This is the eleventh in a 12 part blog series, where I review CXL Institute’s ‘Digital Psychology and Persuasion’ Minidegree. Today’s blog is in continuation with the last week, we will discuss 9 more triggers and techniques you can apply to persuade users to take a desired action.
Forer Effect
We most easily identify with vague, mostly positive, and general personality descriptions. In actuality, they are so vague that they are applicable to anyone and everyone. Beware that the self-serving bias has been shown to cancel out the Forer effect. Use the following persuasive tips:
- Refer to rather vague and general personality traits (e.g. “Are you the kind of person that likes to share knowledge?”).
- List mainly positive traits of your brand or products.
- Mention that your solution is perfect for ‘these kind of people’ (and test with having ‘an authority’ mentioning it about you)
Choice-supportive Bias
We tend to attribute more positive features to the choice we made. In order to get your customers to attribute positive features to you (and negative ones to others):
- Test by asking your users why they visit your website or use your app.
- Ask them why they bought and use your product.
- Show previously visited pages and bought items!
Ambiguity Aversion
Humans typically feel suspicious when we’re not told what the probability of an event is. This is because often – in real life and commercial situations – it’s usually in favor of the supplier. Our brain is simply afraid of, and therefore aversive towards, being fooled.
- Be specific in your offer and communication style (instead of offering vague information).
- Be specific about what happens when people click on a call to action.
- Provide ‘feed-forward’ information (‘what’s next…what do you get…’).
- Use fixed discounts instead of a chance to win.
- Try to find the ambiguities in your competitor’s offer and emphasize your certainty there.
- Guarantee your offer (money back, no cure = no pay).
- Within your portfolio, make your cash cow the ‘most certain offer’.
- Finally: In places that need improvement, experiment with small doses of uncertainty.
Belonging and Conformity
It’s innate nature to belong to a group, people like to share the feeling of belongingness to their group; they even conform to the values and beliefs of the group. Sometimes people even start behaving opposite to the values associated with the group they don’t want to belong to. Therefore, such need for belongingness becomes a strong persuasive effect to make them want to belong and conform to your group.
- Support the forming of groups, connections, and dialogues among your customers and prospects (be it on your own platforms or on previously existing ones).
- Find and nourish the influencers within the more important social groups (e.g. on Facebook or niche platforms).
- Aggregate as much information about a specific customer or prospect and show that you’re approved of by his or her social peer group (from the device he uses, to more advanced log-in or Facebook profiling data).
- Show your customer that members of his social peer group are buyers, users, and advocates (e.g. with ratings, reviews or Facebook profiles).
Paradox of Choice
If we’re offered just one option, our choice is to either go for it or not. However, if we’re offered two choices, we automatically start choosing between these two, forgetting about the “or not” option existing silently in the background. Not choosing at all becomes a much less obvious option. Therefore, offering more than one option is usually more persuasive.
On the other hand, if we’re offered too many choices we tend not to make a choice at all. Too many choices are simply too difficult for our simple ratio.That’s the paradox of choice.
- Prevent providing only one call to action. Instead, add a link or another CTA as a secondary choice.
- If you have only one product or service, try to create one or two variations of it (like a black or white iPhone).
- With a multitude of comparable products, find your product’s optimal choice number via testing. It’s probably in the 3 – 20 range (In my own experience: The more complex and less comparable your products, the fewer options you should offer).
- The same applies for amount of USPs
- And for the number of links on a page.
Autonomy
Situations that give autonomy increase motivation. For example, instead of marking compulsory fields in a form, mark the optional one’s. This gives a sense of autonomy to the user and increases motivation to complete the form.
Visual Cues
Use a visual cue to emphasize your most important content/USP/CTA. If you have multiple chunks of content, visual cues will help your customer consume these chunks in a logical, manageable order. If you have more content than what’s visible (below the fold or on next pages), use cues to direct attention to it.
Self-efficacy
People feel motivated when they are reassured of their capabilities to do the action on their own or when they see others doing that action successfully.
- Provide instant feedback on correct behavior (i.e. green check marks appear when fields are filled in correctly).
- Visualize the simplicity of procedures (a progress indicator with three – five clear steps, an easy looking infographic, etc).
- Show existing customers who have previously bought items or taken actions.
- Use ‘how-to’ pages (and possibly videos) where you show your visitor how easy it is to act.
- Use social proof (i.e. 12,452 others bought a product with us today).
Self-generation Memory Effect
If you want your customer to remember something, a highly effective strategy is to have them generate the information themselves.
- Don’t show all of your USPs, but ask your customers to think of one or two reasons why to buy your product themselves.
- Use a feedback tool to ask why customers are considering your offer (open answers).
- Even in your shopping basket or on your thank you page, you could test by asking the customers why they bought your product.
Next week, I will further discuss my learnings and opinions from the next few courses I take in the Minidegree. To stay updated with my weekly blogs and explore the ‘Digital Psychology and Persuasion’ Minidegree with me, subscribe to my blog.
Until then, explore the various programs offered by CXL, by clicking on the link below: