The Ultimate Persuasion Techniques to increase your Conversions Today (With Examples)
The ultimate persuasion techniques for conversion optimization, in this article, you’ll learn 28 psychological tactics to influence your visitors to take action and convert visitors into customers.
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Aesthetic-Usability Effect
Get trusted by design
The Aesthetic-Usability effect is perceiving aesthetically pleasing design as better and easier to use compared to the lesser-good looking interface.
Masaaki Kurosu and Kaori Kashimura (1995), did the first study of the Aesthetic-Usability effect concluding that the aesthetics of an interface strongly influence user evaluation of usability and functionality. Based on the results of their experimental analysis, people think beautiful interfaces work better than uglier interfaces. The experiment was done with 26 different ATM UIs and 252 participants.
Moreover, according to Donald Norman (2002), although aesthetics may cover up minor issues, it does not completely cover up a system’s flaws. Appearance and functionality should work together and neither of them should be sacrificed. A system with complete functionality and less appealing design and vice versa are both equally bad.
Craigslist is a popular app for looking up basically everything. Craigslist’s functionality is pretty straightforward but with poor design.
Although Craigslist is more straightforward in terms of function, people may still prefer websites with more appealing user interfaces such as Airbnb, eBay & Amazon.
The appealing designs, give the users the feeling of being secure and welcomed compared to Craigslist that doesn’t even bother giving them a better interface.
Ambiguity Effect
Take the risk or play safe?
The Ambiguity effect shows the human nature of avoiding uncertainty and playing safe with what they are surer of.
In 1961, Daniel Ellsberg did an experiment with 2 urns that both had 100 balls in them. The number of red and black balls in Urn 1 is unknown whilst Urn 2 had 50 red balls and 50 black balls.
The experiment promised to give a prize for the participants who will be able to draw a red ball from the urn of their choice. The results showed that the majority of the participants chose to draw a ball from Urn 2 which probabilities were known compared to Urn 1.
This led Ellsberg to the conclusion that lack of information and ambiguity affects people’s decision making. People don't only rely on probabilities but also base from the uncertainty of an option.
Nowadays, a lot of websites offer free trials ranging from 7-30 days. This is where the ambiguity effect may kick in.
Websites like LinkedIn Business and Hootsuite offer free trials to their potential customers by showing them a Free Trial landing page with a big button labeled “Start Your Free Trial”. The problem here is the uncertainty of what happens after the trial ends.
On the contrary, websites such as Xero and GoToMeeting ensure their visitors seeing a text saying “No credit card required.” near their free trial buttons.
By doing this, visitors have no more hesitation and continue with the trial.
Attention Ratio
Keep it direct, without distractions
The Attention Ratio is the number of the things you can do in a website against the things you should be doing.
Henkel and Mather (2007) did an experiment that showed people associating positive features with their past choices. In the experiment, the researchers provided 2 car options to the participants. In the following session, they gave the participants a list of positive and negative features and asked them to associate the features with the corresponding car. It resulted in people associating positive features to the car of their choice even though their choices didn’t have some of the positive features.
The human memory tricks peoples’ brain into thinking that their past choices are equal to the better choice. Not only that, due to the fact that you’ve chosen a certain option, it makes you forget the flaws it had and you focus more on the positives.
Need another example
Choice-supportive Bias
Your choice, best choice.
Choice-supportive bias is the tendency of people associating positive features to the options they remember choosing.
Henkel and Mather (2007) did an experiment that showed people associating positive features with their past choices. In the experiment, the researchers provided 2 car options to the participants. In the following session, they gave the participants a list of positive and negative features and asked them to associate the features with the corresponding car. It resulted in people associating positive features to the car of their choice even though their choices didn’t have some of the positive features.
The human memory tricks peoples’ brain into thinking that their past choices are equal to the better choice. Not only that, due to the fact that you’ve chosen a certain option, it makes you forget the flaws it had and you focus more on the positives.
Now that you know that people remember their choices as better than they were, your goal now is to make them feel that they truly made the right choice.
By doing so, people will remember their past choices more and will remember them as the best in the future. You may thank them and tell them they made a great choice after purchases or include their recent purchases or visited pages before.
Anchoring Effect https://www.userlike.com/en/blog/website-content-psychological-bias
Another name here
The Anchoring Effect happens when a person takes a piece of initial information and makes it a basis against other options.
In 1974, Tversky and Kahneman did a study about the Anchoring Effect. Participants were asked to multiply 1x2x3x4x5x6x7x8 or 8x7x6x5x4x3x2x1 within 5 seconds.
Due to the short given time, the participants just made up estimations and their estimations showed that people who multiplied starting with 1 gave lower values while those who started with 8 gave higher values.
The values of the first few numbers in the equation greatly influenced the range of their estimates and this is because the first numbers served as their ‘anchors’ or basis.
Another example
Focusing Effect
Call-to-action in what is important
The focusing effect is a cognitive bias where a person makes a decision by focusing on limited factors instead of taking it as a whole. Past experiences and stereotypes are some of the factors that trigger the focusing effect.
Schkade & Kahneman (1998) first studied the focusing effect by asking people who they think are living happier lives, Californians or Mid-Westerners.
The majority of the respondents answered Californians. This shows how people focused on the stereotypes associated with California such as the beautiful beaches, the good tropical weather, and that Californians are always outgoing and carefree.
Online Dialogue made an A/B testing on the MoneYou website that demonstrated the Focusing Effect. MoneYou chose their interest offer as their main focus to attract more customers.
They placed their focus in a place where people would pay more attention and that is through photos. They moved the focus from the title to the photo and by doing that there was an increase in conversion by 17%.
Authority Principle
Aye, aye Captain!
The Authority Principle is the tendency to follow or believe the authority or something that feels authoritative.
The famous Miligram Experiment by Stanly Miligram (1963) shows people feeling obliged to follow the authority. In the experiment, participants were ordered to ask questions to the student (an actor) and shock the student for every wrong answer and increase the level of shock. Every time the participant hesitates to shock the student, the experimenter (also an actor, wearing a lab coat) will simply order the participant to do so.
The experiment resulted in 65% of the participants following the experimenter’s cues and going up until 450 volts.
The Authority principle not only works on people with high-respecting profiles. It could also work with titles, awards, and badges that make you look authoritative.
Anything that looks professional from offices to clothes, to websites, ANYTHING, builds people’s trust and convinces them to trust and follow.
A good website example is when a rare WOW badge given by a renowned businesswoman was displayed in the BagServant website. The badge made them appear as experts in their field and that badge gave them a big 72.05% increase in conversion.
Gaze Cueing
Are you seeing what I’m seeing?
Gaze Cueing is our tendency to look or pay attention to what other people are looking at or where their gaze is.
Chris Kelland Friesen and Alan Kingstone (1998) conducted an experiment where a number of respondents were quickly shown a random sequence of photos of faces looking at the left, right, and straightforward and a capital F or T appearing on either the side of the face.
The respondents were then asked to tell where the letter was placed. The experiment shows that people were fast to respond when the letter was positioned where the eyes were looking.
This explains the gaze cueing where a person automatically follows a person’s gaze.
The MoneYou website added a photo of a woman gazing at the direction of their mortgage quick quote widget. The woman’s gaze led the visitors to the widget and since then, the website conversion increased by 9%.
Visual Cueing
Focusing on the Good
The focusing effect is a cognitive bias where a person makes a decision by focusing on limited factors instead of taking it as a whole. Past experiences and stereotypes are some of the factors that trigger the focusing effect.
Schkade & Kahneman (1998) studied the focusing effect by asking people who they think are living happier lives, Californians or Mid-Westerners.
The majority of the respondents answered Californians. This shows how people focused on the stereotypes associated with California such as the beautiful beaches, the good tropical weather, and that Californians are always outgoing and carefree.
Online Dialogue made an A/B testing on the MoneYou website that demonstrated the Focusing Effect. MoneYou chose their interest offer as their main focus to attract more customers.
They placed their focus in a place where people would pay more attention and that is through photos. They moved the focus from the title to the photo and by doing that there was an increase in conversion by 17%.
Curse of Knowledge
Are you thinking what I’m thinking?
The Curse of Knowledge happens when you fail to see how other people perceive certain things because your brain tricks you into thinking that if you know this, people should already know this too.
Elizabeth Newton found out that people have a hard time accepting that other people don’t know things that they already know. In her research, she asked “tappers” to tap a song from a list of songs she provided.
The “listeners” will then try to guess what song is being tapped. Before the experiment, Newton asked the tappers how much do they think the listeners will get the right answers - the tappers answered 50%. After the experiment, results showed that only 2.5% of the songs were guessed right by the listeners.
Because the tappers already know what they are tapping, they probably thought, “C’mon it’s too easy!” or “It’s obvious!”. On the contrary, the listeners were challenged because they do not have any idea what song is being tapped.
Other Example
Contrast Principle
Judging based on differences
The Contrast Principle is our nature of bringing up judgments by comparison and contrast not by what it really is.
The Contrast Principle was first studied by Robert Cialdini in his 2007 book - The Psychology of Persuasion. Cialdini explained how people perceive things by basing on a comparison. An example given is a situation where a guy talks to an ugly girl in a party and then an average-looking girl walks in. Suddenly that average-looking girl looks beautiful.
One example as well is when you carry a heavy box first and carry a lighter box after. A person will tend to say, “This one’s light!” but in fact, the box is just lighter compared to the first one. It appears to be light because you compared it to a heavier box.
Back in 2010 after the first iPad was released, Steve Jobs asked the audience how much they think the iPad will cost. He then flashes a big “$999” on the screen, a total shocker for the audience. Truly an amazing device but $999? That’s a big tag!
But then a big “$499” falls from the screen and crushes the “$999” price. Jobs announced that the iPad was not $999 but “ONLY” $499! People were convinced that the gadget was cheap because they compared it to a higher price of $999. Jobs made the device appear cheap to the audience even though $499 is actually still a big price to pay. Genius!