Optimizing the Conversion with CXL — post 3

This is my third post and consequently my third week of study with CXL Institute. This past week, the theme of the classes was Psychology mixed up with Marketing, and an Intro to Neuromarketing. In the first classes of introduction, some themes emerged which, here, were discussed in greater depth. One of these subjects, that was widely discussed, was the Seven Principles of Persuasion, by Robert Cialdini. I am going to list them, explaining briefly what it is about:

• Reciprocity Principle: You give a little to receive back a little. That’s because people tend to give back what they get from others. We, humans, simply hate to feel indebted to other people.
• Commitment/Consistency Principle: If we already commited to do something more easy to do (like filling some fields with my data), it is more likely that we will do a more difficult task later if we are asked.
• Social Proof: That is nothing less than people doing what they observe other people doing. It is more likely that we do something that other people already did. And that is simply because we do not want to make the wrong choices at the risk of being judged by everybody.
• Authority Principle: People, widely speaking, tend to obey and follow authority figures (like celebrities, famous athletes, well-known professionals, etc). Even if those people have questionable character.
• Liking Principle: It is simply that we are more likely to believe, trust and buy from who we already like. It is based on sharing something similar with people you like, and also on something as superficial as how attractive a person’s clothes are. And it is a known fact that pretty people sell more (you can check that in this link).
• Scarcity Principle: That is because we are more attracted to those things that are exclusive and hard to find. Is the perception of products seeming to become more attractive when their perceived availability is rather limited. Based on Quantity and Time.
• Unity Principle: It is the shared identity that the influencer shares with the influenced. It is about shared identities.

And what this tells us is that all of us suffer from it. And if we are able to manipulate these principles, it means thabhbht we are able to make our website visitors feel more persuaded to buy our products or hire our services. The ways that this can be applied on our website are the most varied. It can be in the text (quantity, form of text directed to the client), in the page (and that involves a lot of things, like colors, structure and layout of the page, images) and so on.

Going deeper into these principles we have to understand how a behavior works. Behavior is a set of activities and reactions of an individual. To do this we studied the BJ Fogg Behavior Model Framework that says that to a behavior to occur, it must come together at the same time with three elements:

• Motivation: The individual must be motivated to do something.
• Ability: It must have the ability to do so. Is more important than motivation, because it depends on the availability of the environment. Motivation alone is not enough.
• Trigger: Without an appropriate trigger, the behavior will not occur even if you already have high motivation and ability.

Fogg’s model also says that: Behavior = Motivation x Ability x Trigger. With equal importance. It must be carefully balanced how easy it is versus how motivated they are. Special attention to the placement of triggers (call to actions, buttons, links), take the action has to be as easy as possible.

To start things out, you must define a specific desired behavior — what you want your visitor to do, the conversion goal. You must look at the three elements mentioned above individually and analyze what is best for every part of the visitor path to conversion.

With the specific desired behavior, we have to determine its type, so we can use different psychological strategies and persuasive techniques to change the actual behavior to the desired one. And we already know that the desired behavior happens when motivation, ability and trigger converge.

Now, stepping into Neuromarketing… All the persuasive techniques we use, we have to use it against the Old Brain, that is one of the three parts of our brain. The message has to be delivered in the right form — the “How you say” is as important as “What you say”. There must be a high focus on target customer benefits, and that’s because the Old Brain is concerned with survival, it only cares about itself and not anyone else (message all about the customer). And actions that make the decision-making process difficult should be avoided as much as possible, like: focus on the company/product, not provide clear reasons that support the selling proposition, communicating unnecessary content, and so on.

The decision making is not logical. Both emotional and rational decision making are used by people when making a decision. And what has been learned is that usually the emotional side wins, but people justify their actions with rational reasons and often without even being aware of it. Stopping to think and reflect a little, it really makes sense. So, emotions are very important for choosing. The very point of choice is arguably always based on emotion, but people like to pass that image that they are racional.

To finish this post, I would like to use the analogy used by a teacher in the course. Imagine that the visitor is in a Persuasion Slide, and to convert, he must get down the slide. The Nudge you provide is like the Start of the persuasion, you getting the attention. The gravity is symbolized by the Customer’s Initial Motivation. The Angle of the slide is the Motivation that you provide (both conscious and non-conscious). And the Friction is the real and the perceived difficulty. It is a nice little scheme to facilitate how we view these factors.

It was so nice to learn all this stuff. It is those things which help us a lot to know what we are doing and if we are doing the right thing or not. Thanks so much again to CXL Institute for the opportunity, loving it so much.