Curious about how to crack the code to how your visitors make decisions?
Understanding what triggers human perception and their reactive behaviors can be a mystery.
The science behind buyer behavior and persuasive marketing can go pretty deep into subliminal territory, and can make us feel like we’re lost in the matrix.
Are we lost in the matrix? – GIF source
I’ve tidied psychology concepts into six sections to tie ideas back to convincing your visitors to convert on your landing pages: identity, needs, motivation, control, stimulation, socialization, and design.
Here are 41 psychology concepts to help get you decoding and your visitors converting:
Identity
As soon as someone arrives at your landing page, it’s important they feel a sense of self and belonging.
There’s nothing worse for conversions than scaring people off as soon as they land on your page. This can happen because the ad they clicked brings them to a page that makes them feel like a lost stranger.
When weaving principles of Identity into your landing pages, consider what it is you want your visitors to identify with. Your visitors need to identify with your landing page, which means your page’s emotion, offer, message, tone… the whole shebang.
Psychology Concept #1: Theory of Self-Interest
First and foremost, people care about themselves, so be sure to focus your entire landing page on your visitor.
The clearest way to make your page all about the visitor: make it all about your visitors and be explicit in showing how your offer will improve your visitors’ lives.
Visitors think me, me, me – image source
Everything on your landing page should be about the visitor. Give them something for free, fix their problems, speak in their language, focus on their mood… make it all about your visitor.
Psychology Concept #2: Emotion
To help persuade their buyer behavior, try to evoke a relevant emotion that your visitors can easily identify with. We typically make buying decisions based on our emotions.
USC neuroscience professor, Antonio Damasio, wrote a book called Descartes Error, which argues that emotion is a necessary ingredient to almost all decisions.
OkDork and Buzzsumo analyzed the top 10,000 most shared articles across the web and summed up the most popular emotions:
People are likely to share the stuff they can emotionally identify with – image source
Psychology Concept #3: Storytelling
There’s all this hype lately about storytelling your brand. Companies have even hired Chief Storytelling Officers (CSO). Here’s a list of current top CSOs on LinkedIn.
Fad or not, the trend makes sense because storytelling helps us relate to things. The quickest way to get your visitors to identify with your offer is through compelling storytelling. Better yet, use visuals.
Research has shown that we remember visual images much easier and better than words, so show your visitors how your offer works. Your copy and wording can act as reinforcement.
UNICEF provides immediate storytelling through compelling visuals:
Pretty obvious where your donations go – image source
They have timely storytelling, too. This one in response to Hurricane Matthew – image source
Psychology Concept #4: Copy and Tone
Speak to your visitors conversationally on your landing pages and be intentional with your wording and tone. Copywriting is yet another opportunity to elicit the emotion you want, so take advantage.
Here’s how Basecamp humanizes their landing page with copy and wording tone:
Feel the panic? – image source
Psychology Concept #5: Style
We hear about how important “look and feel” are to defining your brand identity. Everything you put out there representing your company should have an intentional branded style to it.
The concept stands the test of time and to this day helps your audience identify and trust your brand’s personality.
There’s a psychological consistency in style that you want to capture, so your visitors feel like they’re in a familiar place when arriving at your landing page.
Coca-Cola’s style is the iconic example that aces this style consistency across multiple campaigns:
Share a Coke campaign – image source
Taste the Feeling campaign – image source
Open Happiness campaign – image source
The more someone experiences consistency with your style, the larger the role of brand equity becomes, where people will continue to recognize and identify with your brand.
It becomes a reliable, consistent and trustworthy thing for them, where they have to think less and less about decision making each time they encounter your brand.
Needs
When it comes to needs and evaluating options, there are several things we consider when spending money that have to do with basic survival needs.
Things that run through our head when considering cost: Do I really need this? How much do I have to give up for it?
We consider cost in terms of what we have to give up in order to gain something in return so that offer better be worth it. Know your visitors, where they came from and what their needs are.
Psychology Concept #6: Action Cycle
Hubspot found that 96% of visitors to your landing pages are not ready to buy. That’s pretty staggering. The key is to know all about your visitors, like where the heck they came from and which stage of the action cycle they’re in, before pushing hard for the conversion.
Know what your visitors needs are so you can address their stage in the action cycle.
A reminder of what our Chuck Norris version of the action cycle looks like (in case you’re not familiar):
Which stage of the action cycle are your visitors in and where did they come from?
Not everyone has the same level of urgency and readiness to convert, so be sure to address that. Ask yourself:
Are people landing on your page because they randomly saw your display ad and got distracted and pulled in by your super interesting ad and stellar copywriting?
Or did they go looking for you after weeks of competitive analysis and previously visiting your page, now ready to convert?
Psychology Concept #7: CTA Threat Levels
Knowing this is especially important when designing your call-to-action (CTA). You want to be sure to design and test for the right threat level.
Threat levels should be different for your different audiences, since we now understand they come from different places on the internet and your visitors are in different stages of the Chuck Norris action cycle.
The more primed and ready your visitor is to convert, the higher your CTA threat level can be.
KlientBoost’s Johnathan Dane claims:
“The hotter CTAs won’t work for colder traffic, but colder CTAs will work for hotter traffic.”
Psychology Concept #8: Gradual Commitment
A small commitment can be used to propel your visitors toward making increasingly larger commitments.
Robert Cialdini’s thoughts on commitment and consistency:
“People commit, orally or in writing, to an idea or goal, they are more likely to honor that commitment because of establishing that idea or goal as being congruent with their self-image.”
How do you get people to make small commitments on your landing pages? Add more fields to your forms and use multi-step forms.
Make the easiest no-brainer low-threat fields the first on your form. The commitment should grow from there. Here’s our version of a multi-step landing page:
Step 1
Step 2
Final step – we do the gradual commitment.
Psychology Concept #9: Explain “Why” First
Before you go into the “what” and “how” of your offer, explain the “why.” Think of it as a need to know basis, where only people who are relevant and can benefit from knowing something are the ones clued in.
If it’s not immediately relevant to your visitor, you run the risk of them ditching your page.
Basecamp tells you why it’s time to try “the Basecamp way” before explaining anything else:
They also visually show you why their offer will help you – image source
Psychology Concept #10: Sobering-up Effect
The sobering-up effect is especially important the instance riiight before your visitors convert (or change their minds). It’s that moment your visitors think they’re done weighing all their options and are about to click your CTA or make their purchase…
Then the reality of giving something up (aka the cost) hits them. They ask themselves again – how badly do I need this?
How to solve this on your landing pages – reinforce your visitors’ decision to move forward with your offer by making sure the area around your CTA is free of any conversion friction.
Some CTA design tips and examples below:
Avoid inviting negative thinking – refrain from using scary words near your CTA, like spam or sell your email address, even if you mean to do the opposite.
Use sales closers – include supporting language near your CTA, like in this example:
Simple and reinforcing – image source
Use action words in your CTA
Include CTA directional cues Avoid sign up forms – this can give your visitor an extra subliminal push at that last millisecond their decision making process.
Content Verve tested out the arrow, which helped push conversions along – image source
Avoid sign up forms – this is an extra step that may discourage your visitors to continue on. This is especially true for e-commerce sites. Try to avoid making your visitors sign up for something just to make a purchase.
Motivation
Motivation is an internal process that makes us move toward a goal. Some concepts to consider that may trigger our visitor’s movement forward (toward that CTA conversion):
Psychology Concept #11: Problem Solving
Resolving an issue, finding a solution and solving a problem all appeal to our natural desire to fix things. As kids, we take things apart so we can put them back together. We piece together puzzles for fun and to exercise the brain.
Satisfying to watch the completion, right? – image source
Tap into this natural inclination and solve a problem for your visitors. Show them how you’ll do all the work for them, and make this clear in your unique value proposition.
Psychology Concept #12: Price Point Savings
Savings and adding value to certain price points can help persuade someone’s decision making process.
Here’s an irresistible offer for someone looking to book a flight with Southwest. The visitor may have initially wanted a flight vs. a new credit card, but laid out in terms of savings and earnings for future flights, the offer suddenly seems like something the visitor needs.
Hmm, maybe I do need another credit card… er I mean, flight. – image source
Psychology Concept #13: Framing
Framing effect is the way you present your information and the context you place it in. It’s a way to play into our cognitive biases and spin someone’s perception, whether it be in a positive or negative light.
There’s four main types of framing that you can use while creating content for your landing pages. I’ve included examples in the context of quitting smoking:
1. Loss framing – appeal to your visitor’s fears. This is where you show your visitors what would happen if they didn’t use your offer.
Instilling fear – image source
2. Gain framing – show your visitors how their life will improve with your offer.
Instilling encouragement – image source
3. Statistical framing – use stats to trigger desired emotions.
Using stats to break it down – image source
4. Language framing – use your copy to encourage visitors to feel a certain sensation.
This one uses visual and language framing to portray danger – image source
Psychology Concept #14: Anchoring
Anchoring is especially useful when listing prices. The “anchoring heuristic” is basically a mental rule of thumb that your brain uses to simplify complex problems to make decisions.
You typically see anchoring used in these three ways:
1. Multiple unit pricing – the easier the math, the better. Here’s an example where “10 for $10” is more effective than “$1 each”:
Multiple unit pricing makes it feel like you’re saving more – image source
2. Purchase limit quantity pricing – such as the limits on sale items at the grocery store.
Were you really walking in to purchase 7 cans or did you originally want to buy fewer? – image source
3. Initial price setting – like the sticker price at the car dealership. That’s immediately becomes your starting point for negotiating and you see it as soon as you step foot on the lot.
What’s your offer price now? – image source
Psychology Concept #15: Priming
Priming is an implicit memory effect where exposure to one stimulus influences your response to a later stimulus. It’s where your memory associates one thing with another.
An example: music and wine study by North. There was a study conducted in 1999 at a grocery store where both French and German background music was played on different days. The days that French music was playing, more French wine was sold and vice versa.
What to do on your landing pages: try to link memory associations for your visitors on your landing pages. Here’s two examples of priming in action (well one of them successfully primes, the other fails):
Is the grouping above or below priming you?
Pretty obvious which one is the priming example right? – image source
Control
The purpose of understanding the psychology of landing pages is to understand what goes through your visitor’s head so you can help guide the decision-making process. Grasping elements of our natural inclination to control, should help you better persuade on your landing pages.
Psychology Concept #16: Try Before You Buy
Since most your visitors will not be ready to convert upon arrival at your site, it’s important to give them non-threatening options so they don’t feel pushed to take action.
Try Before You Buy is a way to offer visitors a way to let your visitors be and have your offer speak for itself.
Warby Parker does a great job of relieving anxiety by offering a Try Before You Buy option with their Home Try-On option.
They make it easy to return the frames you don’t want, too – image source
Here’s another example by Jack Threads:
JT’s Tryouts allows you to never buy before you try – image source
Psychology Concept #17: Evaluating Alternatives
According to Boundless:
“During the evaluation of alternatives stage, the consumer evaluates all the products available on a scale of particular attributes.”
This happens in the third stage of the consumer decision process (after identify decision and gather relevant info stages).
How to use this to your advantage – speed up the evaluating process and give people less alternatives. The fewer the options the easier the decision-making process.
You can avoid the paradox of choice by offering fewer options.
Shoot for the sweet spot – image source
Psychology Concept #18: Cognitive Biases
There are several biases that affect our decision making. Mental Floss claims 20 that screw up our decisions.
In addition to Anchoring (psychology concept #17) and Availability Heuristic (more on that later) and, check out the other 18 biases:
Which bias are you most susceptible to? – image source
When designing your landing pages, just be aware that your visitors are susceptible to all of these biases that could detract them from your CTA and landing page goal.
To help avoid these biases, make all the elements of your page exceptionally clear and focused on a single goal.
Psychology Concept #19: Loss Aversion
First successfully demonstrated by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, loss aversion is when people strongly prefer avoiding losses over acquiring gains. Some studies show that losses are sometimes twice as psychologically powerful as gains.
How to incorporate this into your landing page? Instill FOMO – fear of missing out.
Here’s how Light In The Box creates FOMO by offering a limited time flash sale:
What happens if you miss the epic sale? – image source
Psychology Concept #20: Urgency
Similar to loss aversion, urgency also triggers FOMO. This one’s more time-oriented. A solid way to conquer urgency is through limited time offerings and perhaps an obvious countdown.
Is this a countdown to le disco? – image source
Psychology Concept #21: Scarcity
When there’s hardly anything left of something, people naturally want it more. The thought behind scarcity – the offer must’ve been so good everyone wants in on it.
Expedia urges FOMO by showing scarcity in the number of flights left:
Funny how you need exactly 2 seats… coincidence? – image source
Stimulation
To keep your visitors’ attention focused on your landing pages, and better yet, your CTA, keep them stimulated. There’s a number of psychology concepts that we can work into our landing page designs.
The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus spearheaded a whole wave of philosophy based on pleasure psychology. Naturally dubbed Epicureanism, the purpose of the philosophy was to attain the happy life, free of pain.
Psychology Concept #22: Feeling Pain
The psychology of feeling pain goes back to the philosophy of Epicureanism. People have a basic desire and need to avoid feeling pain, so speak to this on your landing pages.
What do your visitors want to avoid? Evoke that pain, and then be the hero with the solution to save your visitors from it.
Here’s an example of Orange Dental Care’s website showing pain:
Will they kill my ache? – image source
Psychology Concept #23: Feeling Pleasure
Epicurus found that pleasure and pain are measures of good and evil, or life and death, which means people tend to make choices based on what makes them happy.
What to do: show happy people on your landing page, use happy words, and make this messaging very clear.
Here’s how 1-800-Dentist shows pleasure:
Wanta type in your zip and be happy, too? – image source
Psychology Concept #24: Cognitive Flow
People also feel happy when they have a clear understanding of what’s going on, so aim to have an easy cognitive flow on your landing pages. The pathway that flows equally between challenges and skills is what gamer-makers shoot for.
No wonder gamers get addicted – image source
Psychology Concept #25: Create Curiosity with Stimulation
According to Changing Minds, you can use Stimulation and Partiality principles to create curiosity.
In addition to Epicurus’ pleasure and pain concepts, you can accomplish stimulation on your landing pages using:
Novelty – include something new with buzz that makes us want to learn more
Losing out (more on Loss Aversion later)
Puzzles – use puzzles and mystery to make people want to finish exploring and solve problems
Words (more on Copy and Tone later)
Psychology Concept #26: Create Curiosity with Partiality
Changing Minds describes the Partiality principle:
“Curiosity comes from partial knowledge which promises benefit. Telling them everything satisfies curiosity. To get them going, give them a taste, not the whole meal.”
The way Changing Minds suggest using Partiality:
Hinting – spark interest by dropping a hint and nudge people to want know more
Promising benefit – if your benefits are communicated properly your visitors will be curious about learning more
Partial images – when you see a part of something, you naturally want to see the rest of it
Slow reveal – create anticipation to see whether or not our predictions are right
Psychology Concept #27: Reciprocity
Satisfy the sense of reward and good karma that people crave. It’s a natural instinct of ours to want to return a favor, so why not be the first to offer your visitor something free and useful on your landing page. This will help you earn their reciprocity (aka conversion) later.
Trulia offers a free interactive mortgage calculator on their site. Visitors in the market for buying a home can use this free feature time and time again:
Free to use with no strings attached – image source
If you racked up all those useful mortgage calculations for free, wouldn’t you think of Trulia when ready to buy?
Psychology Concept #28: Visual and Auditory Connectivity
This connectivity principle has to do with appealing to more of your audience’s senses to capture their attention. To connect the visual and auditory senses, use GIFs, animations, and videos. If there’s sound that will help tell your story, even better.
Here’s three reasons according to Unbounce why video can increase landing page conversions:
Videos increase the length of time people stay on your page, giving your brand message longer to sink in.
If you feature yourself or company employees in the video, the trust factor is raised significantly.
People are lazy and prefer to watch vs. read.
According to a MarketingLand survey, 71% of respondents say video conversion rates outperform other marketing content.
This is how the respondents viewed the impact of video on ROI:
Nearly half said the ROI improved with use of video – image source
Socialization
There’s something about the Bandwagon Effect that makes people want to follow the mass herd. The mentality – if everyone’s doing it, I should be doing it, too.
Robert Cialdini ‘s quote about the Liking Principle:
“People are easily persuaded by other people that they like.”
Sometimes the thing that everyone’s doing doesn’t even have to make logical sense – are most of us just sheeple?
Regardless of the sheeple issue, socialization has to do with building trust and credibility.
Psychology Concept #29: Social Influence
Another way to persuade buyer behavior on your landing pages is to use social proof so people feel like other credible people, just like them, have benefited from your offer.
This refers to all types of social proof: ratings, reviews, social shares, number of other users, logos of other users, media badges, testimonials, subscriber counts, social connections, test results, etc.
The key is to make your social proof appear realistic and so your visitor can identify with other users. Here’s how 1-800-Dentist does it:
Worked for Mark M. Might work for you, too. – image source
Psychology Concept #30: Power of Authority
Look for those valuable micro-influencers in your industry. These are influencers that are seen as a trusted source and have much more authority over buyer behavior than a paid celebrity or ad.
According to Warc, micro-influencers were found to have up to 22.2 times more conversations each week about recommendations on what to buy vs. an average consumer.
In terms of conversions, Warc found that:
“82% of consumers surveyed said they were highly likely to follow a recommendation made by a micro-influencers.”
What this means for you – don’t pay Kim Kardashian $1m to endorse your landing page offer.
Unless you’re trying to appeal to her sisters, your visitors most likely won’t relate – GIF source
Instead, feature micro-influencers and successful smaller-scale companies and awards that your users can relate to. Here’s how Veterans United does it:
Rick D. West, a veteran that other veterans can relate to – image source
Psychology Concept #31: Availability Heuristic
Very Well defines availability heuristic as “a mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to mind.”
Kendra Cherry of Very Well wrote about this principle:
“When you are trying to make a decision, a number of related events or situations might immediately spring to the forefront of your thoughts. As a result, you might judge that those events are more frequent and possible than others.”
What this means for your landing page: include real-life examples, case studies, understandable stats, testimonials and real people that have benefited from your offer.
A real-world example can act as immediately available proof of your offer, knocking out any other examples your visitors might associate with your offer.
Psychology Concept #32: Commitment
People are likely to be loyal to your company if they feel they are involved and part of the community. Once you get commitment from your visitors to provide input and to be engaged, you can use this as the basis of a loyal relationship.
How to do this on a landing page? Ask for feedback. Ask for opinions. Find out what your visitor’s pain points and needs are, or engage them with a free useful tool, like an interactive calculator.
Design
Psychology Concept #33: Primacy Effect
This has to do with remembering things you first confront in a list or at the top of a landing page. Our brains are hardwired to remember the first few things we ingest versus the things we encounter later.
Why? Perhaps our cognitive load runs out of space or we get bored.
What this means: put the most important content at the top of a list, the second most important at the bottom of the list, and the least important in the middle.
Psychology Concept #34: Von Restorff Effect
The Von Restorff Effect is the idea that people are also most likely to remember things that stand out from the rest, like this:
He’ll be remembered as the most excited fan – image source
Try to create contrast and isolate things on your landing page that you want to draw attention to.
Psychology Concept #35: Deictic Gaze
Deictic Gaze is known as joint visual attention, where people look where attention is drawn. Here’s what I mean:
Couldn’t help it – image source
Take advantage of this herd mentality and use directional cues in your landing page design for that extra umph in converting. An example from Fetch Rate:
The blue arrow makes the CTA stand out even more and encourages you to fill out the non-threatening form field – image source
Psychology Concept #36: White Space
White space not only helps to organize clean placement of all your content on the landing page, but it also helps to emphasize your CTA, making it a focal point.
Hubspot calls the white space around your CTA “breathing space” that “produces a calming effect allowing your CTA to stand out from the rest of your design.”
Oli Gardner said:
“The reason we say blank space is because the color of the space isn’t important. The purpose is to use simple spatial positioning to allow your call-to-action to stand out from its surroundings and give your eye only one thing to focus on.”
Psychology Concept #37: Typography
There’s a subliminal message to the typefaces you choose, so make sure the emotion aligns with the message and energy you’re trying to give off on your landing page. Here’s a quick summary of five typography categories:
Have you been using the right typeface? – image source
Psychology Concept #38: Color and Contrast
Contrast helps to make your important info, like your CTA, stand out. Draw in your visitors’ attention toward your CTA by saving a certain color designated specifically for your CTA and offer headline.
Saving a certain color for your CTA offer and button will make it stand out – image source
Which color to choose? There’s a ton of charts and descriptions out there to define which emotions are evoked by each color. Here’s a version with a simple format:
Choose wisely – image source
Psychology Concept #39: Encapsulation
Encapsulation helps with contrast, white space and increasing the Von Restorff Effect. With encapsulation you use a container to frame and highlight what’s inside.
Encapsulating helps your CTA stand out – image source
Psychology Concept #40: Formatting
Formatting is a big deal when it comes to ingesting your landing page info. If you categorize your content into clean and organized buckets of info for your visitors, they’ll likely latch onto your CTA messaging more easily.
Format your info with simplicity in mind.
You can follow these five questions from Oli Gardner’s Information of Hierarchy when it comes to laying the copy on your landing pages:
What is the pain or problem your customer feels?
What’s the solution?
How does it work?
Who does it for you?
Who says it’s good?
Design-wise, keep in mind your White Space and Encapsulation principles, and make sure your readability is easy peasy.
Psychology Concept #41: Imagery
As mentioned in the storytelling topic (psychology concept #3) there’s a lot you can do with imagery to tap into your visitor’s subconscious. Use your hero shot strategically to help move your visitors along through the decision funnel.
Imagery ideas and options for you to consider:
Show happy people using your offer. Here’s an example where Highrise redesigned their landing page to include imagery of a happy user:
Big improvement in conversion rate with her smiling face – image source
Use a visual that makes your audience feel like they’re actually there. Gateway West Loop features image shots directly from their apartment living rooms.
Feels like you’re standing in the room – image source
Nicole Dieker goes deep into the use of imagery and reveals 41 hero shot secrets with us.
Closing Thoughts
If we could unlock all the secrets to how the subliminal brain works and apply them to our landing pages, whipping out conversion rates would be like:
Hiya, voila… no big – image source
Like most good things however, slow and steady does the real trick. By using these psychology concepts and intentionally incorporating them into your designs, you’ll tap into your visitors’ buyer behavior more easily urging them to convert.
The post Landing Page Psychology:
41 Concepts for Conversion appeared first on KlientBoost.