Choice is a good thing, right?

Let us take you back to the grand old days of grocery shopping, when butter came weighed out in a scoop, the grocer knew your children’s names and your favourite cut of beef, and a brand was something you applied to a cow’s bum (not too different to shopping in Lidl today, one might imagine). Limited choice made shopping a simpler experience in those days ('You can have any colour as long as it's black'), but surely the huge array of brands, products and quantities available in today’s supermarkets make shopping a more satisfying experience? After all, what brunette with frizzy hair and split ends could argue against a shampoo product made specifically to meet her needs?

What's the impact of choice on consumer purchasing and ecommerce?

However, as previously demonstrated in our series of articles on digital psychology, the…

A summary of 7 principles of persuasion

There is increasing interest in applying the principles of Psychology to Digital Marketing. According to Kath Pay of Cloud.IQ, the benefits of incorporating consumer psychology into your marketing are two- fold: "First, applying the principles of the Psychology of Persuasion can assist your customer in their journey to achieve their objective i.e. buying a product or service from you, and secondly, you, as the marketer, benefits from facilitating more successful conversions". Kath has a new free download 'Leveraging Psychology in Digital Marketing' explaining how the relationship between buyer psychology and behaviour can help marketers optimise the online customer journey. It covers the principles and examples from landing pages and email marketing on how you can improve conversion efficiency as part of inbound marketing. This infographic is a taster of the book's themes to help you get under the skin of your customers through psychological techniques including those focussed on…

Examples showing why customer loyalty may be a self-fulfilling prophecy

We’re funny creatures, us apes. Take decision-making, for instance. Before we make a decision, such as buying an expensive item, we’re often beset by doubt and uncertainty. We might check out price comparison websites, ask friends and family for advice, or explore numerous models and variations of a product, all before committing to the purchase. But once we have committed… once we have handed over our credit card details and gone through with the transaction… suddenly all that uncertainty drops away like water off a duck’s back. You can almost feel the relief as you wallow in the glow of your choice’s superiority, even though, in reality, the products that you left sitting on the shelf were probably just as capable as the item you selected. It’s not just buying decisions that are affected in this way. …

Examples showing the value of social proof in boosting email subscriptions

If you’ve ever watched sitcoms, you probably have a good idea what 'canned laughter' is - it’s a track of 'people laughing played in the background' every time there is something funny on the screen. This way TV producers can alter our perception of a particular scene as its perceived to be funnier. It’s not a secret trick psychologists have been silent about, but one of behavioural patterns we all follow intuitively. It’s called social proof, and it can throw a whole new light on your email marketing operations. Social proof is a phenomenon occurring when people undergo a process of decision-making. Our brains are programmed to automatically follow other people’s behaviour. Once we notice a large group of individuals have made certain decisions, it is very likely that we will perceive…

 Best practice principles and examples showing how testing colour can boost conversion

In my previous post exploring research and examples showing the principles of Colour Psychology, I illustrated how colour choices can impact user engagement and conversion. There is so much to share on this topic, that in this follow-up I look into more detail on the use of colour for your Call To Actions (CTAs). When you want visitors to out-click your competition, some people suggest that you do things with big, fancy names like use conversion-centered design principles. It would be a whole lot simpler to say 'design your pages so people are unable to avoid clicking where you want them to.' One of the best ways to do this is to employ the proper combination of colour and contrast. The colour elements of a landing page work together to immediately capture the attention, and direct the visitor’s eye to that all…

Research and examples showing how the principles of Colour Psychology apply to Persuasion Marketing

Just about everyone has a favourite colour, (and a few not-so-favourite ones), and as such, most of us realize that colour has an unusual ability to influence how we feel.  Armed with the knowledge that colour can be a persuasive force in consumer decision-making, Professor Satyendra Singh from the University of Winnipeg asserts that retailers are always attempting to use the influence of colour to their benefit (Impact of colour on marketing, Management Decision, 44 (6), 783-789). This may involve techniques as simple as targeting consumers of a specific gender based on product colour, to using specific colours to subliminally entice consumers to buy: see Professor Okan Akcay in 'Marketing to teenagers: The influence of colour, ethnicity and gender,' from International Journal of Business and Social Science, 3 (22), 10-18. Available…

Why developing an emotional connection through personal branding is essential for ecommerce

On a daily basis, the average consumer will see as many as 5,000 ads. The sheer volume of ads is a large reason why many consumers view companies with distrust, believing that they will only take action and speak with only sales in mind. The reality is, consumers prefer to do business with people, not companies. Personal branding allows your audience to see the human behind the operation.

Why Personal brands?

The most important factor in determining the success of a company is trust. Unlike brick-and-mortar stores, your customers do not immediately receive a physical good after they have shopped at an e-commerce store. In order for them to make a purchase from your site, they must be assured that they will receive the product and…

Connecting content on a deeper psychological level

The many different types of content marketing give great opportunities for brands to develop storytelling in new ways. Previously, Dan Bosomworth explained brand storytelling techniques in-depth. In this infographic we gain insights on how people will respond to the content we share, showing how are brains are wired to connect with compelling stories. Did you know that...

'The brain processes images 60 times faster than text, and 92% of consumers want brands to create stories around ads. Because of this, marketers should be delivering linear content with clear narratives and using images to tell their stories".

This storytelling infographic from Onepost shares this insight, explaining that  'finding the right story will activate part of the brain to listen, absorb and transpose it into their own ideas and experiences, making it memorable'. …

How price, type size, position on page and the colour of prices can all impact on whether people click the buy now button

The ultimate goal of marketing, of course, is to get people to buy. That means, that in an online context, actions that marketers can take to influence the pressing of a “buy now” button are desirable. 

But how often do we focus on what seem like trivial things, such as the size of the type used to show the price? Psychological research shows some interesting factors about the way prices are displayed. Get the display of prices right on a web page and you can affect the chances of that “buy now” button being pressed.

There are several factors which I shall cover in this article:

Should prices end in an odd numbered digit?It is not the last…

Learn to love The Logic Sandwich

To successfully take people through a whole buying decision, you need to find the right balance between satisfying their emotional and logical needs. The human brain has two halves: the left side of the brain is rational, considered and thoughtful, the right is creative, intuitive and spontaneous. To really get someone on board with your brand, you need to appeal to both sides of their nature. In short, you need messages that tick their emotional and logical boxes. [caption id="attachment_35506" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Are you serving up a Logic Sandwich?[/caption] Whatever you’re selling and whomever you’re selling it to (in the vast majority of cases), you are selling to a person: a human being. And, real people are primarily driven by their emotions. Even when what they articulate is a logical motivation for a purchase, there will be…