Behavioral Psychology for Conversion Optimization.

“Knowing who your customers are is great, but knowing how they behave is even better.” — Jon Miller

(Image source: Google Images)

Let’s start with understanding what exactly behavioral psychology is? and how you can use this science in improving your conversion rate. So, Behavioral Psychology, also known as Behaviorism, is the study of the connection between the human brain and behavior. There are many studies going on to understand why we behave the way we do. It is basically the connection between our thinking and our actions. Various authors have written some interesting books on behavioral psychology such as Influence by Robert Cialdini, Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.

It’s really fascinating to know how the human mind works. But it is way more interesting to use this knowledge to persuade users to do certain tasks. Now, in the field of marketing, it is very important to know what motivates any customer. Why do they choose some products over others? According to Fogg’s Behavioral Model, three essential elements must be present for individuals to behave: ability, motivation, and prompt/trigger. Motivation is your desire to do the behavior. Ability is your capacity to do the behavior. And Prompt/Trigger is your cue to do the behavior. When a behavior does not occur, at least one of those three elements is missing.

Role of Behavioral Psychology in Conversion Rate Optimization.

Conversion rate optimization means improving your website to optimize the conversion rate of traffic on the website. Where conversion rate is the number of visitors to a website that completes the desired goal (a conversion) out of the total number of visitors. Through Behavioral psychology, you can understand the basics of why website visitors convert. This will help you understand the field of conversion optimization and improve your digital marketing strategy based on human behavior.

So, whenever it comes to designing marketing strategies or campaigns always keep customers in the center. Catering customers must be of utmost priority and importance.

• Use loss aversion theory — This is based on a cognitive bias that takes advantage of people’s tendency to prefer avoiding losses than acquiring gains. Using this technique you can target your ads to your potential customers to let them know that they could be losing out on certain features or special offers. In such cases, customers tend to make hasty decisions. Xiaomi used this principle in its Redmi flash sale strategy. It announced beforehand that a limited number of this amazing tech-heavy cheaper phone will be launched on some date for a limited period of time. People went crazy and bought these phones as soon as sell started. At first, many people couldn’t as only limited copies were sold. This created scarcity and a desire to buy this phone. This strategy has worked wonders for Xiaomi. Also, Amazon relies on using the limited time to encourage immediate purchase.
• Build trust and Belonging towards your brand — People will buy from you if they like you as a company. If your product’s image or ethics align with the customer’s image and ethics. This is the reason why brands hire celebrities, influencers, and micro-influencers to advertise their product. If you are selling some sports products, having any sportsman as your brand ambassador will improve your product value and people’s liking. People will accept your product easily. Your brand should be able to provide the feeling of a community. Humans are social creatures who love to feel like part of a group and customers often purchase products in an attempt to feel part of a specific group.
• Social Proof — This principle talks about the human tendency of following any trend. If a large number of people doing something, the product must be authentic. They can self approve the product by reading the feedback and reviews of the customers. Many of the websites use these kinds of social proofs on their landing page to make look more promising. “We have more than 50k subscribers”, “Our product is validated by XYZ company”. Companies hire famous and recognizable people as their brand ambassadors to increase their product value.

Knowing your customer is the key to increasing the conversion rate. The more you know about your customer, the more you will be able to serve them better. At the same time understanding the behavior of the customer is important too. Not just the marketing campaigns, you can use psychology in designing landing pages too. Designing your web pages just the way your customer wants is the key to improve conversion rates. You can observe the visitor’s journey on your website and grasp insights out of it to provide users with a better experience. Also, they likely to perform the actions you want them to. Here is how design psychology can help your landing page optimizations.

• cognitive fluency — It is the ease with which information is processed. Users should find your web page aesthetically pleasing. Users should not get overwhelmed by your web pages. CTAs on your landing pages must be perfectly designed. More choices create more confusion for the visitors, which in turn causes friction in the conversion process. You can incorporate cognitive fluency in your landing page by following various simple tricks such as sufficient use of white spaces, good contrast.
• Improve the page load time — The landing page that the user has redirected to must be smooth and attractive. Most of the time, a lot of animations are involved on the page that increases the loading time of the page. This extended time unknowingly decreases the motivation of potential customers. Hence, try to keep the page minimal and attractive.

Understanding behavioral psychology is very interesting and important in gaining conversion rate optimization mastery. Once you know what motivates or triggers users, you can design much better-converting experiences. I had never thought of marketing being related to human behavior. But my Conversion Optimization course at CXL Institute has opened me to this new horizon. It has been a great learning journey with CXL until now, excited to explore more.