Determining Factors to Improve Conversions Using Psychology in Web Design

When trying to make a sale, what you’re doing is not trying to peddle a product or a service but to sell an idea. In order to get there, you need to A) identify what your audience wants and B) persuade them to get it from you. For this to work, they need to trust you, see your goods as something with a great price-to-quality ratio and be mentally prepared to make this leap of fate. Doing business with someone for the first time is a risk, which is why most people need to go through several stages before finally becoming paying customers.

However, what if you could use your website in order to make all of this happen? What if you could apply various psychological principles in order to silently persuade your audience to trust you? All of this is definitely possible, even if it’s not as easy to achieve. With that in mind and without further ado, here are several determining factors that you need to work around in order to improve conversions using psychology in web design.

1. Customer service

The first thing you need to understand is the fact that customer service tends to be one of the most important factors when it comes to your conversion rate. The problem, nonetheless, lies in integrating this into your design and demonstrating it to your customers before they have the chance to use it. The simplest way to achieve this is through the use of chatbots. By showing your audience that you’re available 24/7 and that you’re there to respond on a second’s notice, you’ll gain a lot more loyalty.

As for the chatbots themselves, they minimize the cost of having to hire a real customer service by quite the margin and are much more reliable. For traditional customer service, you would have to train everyone, make sure to provide them with adequate equipment and give them enough time to become experienced enough. Present-day chatbots can handle the majority of issues quite effortlessly and without the danger of human error. Moreover, the integration of chatbot into web design is an industry standard. This means that it’s something that your customers will come to expect.

2. Trustworthiness

Another factor you need to use to your benefit is the one of trustworthiness, yet, to understand it, you need to understand that your audience starts forming their opinion of your business before they click on the link. You can never get a second chance to make a good first impression and in order to leave a good first impression in a digital environment, you need to turn towards SEO.

Listening to the advice from the Brisbane SEO agency - the first step in making this happen lies in finding adequate keywords. By using all the most intuitive keywords to track you down and being unable to do so, your audience will suffer from a no small amount of frustration. Finding adequate keywords, nonetheless, is not an easy thing in an oversaturated market. You also need to focus on the local market, as well as think about the position of your business on a global market. Therefore, looking for local partners might be a good idea.

Other than this, your rank is incredibly important, due to the fact that A) it affects your traffic without which a high conversion rate doesn’t make much sense and B) it affects public opinion of your brand. You see, a conversion rate of 5 percent is not the same thing if you have 10,000 visitors each month and if you have 1,000 of them. As for the latter, people are more likely to trust a business that comes at the very top of search results, than one that’s further below. That is, in a scenario where they even click on your link, which, suddenly, becomes a lot less likely.

3. Testimonials

The reason why people are so reluctant to buy a product without a review or ratings is due to the fact that not a lot of them are willing to take this risk. Instead, they want someone else to but your product/use your services and then recommend it to them. This way, they can have a much safer experience and already know what to expect. This is something you can achieve with the use of testimonials.

The problem with this lies in the fact that testimonials are not that easy to earn. Think about it, not everyone who buys your product and is happy with its quality is going to leave a positive review. On the other hand, people who aren’t happy with your service are far more likely to leave a comment or a review. This is why you need to look for a way to incentivize these testimonials.

The composition of these testimonials is also quite important. The tone and voice that you employ need to be the one used by your audience so that they can feel that the review is left by their peers. Stay away from corporate jargon, exaggeration, and use of common marketing phrases. Second, you should add the picture to the testimonial, so that your audience has an easier job seeing those who left them as real people.

Also, testimonials give you a chance to use the FOMO (fear of missing out) phenomenon in order to boost your sales. This is a simple psychological phenomenon and by using examples of people who made the right choice, you might motivate your audience to do the same. The best thing about this method is the fact that it’s quite subtle, which means that it might bypass defense mechanisms of audience members who have already prepared themselves to defend against hard-sell techniques.

4. Better customer experience

Another thing you need to understand is the fact that your job doesn’t end with the sale. In fact, this is only the beginning. Unless you’re in an industry that deals with one-time purchases (exercise equipment, chess sets, etc.) this first purchase will also be a method of persuasion. Therefore, you need to ensure that it’s an overwhelmingly positive one.

Now, methods that you use in order to improve customer experience somewhat depend on the platform that you’re using, yet, principles are always the same. Improve the transparency of your categories, make the site easier to navigate and resort to minimalism.

5. Emphasis on your refund policy

Previously, we’ve already talked about trust, now, it’s completely understandable that your audience will be careful about how they spend their money. However, what if you were to show them that their trust means more to you than their money? The simplest way to do so is to enact a lenient refund policy and put a strong emphasis on it. This will not only persuade people to buy from you but also soften any negative reaction. A person who gets their money back is less likely to leave a negative review or even rate you with a low grade.

6. Limiting the number of choices

As an e-commerce business, it is in your best interest to show your audience all that you have in offer, hoping that they’ll find something that’s to their liking, right? Well, not necessarily, you see giving people too much choice might make them a lot less likely to make up their mind, which is why you should try and limit your offer to several items at a time.

The best way to do this is to present them with items that are similar or closely related to the one that they’re currently looking at. Sure, for your up-sale or cross-sale method, you could pick something that’s not-as-related, yet, once again, it’s important that you don’t push this too far when it comes to the number of items.

7. Mobile-friendliness

Nowadays, more people are using smartphones to browse the internet than desktops, laptops and tablets combined. This is why you need to put a stronger emphasis on your m-commerce game. The simplest way to do so through design is to optimize the checkout page for mobile users. The main reason why this is such a neat psychological trick is due to the fact that it gives your audience a much more seamless experience.

You see, when everything works as it should, your buyers aren’t likely to pause in order to think why this is so. Only when things start malfunctioning they might start with their analytical thinking.

In conclusion

At the end of the day, it all comes down to the customer experience. Your audience will stay if you give them a reason to stay and return if you give them a reason to return. Trust takes time so don’t be discouraged if, in the early days of your business and your website, the conversion rate growth starts slow.

Most importantly, remember that you’re in it for the long run, which is why you’re not trying to manipulate them to buy. What you want is to use these psychological tricks in order to persuade them that buying from you was their own idea all along. No matter how hard it may sound, with the right techniques on your side, this shouldn’t be impossible to achieve.

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