking, evaluating data, dragging, writing five-word descriptions or copy-pasting in your spare time? Businesses often need help with these types of tasks, and sometimes it’s cheaper or easier to crowdsource than to write bits of code to do the work.
That’s where marketplaces like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and ShortTask come into play. Here you can take on nano-jobs that pay out a few cents each but are highly scalable and generally don’t require too much attention. Each marketplace has its own stipulations, culture and lingo, though, so be prepared for a bit of a learning curve.
Short Task

3. Virtual Tutelage

Are you an expert in a niche area of knowledge? Can you teach someone to play baroque concertos on the ukulele? If someone has questions about how to store their power tools, can you give good advice on the fly?
There are dedicated web platforms where you can offer your services as an authoritative coach or tutor in exchange for money. Google’s relatively new Helpoutsis a full-on marketplace with video conferencing with customers, while Ether allows you to book paid appointments for phone consultations, with marketing handled by you offsite.
Helpouts

4. Drop Shipping for Risk-Free eCommerce

Drop shipping is a much-praised hybrid business model somewhere between eCommerce and affiliate marketing. Essentially, it allows you to sell other people’s products on websites that you manage, but with none of the risk. The vendor handles the billing, service and order fulfillment – all you need to do is drive the orders and you make commissions.
If you’ve built your website with Wix, you can easily add the 365 DropShip Product Catalog app to your website. There are zero costs involved, and you can earn commissions by hosting a full-on eCommerce-style shop on your site with products from several manufacturers and categories.
365 Dropship Wix App

5. Leverage Your Social Influence

If you’ve got lots of Twitter followers who click on links you post, you can leverage this asset to make money by sending out sponsored tweets.
There are now several marketplaces where advertisers can post offers, includingTweetPeddler, ChurpChurp and SponsoredTweets. There’s a lot of volume in these directories, so you should be able to find offers to promote products that are relevant to your community of followers and won’t kill your social media credibility.
Paid per Tweet

6. Niche Tourist Services

If you live somewhere that tourists flock to, you might be able to profit from the greater economic ecosystem that comes along with a robust tourism industry. While most travelers purchase solutions for lodging, transportation, eats and guided tours from mainstream, big companies, there are growing numbers of them who prefer to do business with independent locals – it’s often cheaper and more authentic.
If you don’t need your car every day you can rent it out with RelayRides. If you do regularly use your car, then you can offer people rides for money using Sidecar. You can also rent out your home, or part of it, using Airbnb, or offer quirky special interest tours of your locale on Vayable.
Airbnb

7. Cook and Host Dinners

Along similar lines, there are plenty of people who are interested in eating out but have grown tired with the anonymous, polished corporate flavors of restaurants. If you can cook up delicious and friendly dining experiences in your own home, it’s easier than ever to reach customers interested in joining you.
Marketplaces for home-hosted meals include EatWith, Cookening and HomeDine.
Cookening

8. Sell Your Collectibles

Are your baseball cards from the 80′s collecting dust in your attic in a box next to your childhood Star Wars action figures? Are you unlikely to ever play that Santana album you have on vinyl ever again? You may have a hard time letting go of this stuff, but your life will feel lighter once you do. You can make decent money selling it, too.
Just take some photos, determine fair asking prices, post on Craigslist or eBay, and the inquiries from interested shoppers ought to come pouring in.
Ebay

9. Offline Tasks via Online Marketplaces

People are posting one-off jobs in droves on platforms like Redbeacon andTaskRabbit, which means you can make extra money by running errands or performing handyman tasks for people in your spare time.
To pick up these gigs, you’ll need to pass a background check, so get started with building your profile with plenty of notice.
Task Rabbit

10. Review People’s Apps

If you’re a gadget junkie, gamer, tech tool lover or an early adopter, you’re likely to get a kick out of SoftwareJudge. Here you can get paid to try out recently launched apps and write what you think of them.
Social proof is a powerful force when it comes to app marketing, so publishers are willing to pay top dollar for your opinions – a quality review can earn you up to $50.

Wednesday, 3 September 2014

6 Simple Ways to Increase Your Website Traffic

As of March 2012, there were 644 million active websites. That’s more than half a billion - in other words, a lot. In this sea of content, images, videos, and social media, it’s easy, as someone with a struggling website, to feel overwhelmed. That said, there is no greater tool your business or brand can have than a website that both promotes your product or service while adding value to your readers’ experience. By generating awesome content and engaging traffic tools to expand your reach, you can boost website traffic while simultaneously establishing yourself as a trustworthy member of the digital community.
Here are 6 quick, creative, DIY ways to improve your website traffic.

1. Optimize your content for search engines

To increase the visibility of your website and boost traffic, incorporate content-rich search words that will earn your site more play in popular search engines. Since much website traffic comes from search engines like Google - especially when a user is discovering your site for the first time - you want to make sure you’re employing simple on-page SEO techniques, like consistently stellar website performance, keyword-rich text and titles, frequent content updates, etc. When incorporated organically, these are great ways to increase your presence in search results and bring more traffic to your site.

2. Improve your social media presence

Your social media outlets should function as an extension of your website. Maintain fun and active Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and Pinterest accounts that don’t only promote your content, but serve to build up your personality and profile. Become active in social communities that are relevant to your content. In addition, make sure your content is easily shareable by implementing social plugins on your website (Like, +1, and Tweet buttons) in order to increase your site’s visibility on social networks.

3. Get grabby

When sharing your content on social media or in link trades, think about creating titles for your posts and pages that will be more interesting to readers. Check out sites like Upworthy and Buzzfeed - they are experts at titles that are creative, honest, and engaging without being sensationalist. We’ve researched and collected some best practices on title length and word choices to determine what kinds of titles generate the most clicks. Think about ways you can implement these best practices to make the content you’re sharing more clickable.

4. Paid traffic

In order to generate high traffic, many websites rely on the pay per click (PPC) model, a form of internet advertising in which the advertiser pays for clicks on their ads, only paying for actual traffic driven to their website. Depending on your budget and industry, this might be a good option for you. If you do want to take your site to this level of visibility, paid content discovery platforms like Google Adwords, Facebook’s PPC platform, and Outbrain Amplify can radically extend your website’s reach and increase your traffic. These content discovery platforms can help extend your reach and bring you a whole new audience that otherwise might not have been looking for you.

5. Find your community

One of the best ways to increase website traffic is to become a hub for your industry. By connecting with other writers, bloggers, and thought-leaders in your field, and forming a virtual community, you will be positioning yourself as a trusted go-to. One way to form real and lasting connections is by prioritizing giving back - ie. employing the “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” mentality. Participate in link trades with other related site owners. And don’t only wait for others to notice you: drive traffic to other websites you respect and trust, and be sure to participate in conversations in forums or on social media to establish yourself and your site as a dynamic community member.

6. Provide real value

While all the above techniques may help you to gain new readers, you also need to think about keeping the ones you have - and how to inspire those readers to tell their friends and share your content. Create useful, unique, and timely content that your readers will organically want to share with their friends, and that will inspire those who are site owners or bloggers to link to your content. These links are a great organic way to improve your SEO. Use videos and images when appropriate to provide a more dynamic reader experience. Proof your content for grammar and spelling, and reveal your unique voice, point of view, and expertise. Word-of-mouth is still one of the most trusted ways to boost website traffic, and to generate this level of engagement, your website needs to focus on providing real value - both entertainment and educational - to your audience.

Monday, 1 September 2014

6 Psychological Triggers that Win Sales and Influence Customers

Whenever anyone asks me what marketing books I recommend that will help them sell more, the very first one I point them to is “Influence” by Robert Cialdini, published in 1984.
A professor of psychology and marketing, Cialdini lays out six ways you can get people to say yes to what you're asking. Anyone who sells things for a living, online or offline, should know, love, and live these principles:
  • Reciprocity
  • Commitment & Consistency
  • Liking
  • Authority
  • Social Proof
  • Scarcity
Let's take a look how you can build some of these influence triggers into your online store to start getting more sales and customers.

1. Reciprocity

The principle of reciprocity means that when someone gives us something we feel compelled to give something back in return. Have you ever gone to Costco ended up with an unplanned sausage purchase in your cart because you felt a nagging obligation to buy because you tried a free sample? Well, that was the principle of reciprocity in action.
Of course, online retailers can’t personally visit the house of each person who interacts with them to shove a sample in their hand. So how can you make reciprocity work for you?

Free Gift With Purchase

You might not be able to offer something in advance, but you can definitely offer something alongside. This tactic is a favorite of cosmetic and beauty products as demonstrated below by Ultra Beauty.
Even if you don’t advertise the gift in advance, slipping samples of other products into your shipped product can create the feeling of having received a gift that might earn you a second purchase.

The Gift Of Content

Content can be a good way for online retailers to provide value to potential customers—in effect, giving them a gift. For example, StyleSeek presents new users with a fun quiz they can go through to reach recommendations for clothes that match what they like:
True & Co, an online lingerie retailer, helps women figure out the right size and style of bra for them:
So whether it’s a guide for how to make the perfect vinaigrette or an exclusive author interview, use content as an ethical bribe that makes people feel grateful towards your business. 

2. Commitment & Consistency

The principle of commitment and consistency says that people will go to great lengths to appear consistent in their words and actions - even to the extent of doing things that are basically irrational.
That’s why if you’re trying to make a change in your life - losing weight, for example - it can be very helpful to state your goal publicly. Once you’ve committed out loud (or online) you will have much more incentive to keep up your end of the bargain.
As a retailer, if you can get customers to make a small commitment to your brand (like signing up for your email newsletter), they are more likely to eventually purchase from you. And if you can actually get products in their hand, even if there is no official commitment to buy them, your chances increase even more.
This is the principle behind Warby Parker’s Home Try-On Program:
Warby Parker knows that with a product that sits right in the middle of your face all day, look and fit are important. They also know that if they can get a set of frames in your hands, they are probably about 50% of the way to making a sale. So they make it as frictionless as possible - order the samples, get the box, order the frames you want, and send the box back for free. They say there's no commitment, but they are wise students of Cialdini - they know the customer feels the commitment the minute they open the box.
Zappos’ famously easy return policy is another example of this - there is less friction for the customer to buy because they know that if they don’t like it they can return it. But once they have the product in their hands, will they really return it? Probably not. They're already committed.

3. Liking

The principle of liking says that we are more likely to say yes to a request if we feel a connection to the person making it. That’s why the sausage sample lady at Costco is always giving you a nice smile.
It’s also why brands hire celebrities to endorse their products - so that people will transfer their love of Roger Federer to watches he’s endorsing.
There are lots of ways to make this principle work for your store:

Telling Your Story

As a direct-response marketer I tend not to truck much with branding. But if there’s one place that branding is essential, it is in triggering the principle of liking.
Every element of your store - colors, fonts, photo styles, copy - contributes to your brand personality, and your goal is to create a personality that is cohesive and that your target customer will like. This might be brisk and efficient if you are selling into a business market, warm and playful if you’re selling children’s products, 'earth-mothery' if you’re selling natural products.
Many stores will include something like an “About Us” page that is basically brand personality distilled. Here’s an example from Hiut Denim Co:
And one from jewelry designer Elva Fields:
This is a great way to sum up your story and to get people to like you.

Use Models People Can Identify With 

If you’re selling clothing, jewelry, or accessories, one quick way to create a connection to your customer is to show your stuff on people they will identify with and like. This doesn’t mean you need to book Russian supermodels; it’s best if they look like your customers. This might mean funky and cool, like So Worth Loving:
Casual and athletic, like Title Nine:
Or preppy, like Southern Marsh:

Social Links

People are more likely to purchase something if it’s recommended to them by someone they know and trust. So make sure that your product pages have links to Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and Google+ so that your customers can tell their friends about the great product they just found on your site.
I know this sounds obvious, but I had to poke around to find examples, especially with smaller stores. But tea shop Little Sparrow is doing it right:
And so are more well known brands, like Fab:

Display What Others Are Buying

Have you ever noticed someone wearing the same shoes or shirt as you and mentally saluted their fine taste? You probably felt a quick connection with that person based solely on that one data point.
Stores can play off that idea by presenting products that are similar to what the person is browsing, as seen here in the online store for the comic The Oatmeal:

4. Authority

Most people have heard of the famous Milgram experiments, in which volunteers were convinced to continue delivering what they thought were incredibly painful electric shocks to unseen subjects, even when they could hear (faked) screams of pain. The presence of a man in a lab coat telling them to continue was enough to earn the compliance of nearly all the volunteers.
People appear hard-wired to respond to authority (or the appearance of authority). How can you use this to sell?

Expert Creation

Does your product have a scientific secret sauce? Display content from professionals with credentials likeHerbalife:
Is it hand-crafted by trained artisans? Tell the world all about them like Dodocase:
And of course books are another great example of this. Are you more likely to buy a run-of-the-mill book about how to cook French Food… or one by Jacques Pepin? Cookbook Village knows that big names sell books and they have a whole section for big name chefs:

Expert Curation

These days the range of products available to a shopper are so vast it’s hard to wade through them all—and that’s why “curation” has become the buzzword of the moment.
Do you have a Chief Stylist (or someone who could reasonably pass for that)? Have a page with her top picks for the season. Selling fitness products? Have a personal trainer give his favorite picks. Even a little authority is enough; Kepler’s Books provides recommendations from each of their staff members:

5. Social Proof

The principle of social proof is connected to the principle of liking: because we are social creatures, we tend to like things just because other people do as well, whether we know them or not. Anything that shows the popularity of your site and your products can trigger a response.
Have you gotten good press? Mention it! Received loving emails from customers? Quote them! Gotten good feedback from your mom? Heck, get it up there. Look, cute tableware purveyor Camila Prada has done all three:
Another tactic is to provide a “Best Sellers” or “Most Popular” page, as demonstrated by Black Milkbelow. Are the anatomically-correct muscle leggings really their most popular, or just the ones that are most piled up in the warehouse? As a consumer, I don’t know. But by declaring these particular leggings the most wanted, Black Milk has given them a sheen of desirability.
And of course, ratings and reviews, a la Amazon & countless other retailers, are another fine way to show social proof.

6. Scarcity

Cialdini’s final principle is the principle of scarcity, which states that people are highly motivated by the thought that they might lose out on something. Call it the Eternal Teenager Principle: if someone tells you that you can’t have it - boy, do you want it. This is probably the one I’m the biggest sucker for, personally.
Marketers trigger this effect by using all kinds of tactics to suggest that products (or low prices) might soon be gone, or that someone is trying to keep this product off the market.

Deadlines For Sales

Lily Pulitzer is counting down to the second when she her summer sale prices will become unavailable.

Impending Out-Of-Stock Announcements

You want that cute toy box from ModMom? Well, you’d better hurry - there are only three left!

Seasonal or Limited Products

Every March when my friend gets her green Shamrock Shake from McDonalds she crows with happiness all over the social media. Think she’d be that excited if she could walk in and get it any time? Of course not. The knowledge that the supply is limited motivates her—and makes her feel like a success for having “won.”
And speaking of me being a sucker for this tactic, that’s exactly how I feel about my Pumpkin Spice Latte from Starbucks.

 

But What About Pricing?

You may be wondering where the extremely common retail tactics of sales & discounts fall under these six principles. Is Cialdini saying that price doesn’t impact people’s purchasing behavior?
Of course it does, and Cialdini mentions a couple of pricing experiments in the beginning of his book. But think of it this way: the price of your product represents the size of a risk someone is going to take on. In other words, people will be a lot more choosy over a $10,000 product than one that is $1.

Risk Removal

The six principles of influence represent additional non-obvious ways to impact perceived risk. For example, by using appeals to authority, you're decreasing the risk of a 'yes' - someone who says yes (to your appeal to buy a product) can always point to the authority you've demonstrated to rationalize their purchase. By using scarcity tactics, you're increasing the risk of a 'no' - someone who declines your offer right now might miss out.
So given a price that you have settled on for your products, using the principles of influence can decrease the risk of 'yes' (liking, social proof, authority) or increase the risk of 'no' (scarcity, consistency, reciprocity).
Sprinkle them throughout your site and watch your sales go up!

Wednesday, 13 August 2014

Psychology of Online Buyers – Web Design Tricks for an Online Store to Sell More

We are constantly manipulating human consciousness as everyday life as in business. Skilled craftsmen of a psychological impact turn us into docile audience, ready to purchase each advertised product. Online commerce thrives due to numerous methods of suggestion and direct persuasion.
Psychology of Online Buyers – Web Design Tricks for an Online Store to Sell More
First of all you need to study the ways of interaction between your website and visitors. Various surveys will be really helpful; by the way you can install heat-map plugins onto your website thus track most interesting content.
These observations will help you understand wishes of your customers and using engaging techniques given below you will increase their interaction thus you’ll enlarge your sales.
Further we’ve provided numerous psychological techniques that will stimuli your sales. For the sake of your shop learn to use these approaches and soon you’ll have a positive result of your work.

Use the knowledge of the general psychology of mass consumer

It’s known that standard selling methods, which work for supermarkets are the main strategies applied by online shops. Profit and number of visitors who make a purchase can be increased using uncomplicated marketing actions, such as:
  1. Place most profitable products to the best positions;
  2. Combine complementary product samples (wine and cheese, slippers and pajamas) in one category;
  3. Display them on a single page of search results.
And how close do complementary products coexist for you, – put them at least in a row to draw user’s attention to the fact that they may need one of those.

Start from small things

Analyze user reaction to each and every minor change in design:
  1. Changes in shape/color of buttons;
  2. Changes in color of content and background image in the header.
Free Google Website Optimizer is a great tool designed to help you ease website testing quality.

Promotion, variation of prices and interest rates

Have you read “Marketing Experiments” by Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, he said that most consumers perceive the price stated first in a row, as average and standard. That is, when announcing the sale “with discounts from 15 to 30%,” you need to realize that people will expect 15% discount on larger amount of products, and 30% for just a few ones. That’s why it’s really important to state in the header the phrase: “discount up to X%” and in general use the phrase “up to” not to confuse people. By the way, did you notice that “to” sounds more convincing than “over”? If you specify prices in dollars, better inform your visitors of minimum values, like starts “from $15″, which looks much more attractive than “$15 – $40.” However, using such ambiguous wording, you probably should ensure the availability of footnotes, which set out the terms of discounts, and set them out very clearly. Otherwise, you may experience some fracas with those customers, who didn’t delve into the matter, and the page where they can be addressed, will be an excellent proof of your innocence.
Buyers are susceptible to offers of free shipping, and can even prefer $15 shipping to a $20 discount. Try to benefit from these oddities of human thinking. Skillfully manipulating the figures and percentages, you will attract people with enticing banner ads, themes, messages when sending newsletters, etc.
I guess you’ve seen following price tags: $99.95 or $49.95. The trick is in subconscious perception of these numbers, they are closer to $90 or $40 thus against all logic, they do not distort the real value of this amount. A series of experiments showed that the goods price at $9.99, were sold twice as much as $10.00 ones! Incredible, isn’t it? This method is more suitable for consumer-Americans. Moreover, it works much better with certain product groups.

Use the principle of reciprocity

This principle is clearly described in Robert Cialdini’s “Psychology of Persuasion. In short, you wish to provide a service in respond to any courtesy. This behavioral norm has been instilled to all of us since early childhood. Our parents teach us to be polite and show appreciation for any favor, thus making us susceptible to psychological influence. They make us believe that people will not like us if we deny giving a back favor. Sale – is an analogue of the favor, to some extent it requires you reciprocal actions. Online stores offer additional bonuses, discount coupons, more expensive analogues of an exact product, in order for the customers to answer with a courtesy and buy those products. The principle is simple, as breath-in breath-out. And it’s not even the price: if raise it before Sale, anyway visitors will not come and buy.

Beautiful design web store

It’s been proved that nice-looking shop assistants sell more, and the court is more favorable to attractive people. Online store visitors are driven with same approach as judges with lacking opportunity to meet you closer, they rely on the first impression. Human subconscious ingrained an idea that beautifully decorated shops are much better that all other ones.
Use pictures that “have a character”.
Use photos that appeal to your senses, don’t forget that users “find interesting” photos with attractive individuals of both sexes. Allow your viewer to “smell the smoke”, “feel the sweat”, taste the wine and experience the embrace simply looking at those photos.
instantShift - ASOS.com
To make pictures come alive look for moments with beautiful light, pleasing back-round and most importantly, make sure that your pictures convey some kind of emotion: be it sadness, fear or happiness. It is said that eyes are the mirror of the soul so capture what you see in your subject’s eyes. Keep in mind, hands are also very expressive.

First person information presentation

According to the statistics, people are attracted to texts bearing personality imprint.
Imagine this: you open the page of a computer store, you see a bunch of products offered to you in an indifferent and detached manner, it makes you feel isolated all those buttons, images, and registry items. Wouldn’t it be more pleasant to interact with a “cart” that addresses you personally as if it’s human. You need to make your customers feel as if you want to get to know them, or show the human-like face of your brand. Positive feedback scores and chat with the audience in first person adds credibility to you as a professional, outlining your brand identity.

Simplicity and accessibility of “shorthands”

People trust only those things and notions they understand. That’s why; try to present instructions and call-to-actions clearly. Visual clues and pointers to the page of your store should be clearly visible and understandable so that users could easily find what they came for. “Interconnections” between navigation symbols of your website should give a convincing image of your company.

Upselling Offers

What’s an upselling offer? These products are usually placed on the checkout page or directly on the page with description of a goodie. You can offer additional services, facilities, advantages in terms of warranty or delivery to buyers of certain goods. What you need to do? Make an additional premium offers that will sound as real “baits”, in a good sense! For example, upselling products are usually the best choices to meet customer requirements.

Binding of prices

This technique gives you an possibility to vary various values. Prices and package are distributed the way that customers choose more expensive products, thus the difference between these products is not that high. For ex., Amazon.com offers a free “super-economy” delivery of any order worth over $25.
This is how this technique works.
If you offer a choice from three variants of designs: “web version”, “print version only” and “web + print” at prices $59, $125 and $135, respectively, you’ll notice that most customers prefer the third one. However, if you remove “print version only”, you’ll reduce your profits, since most people will choose cheaper “web version.”

Psychology of color perception as a marketing tool

Everyone knows that certain colors naturally affect emotions and human physiology, you always have to consider the characteristics of the environments that belong to your potential visitors. Colors are perceived differently on all continents and almost in all cultures. Therefore, it would be good to find out something about color theory, before you start building the layout of your future store. Competently composed color combinations will help you attract more loyal users.

Some more interesting stuff: Neuro-Marketing tips and tricks

Decision-making Process

Now let’s talk about one more interesting thing, i.e. the decision making. Do you know how humanz make decisions? If you’re not a psychologist-behaviorist, or if you are not studying psychology/behavior of primates, than this part of article will be very interesting for you.

How it works?

Human brain can be divided into numerous parts, ancient ones – that developed millions and millions of years ago and more recent ones – those we’ve obtained when got on two feet. If we did not evolve, we would still look like those proto-primates resembling squirrel from the “Ice-age”.
Decisions we make come from that ancient part of our brain, and it’s called – the Reptilian part. It responds for the basic necessities of survival: sleeping, breathing, reproduction, response to external stimuli and it controls decision-making action. That’s why it’s really important to make some actions that will appear to this part, and use the language that it understands the best. Two other brain sections, the “New Brain” and the “Middle Brain” have a supporting role.
  1. The New Brain is a pure logics, it makes deductions based on facts and data, later sharing it with other two parts.
  2. The Middle Brain produces emotions. It processes intuitions and feelings, and then shares its discoveries.
  3. The Reptilian part is a decision-maker.
Luckily you can always figure out some ways on how to influence even the most stubborn person.

Basically, there are four dead-simple tricks!

  • Diagnose the pain – reptilian part “wants” to avoid pain at any cost. Here you need to show how your product will “cure the pain” and “relieve the frustrations”;
  • Differentiate your claims – you need a hook that shows how your product stands apart from others, create a real contrast to help the Reptilian part see you as special and decide in your favor;
  • Show benefits – show it the gain it will get from choosing your product, you need to demonstrate concrete evidence of your benefits using simple and easy to understand messages;
  • Deliver your message – to complete your effective sales technique, your messages and presentations should be filled with visual stimuli and emotions that grab the attention of the Reptilian part and cause it make a buying decision in your favor.

Neuro-marketing Concept

Neuro-marketing is the latest form of marketing study aimed at studying brain’s responses to advertising including messages and images. It assumes that human brain has discrete functional areas that manage consumer behavior which is mostly driven by the subconscious. This advanced technique allows to influence our subconscious. With Neuro-marketing you can develop effective marketing mix that will satisfy consumers better (what is the main objective of marketing). Eventually Neuro-marketing study will be used to customize products and marketing communications according to the brain type of potential customers.
instantShift - Neuro-marketing Concept
Neuro-marketing study provided marketers with a secret weapon that is focused on making websites more engaging. Some of these tips can be familiar to most of us, but when used together, these tips will be your weapon of mass attraction.
  1. Too many choices – if people have too many choices they will not choose at all, that is strange but it’s the fact, the wider the range of products is, the more time user needs to choose the one (you can try to reduce the amount of similar products);
  2. Social validation – reviews and testimonials, users consider reviews of other customers more important than those submitted by the experts, or provided by the website specialists (try to engage your customers in submitting reviews considering the products they’ve acquired);
  3. Scarcity principle – if something is unavailable it is considered to be more valuable;
  4. Food, sex and danger – powerful triggers for action (feel free to use but not overuse);
  5. Power of faces – fusiform facial area, part of a brain that makes us focus on the faces of people, when using pictures of people make sure they look right;
  6. Story – information that is presented in a form of a story is processed better, you can personalize your fact presentation with your own thoughts if it is appropriate (this will be effective when presenting video reviews of the products you offer);
  7. Commitment – by asking small commitments you will get more loyal customers after some time, similar to social validation.

Conclusion

Tips provided in this article will help you increase website usability and user response, when used right they will help you achieve sky-high conversion rate and you’ll get a handle on the best way to present design and content that entices visitors and helps generate business to your company. One thing needs to be pointed out these tips won’t be helpful if you don’t have a solid product or service to begin with, so get that down first. The rest will only serve to deliver it to the consumers successfully.