5 Psychological Triggers That Increase Conversions of Your Online Business

Struggling to increase your email signups?

Experiencing a high cart abandonment rate?

Can’t get enough visitors to push your blog posts along to their friends?

No matter what your business’s goal is, you need to understand your audience and figure out what makes them tick. 

First, you’ll need to understand how CRO works. See details here.

Then, you’ll want to learn what motivates your visitors, so you’ll be able to learn how to convince them to take action.

There are many types of psychological triggers you can experiment with. Websites across different niches can benefit from several different types.

To get acquainted with some that can work wonders for your site, we’ve compiled this list of 5 psychological triggers that can increase the conversions of your online business. 

1. Social Proof

Even though society values individuality in some contexts, humans are ultimately social beings that love collective thinking. We seek out the approval of others and tend to stick with the crowd whenever possible. 

A famous experiment by Solomon Asch takes on and proves the idea of social conformity. In this experiment, participants took an easy-to-solve visual test. Even though the correct answer was obvious, a majority of real participants went along with the incorrect answer that the fake participants provided. 

Conformity also affects us when we are deciding what to buy or share online. The need to be correct and liked by others prevails, and you can use this to your business’s advantage. 

One way to implement the idea of social proof into your business is to incorporate a lot of third-party proof into your website. Showcase the following on your website: 

• Testimonials
• Reviews with quotes
• Trust badges or laurels

When potential customers see that others are satisfied with your business, they’ll be interested in the benefits that you can offer them. 

2. Reciprocity

When you someone does something nice for you, even if it is something small, you will likely feel like you owe them something in return. That is the idea of reciprocity at work.

Provide your visitors with small incentives to persuade them to do business with you. Some examples you can use to apply this principle to your website include:

• Offer a free report or how-to guide: You can demonstrate your business’s expertise and make your visitors feel indebted to you for sharing information.
• Give away gifts to some customers: It doesn’t have to be anything big but consider giving away gifts to some of your most loyal customers.
• Respond to comments on your blog or social media: Whenever someone leaves a comment, do your best to respond. The original poster will feel grateful that you took time out of your day to acknowledge what they’ve said. 

3. Trust

How many times have you found a website on the topic you were looking for only to click off of it because it looked sketchy? Stand out from low-quality competitors by making your website appear trustworthy. 

Some ways you can make your website more trustworthy are:

• Add pictures of your team members
• Make your site’s HTTPS secure
• Incorporate a clean and modern website design
• Openly display business contact information

When your website provides positive user experience, visitors will stick around to learn what you have to offer. This can lead to drastic improvements in your conversion rate.

4. The Decoy Effect

According to the Decoy Effect, you can influence how consumers view the value of your products or services. 

On your website, present a tiered pricing system so that your customers can focus on the relative advantage that one package offers over another. 

If you only have two pricing options, consider introducing a third one.

Caption: The middle option serves as a decoy and convinces consumers to pick the more expensive one.

5. Loss Aversion

The concept of loss aversion states that most people find losing something more harmful than gaining something. Incorporate this psychological trigger into your business’s website and marketing. Send out final reminder emails and use countdowns for deals on your product pages. 

Create a sense of urgency and convince people of what they’ll be missing out on if they don’t take action with your company.

Conclusion

To get optimal results, consider integrating multiple of these psychological triggers into your website. However, as you make changes to your website and marketing efforts, keep your customers’ needs in mind. 

Remember to make your marketing decisions based on how your customers are likely to think based on these five triggers.