It’s all in the brain! Consumer psychology plays an important role in convincing potential customers into believing what they are buying exactly matches their needs.

Here are 5 awesome ways to boost conversions using consumer psychology:

1- Set Minimal Parameters For Your Audience

A study conducted by Dr. Robert Cialdini, Professor of Psychology at Arizona State University to examine the donation process of the American Cancer Society. It examined the impact of two different phrases when asking for a donation.

As seen in the above screenshot, we can easily conclude that humans will take an action when you make the action seem more achievable to them. Businesses can use this trick to increase sales.

People are more likely to buy a particular item when minimal parameters are set. Why do you think some online stores offer cash on delivery and SAAS companies tout no credit card required for signing up? The answer is pretty simple, people will buy more if the restrictions are lesser.

Here are some ways to make the buying process easier for people:

–   Offer cash on delivery.

–   Adopt “Buy now and pay later”.

–   Facilitate monthly installments vs. charging the full amount at once.

–   Include “free shipping”, “free trial before your buy”, “XX% off first order”, “month-to-month terms” and “free replacement offers”.

2- Create a Position in the Prospective Customer’s Mind

In Al Ries’ book, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, he talks about how you can use the power of Positioning to include your business in the ideal slot of the buyer’s brain.

Jif, the popular peanut butter brand used the tagline, “Choosy Moms Choose Jif” in order to position the brand into the minds of mothers who were the ideal target audience of the brand.

It’s crucial to think about your prospective customer and create a tagline that instantly places your brand into that ideal zone of your customer’s brain. Segmentation plays a key role here.

3- Apply the “Von Restorff Effect” to Design CTA Elements

Also known by the name of “isolation effect”, this principle states that the design, color and button that stands out from rest of the elements on the page is the most remembered.

In other words, the human brain remembers things that stands out.

The key takeaway here is that if you want people to click on something or if you want people to remember your brand so that the cycle of repeat purchases are increased, then design the web page and all other marketing materials with the Von Restorff effect in mind.

Have a look at the below CTA example from postcardmania. Notice the use of colors and highlighting of the main CTA button.  Proper use of arrows help to direct visitors towards the button. Moreover, the background image is blurred in order to keep the focus on the CTA.

It’s essential to understand the importance of color branding as colors decide the personality of your brand.

Gregory Ciotti gives a solid view of the most desirable color options for men and women. Your brand must choose a color depending on the target audience and create the CTA element in contrasting colors to help boost conversions.

4-  Adopt a Decoy Pricing Strategy

People love to compare prices of products before they purchase an item.

Often marketers ignore this principle when displaying prices of products. As a result, customers fail to decide which option is the best value for money and this results in poor conversions.

As a marketer, it is important for you to help the buyer decide on the right option. You can do so by adopting a decoy pricing strategy which simply means displaying one or two extra options (known as the decoy) for the product you wish to sell. Keep the prices of the other products way above the main selling product while keeping the features similar. This will generate a cognitive bias in the brain of the potential customer and they will fall in the trap of the decoy.

5- Leverage the Principle of Scarcity

People will quickly buy products that are scarce simply because they feel they might lose out on having the product if they don’t buy immediately. This is called the principle of scarcity.

One of the best ways by which you can leverage this principle is by displaying text like “only 1 left in stock” or “4 people are looking at this product” around the CTA button so that it persuades people to click on it.

Marketers have been adopting the principles of psychology for years. With the shift to ecommerce and online shopping, the time is ripe for online marketers to think smartly and implement the above tactics in order to boost their conversions.