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!

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Social Media Personality Profiling For Business

It’s the epidemic that’s defined the 21^st century. Everyone has it, it’s shared amongst us and spreads like wildfire…yes, social media has pervaded all aspects of our day to day living. Everyone knows the scare stories about how over-exposure to the internet can be damaging to our health and personality, but let’s turn it round and think about how different personalities can affect social media. Everyone’s different – just take the fascinating Myers-Briggs personality test from the clever folk at Quistic. For business owners and social media managers, it may be interesting to think about specific personality attitudes and learn how certain stressors and energisers can help guide marketers in best engaging with their target audience.

borderlinepersonalitytypes.com

According to a recent article by Penelope Trunk, founder and CEO of the personality and career experts Quistic, everyone is motivated by one of three core desires: achievement, affiliation, or competence (or in simpleton’s terms: winning, relationships/affiliation, and craft). Think about what drives you: if you can understand and identify yourself amongst these three key motivators then you can better place yourself to succeed in business. The Myers-Briggs test places one’s personality on a sliding spectrum of 16 possibilities but somewhat worryingly, if, like myself, you are an ENFJ personality type it appears that you find “thinking is often your weakness”; however, it also advises to start writing a blog to further career prospects, so perhaps it’s bang on.

Certain City banks are already using personality profiling to better engender brokering partnerships and deals – if a client is particularly data-focused they will match them with a similarly data-minded broker, or match more ‘blue-sky-thinking’ companies with their own optimists. Understanding how to improve communication across different personalities is a useful and insightful business move.

simplyzesty.com

You might think that marketers should be sensitive or empathetic or have a keen eye for detail or a creative spark or an appreciation for deadlines; in fact, they need to be all of the above, and more. A split personality is perhaps encouraged in the marketing world, and even more so in the social media marketing world. You have to be able to tap into the different mindsets of your varied audiences, understand which channels will best speak to which personalities and create content that appeals to a variety of character types. Your strategy needs to speak to multiple personalities, thus you need to be able to adopt multiple personalities.

Everyone knows that social media is a great way to market your business; obviously you understand what your business is about, but do you really understand your customers? For all you social media managers, and there are a lot of you – five million‘social media experts’ at last count on LinkedIn – here are a few personality traits that you might wish to nurture when marketing a business online. The thinkers at Hubspot suggest that in order to better engage with your business’ customers, you should become: 

The informant – tell your brash reader what they need to know. And don’t beat about the bush.

The inquirer – appeal to the quieter members of your audience by asking them questions, and encouraging a climate for engagement with considerate content.

The helper – for the busy-bodies who are never satisfied you must provide top-notch customer service and answer questions and complaints directly.

The thought provoker – show the curious members of your target market that you are open to dialogue and debate, and that you are the go-to-expert for knowledge in your specialism.

The class clown – appeal to the jokers with some classic slap-stick humour.

The entertainer – this applies to everyone. Everyone likes, and needs, to be entertained. So be interesting.

The go-getter – and for those personality types that your business hasn’t yet tapped into…go and get them on board.

behrouz.jafarnezhad.com

It’s no longer enough for a business to market itself along outdated ‘buy me now’ call-to-action commands; with the advent of social media marketing, the emphasis is clearly on the social aspect. Everyone loves a good story, and this works to any good marketer’s advantage. Your blog and social media personality should be in sync, as this shapes how customer’s view your business’ character and will affect which personality types are more naturally drawn to your company. People come to expect a certain tone from your business, so keep your online personality consistent across the multiple channels. Social media is pre-disposed to helping you nurture and expand your business – people buy things from people they trust and respect, so let your honest and knowledgeable personality come to the surface.

Obviously social networking engages the interests and activities of more narcissistic individuals as opposed to those less motivated by peer approval; introverts and extroverts use online communities differently according to their need to be people-oriented and outwardly social. Nearly 60% of extroverts use Facebook,Twitter and LinkedIn for professional purposes, while 47% of introverts shared the sentiment; although there is clearly a difference in the figures, it’s good news for marketers as it shows the popularity of social media in general. Studies into how different personality types use the internet consistently show that, despite minor fluctuations, on the whole all personality types are using social media for business and professional purposes.

Although there are obviously nuances and dynamics to be considered when marketing on social media, and those marketers who can most intricately manage these will be rewarded, overall the vast majority of your target market – be they introverts or extroverts, shy or narcissistic, thinkers or feelers – are using and responding to social media for professional purposes, and  it follows that it is a useful and successful channel for marketing.

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Get Better Social Media ROI

Social media may be indispensable to your marketing campaign, but it’s a relatively new phenomenon and marketers are still learning how to track its effectiveness. It’s certainly one of the most efficient ways to increase brand awareness and improve customer service, however how do business owners know how much to invest if they can’t see consistently what they’re getting back?

monimbus.com

Being popular on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ doesn’t mean you’re going to instantly make lots and lots of money. Whilst acquiring likes, shares and followers may be a nice ego boost for the company, what the boss really wants to know is how his investment in social media is being converted into leads and revenue. 

For companies that rely on offline methods, such as the telephone, for the majority of their customer acquisition, there are a number of similar techniques marketers can use to track the reach of their social media campaigns. 

Call Tracking

Within industries that typically count on telephone conversions, call tracking can help marketers understand the role of the phone call in the customer journey. Connecting online and offline marketing efforts allows you to keep on top of social media ROI and can lead to a much more sophisticated campaign.

Bhavesh Vaghela, CMO of ResponseTap, outlines the benefits call tracking can have on a campaign: “By analysing the digital journey as a customer moves offline, brands can understand the role different channels play at different stages. For example, when buying a holiday, social typically plays a part later in the customer journey, whereas when purchasing a financial services product it is usually much earlier.” 

Understanding when your customers are engaging with you means you can time to perfection the three stages of the social media ROI cycle.

Custom Social Numbers

Linking unique custom numbers to each media platform is one unobtrusive way of tracking where calls are coming from. 

Walter Blake Knoblock is in charge of digital marketing at HostedNumbers.com, a company that provides virtual phone numbers, and he explains that, “by attaching a virtual phone number to each of your social campaigns/accounts (Twitter, Google+, Facebook ads, etc...) one can see which accounts are performing and which need to be either retooled or cut completely.”

 This technique makes something that was previously untraceable much more transparent; it therefore always pays to have a visible phone number on each of your social media channels. Understanding the effectiveness of each social media platform helps businesses to know where their fan base lies and thus the quickest way to reach their customers. 

Understand Your Channels

Knowing your audience is the key to getting them on the phone and Melissa Leiter, a social media consultant, provides a useful infographic for those wishing to know the best social media channels for their brand message.

For companies that rely on call conversions, Facebook and Google+ are perhaps the best channels. Facebook has the highest number of users and the largest opportunities for companies and by seeing your post reach using the Insights tool it becomes possible to understand the visit-to-lead conversion rate of your social media traffic.

Google+, although a smaller network, is a great way for connecting to niche groups. If you have a product or service that has multiple audiences, Google’s circles tool allows you to tailor your content to specific audiences. Companies that rely on telephone calls for conversions are often found in the insurance, travel, and hi tech sectors, whose customer bases are often looking for highly specific products and services.

Measuring success on social media has up until recently merely consisted of tracking the reach of posts and the traffic being generated. But in the past year marketers have begun to find ways of tracking leads, customers and conversions which are being generated off the back of each social campaign. Being able to connect online engagement with offline conversions is the ultimate step in understanding the ROI of social media.

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10 Fantastic Free Ways To Get Customers to Your Website

Here are ten ways you can get new customers to your website, using the free resources available on the Internet. There are many free Internet sites where you can get in touch with potential customers, if you reach out to them. You’ll be surprised how effective they are. Yes, they’re free. You don’t need big bucks to see big results. 

1. Use Free Social Media to Get Customers

• Use the online social media sites to introduce yourself, your business and your products. Over time you will build brand awareness among people there. Set up your MySpace page, your Twitter account, your LinkedIn, Facebook, Friendster and Hi5 profiles, and link each of them to your website. Facebook offers business pages, too.
• Post pictures of your products at Flickr.com and Photobucket.com, together with your profile, description and a link to the website. When you choose your screen name for these online accounts, you might want to use the domain name of your business site, like JoesHVACDotCom.
• A number of online bookmarking sites offer you an online community of people, such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Ask, Google Bookmarks, Reddit, Blogmarks, Simpy, Delicious, Kaboodle, Blinklist, Live, Slashdot, Magnolia, Spurl, Technorati, myAol, Yahoo Bookmarks, Furl or Newsvine. When you post an article of interest to customers on your website, bookmark the article at some of these sites.

2. Try Free Guerilla Techniques to Get Customers

Explore guerrilla marketing techniques that require only time, energy and imagination. Choose a new promotion, and spread the word about it on your social media sites. Depending on your business, you can offer online seminars, free samples, free consultations, and product video demonstrations. Perhaps it makes sense to give away a free toolbar, screensaver, game or utility, all of which can be branded for your business. Many websites get new customers when they give away free coupons. You can promote the coupons on Twitter and on other social media. Give your customers more service than they expect. If your employees have idle time, offer the customer free product assembly. Use your website to introduce yourself to the customers and share your product expertise with them. 

3. Visit Online Groups to Get Customers

Visit the online groups for more free opportunities to introduce yourself. See if Google Groups or Yahoo Groups has a topic that fits your area of interest. Group members will appreciate your help and advice. Build your reputation as an expert in the field, and group members will turn to you when they are ready to buy. Also, participate in related online forums where your expertise will be useful to customers. 

4. Write Online Articles to Market Yourself

• Write an article about your field of expertise. It could be a helpful "how-to" article about using your product, or an explanation of the benefits of your product. Then submit your article tor one of the many online sites, like ezine.com, that accept free articles. You’ll automatically get a link back to your business website along with free publicity.
• Write a press release and post it online. The topic could be your website expansion, your new product line, a new employee, or a charitable project. Include links to your online website and submit it to the free press release sites online. Check out sites like 24-7PressRelease.com, PRLog.org and 1888PressRelease.com. Email your press release to your local newspapers, too.
• Find your business niche on Wikipedia, WikiTravel, and other wiki sites, and become a contributor. You might be able to link to your business site as a reference. It's one more way to keep your name in front of the online public.

5. Optimize Your WebSite to Get Customers

Use the help of search engines to get more customers to your website. Make your website friendly for search engines. The technique is called search engine optimization. Just by changing the title of your page, its description, or your introductory remarks, you can double the traffic to your site. The traffic sent by search engines is called organic traffic, and it’s free. More traffic gets more new customers to your website. 

6. Take Advantage of Free Business Listings

• Use the Google Local Business Center to create your free listing. When potential customers search Google Maps for local information, they'll find your business: your address, hours of operation, even photos of your storefront or products. It's easy, it’s free, and you don't need a website of your own.
• Proofread your business listing in yellowpages.com.
• Check the local online telephone listing for your business, and correct it if necessary.
• Make sure your Yahoo city listing is up to date.
• Submit your website to The Open Directory Project, dmoz.org. This directory is maintained by humans, and getting in is difficult, but the search engines rank your site higher if dmoz lists it.

7. Use Free Online Blogging to Get Customers to Your Website

• Locate Internet blogs that cover topics related to your business. Leave comments on the blogs, and use your business domain name as your screen name; for example, AngiesCookiesDotCom. Your blog comments provide an additional link to your website. You can pick up free traffic from these links, too.
• Read more blogs. Set up your feed reader with the names of good blogs. A feed reader saves time by letting you skim the headlines of new articles. Whenever you have a spare moment, read something in your field. New ideas are always hatching online.
• If you enjoy writing, set up a blog for yourself. It can be a part of your business website, a page where you write informally about related activities and allow your personality to shine. A business blog is a great tool to build traffic and get customers to your website.

8. Use Free Internet Tools to Get Customers to Your Website

• Set up and verify a Webmaster Central Account at Google.
• Submit a product to Google Base. Google Base lets you submit pictures and describe your items with detailed information called attributes, which will help customers find your content more easily. You don’t even need a website to take advantage of Google Base.
• Install Google Analytics on your site, if you don't already have it. Google Analytics is helpful and free. You’ll learn more about customer behavior when they get to your website.
• Set up a CrazyEgg heat mapping test for your most important pages, to analyze what part of the page a customer looks at and clicks on. The results will help you rearrange items on your pages to maximize visibility.
• Show your customers how to find your physical store by adding a link to Google Maps on your website.
• Set up a MyBlogLog account for your blog or your website. When you put the MyBlogLog widget on your website, your customers can see avatars (small photos) of each other. The use of avatars helps build a sense of community among your customers. There are many such widgets available free online.

9. Create a Video to Get Customers

Convert a slideshow of your products into a video and upload it to Youtube or MetaCafe. Be sure to optimize your title and descriptions to get the most traffic from search engines. Set up your own channel on Youtube. With YouTube hosting your video and supplying the bandwidth, embed the video into your website. The link from YouTube will get more customers to your website. 

10. Try Pay Per Click Advertising to Get Customers to Your Website

No, Pay Per Click advertising is not free, but it can be very inexpensive. Signup is free. When people search for the products you sell, your PPC business ad will appear on the search engine report. With PPC, you only pay when a customer clicks on your ad and comes to your website. Each customer who comes to your website costs you only a few pennies. You can set your advertising budget as low as $1 per day, and turn your ad campaign off and on whenever you wish. You can easily track your Pay Per Click customers to see if PPC brings you more sales. The largest PPC advertising networks are those with the most popular search engines: Microsoft Ad Center, Yahoo Search Marketing, and Google Adwords. 

I hope life brings you much success.
I wish you a very happy day. 

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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