Online Sales Psychology That Works!

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by David Gikandi

So you have a web site. No matter what it is all about, it was built for use by people. The good news today is that people, no matter how complicated they may seem, run on a common psychological framework. They use this framework to do just about everything, including use and buy from your web site. Let us look at seven standard psychological phenomena that work beautifully when it comes to online sales. Learn and apply these and your online success will definitely soar.

Conforming to groups

Peoples' judgement is highly influenced and dependent on the collective judgement of groups. What this means is that you will often make judgements that you believe are entirely your own but in reality they are based on what other people are doing! For example, you may go out and decide to buy something or take a trip somewhere but that decision is most likely highly influenced by your observing or reading about or hearing about other people doing the exact same thing. And you will often avoid things that most other people avoid. In fact, there are very many instances when you will adopt a group's judgement over your own!

What this means is that you should have as many features within your site as possible that allow users to contribute to, feel and be influenced by group opinions. For example, you must have testimonials. Have one testimonial on every page placed well, and have a testimonials page holding a bunch of them. Depending on your site, other things you should consider adding are voting, forums, statistics and surveys. All these allow users to contribute to the group thought and be influenced by it. Very powerful.

Listening to authority

We all know it - people listen unquestioningly to authoritative figures. if you hold anyone in high regard as an authority, you will usually unquestioningly listen and do as they say (e.g., your doctor, lawyer, or sports coach. These people can tell you to do what most people can't and you will almost always do it without questioning it.

This means that your site should have someone or some organization of recognized authority in that field saying something positive about your product or service. It doesn't have to be a famous person, just an authority. For example, a travel service can have a review by some magazines and a vitamin store can have some comments from some doctors.

Small agreements lead to bigger ones. If someone came up to you and asked you for your agreement on some major issue, they are more likely to get a no from you than if they came up to you and led you on with a series of much smaller issues that you can easily agree on, building to the major issue. Getting people to agree to a major issue is a lot easier if you first give them related but smaller issues that they can automatically agree to.

One way to use this in your business is to provide a free trial. It is easy to get someone to try something free. After that, it is much easier to get them to upgrade to a retail version. Another thing you could do is to ask questions spaced out within your sales pitch and those questions are the type that have a yes answer. They must be questions related to the product or service. Doing this will make it much easier to get the final yes to buy.

Incomplete tasks

Most people are quite disturbed by tasks or events that are incomplete. You know how you hate it when those TV shows stop somewhere in the middle of a juicy plot, only to tell you that they will be continued same time next week? It disturbs your mind so much that you make it a point of catching the next show. And on the next show they do the exact same thing! Even in your life, when you have incomplete tasks, you keep thinking about them until you complete them. It is easier for people to remember and stay focused to incomplete tasks.

There are many ways you can apply this to your marketing. Your web pages could lead people from one page to the next using this phenomenon. Your banners could start to give a series of 10 tips, only to stop after the third and ask the viewer to click on to get the remaining 7. Use your imagination!

A bonus use of this phenomenon is that you can figure out ways to get people coming back to your site. You need this to happen because most people only buy something after the fifth to seventh time they get in contact with it. Therefore, getting repeat visitors is the most important thing you can do for your online business. As a matter of fact, you should use as many tactics, freebies and technologies as possible to get repeat visits.

Cognitive dissonance

In plain English, this means that people hate it when their beliefs are inconsistent with their actions. They won't rest until they resolve that conflict by changing their thoughts, beliefs or actions.

One way to use this in marketing is to get someone to make an easy decision, and then get them to take actions on their own so that they can prove to themselves that they made the right decision. People usually want to validate that they made the right choice. Another way to work this is to give them that validation early on so that when it came to the sale, they will have already eliminated their dissonance and they will buy to reinforce their belief.

Conforming to group emotions

In a happy room, most people get happy. In a sad room, most people get sad. People conform to the emotions of the group or environment. That is why casinos and top retail outlets try so hard to create an emotional atmosphere of carefree spending or something similar that will cause emotions that lead to spending.

Have a look at your site. What emotion does it convey. A site's text, prose, colors, graphics and quality can make or break an online business just from the emotional angle. Same thing with banners and other ads that you do.

Needs satisfaction

Whenever people buy something, they do it to get some need fulfilled and/or to eliminate some problem. Simple. Even if you go out to buy a boomerang, the principle is the same. There is a need you wish to fulfill, such as exercise, amusement, discovery, fun. You may also be looking to eliminate something else such as boredom.

Examine your products and services and forget all the hype that you enjoy about your product. Forget the way you love that super-cool feature you built in. Just think on the needs level and find out what needs a buyer wants to fulfill and what they would want to eliminate. Needs are not features. Needs are things like saving time, spending time with the family, knowing something, achieving success. That is what you will be selling all along. You only mention the features as a side item to seal the decision logically, but the decision to buy will be based on emotions and needs.

Surprise, free and casual works

Most people ignore advertising or direct calls to buy something. They get defensive initially. They even learn to automatically 'not see' advertising. I am sure that your brain somehow blocks out all those banner ads and only very rarely do you even really notice what is really on those banners. Why? Well, because your brain can see the ad coming! It has all the cues that make it look like an ad and it is shut out. What if it did not look like an ad. Perhaps it looked like content that you would be interested in reading, or a cartoon you like? You would see it and read it!

What this means is that your web site, your banners, and everything else should have nothing that smells of advertising. Eventually you must ask for the sale (yes, you must clearly ask your client to buy, but only at the right time). But until the point where all your emotional and logical requirements have been fulfilled, you must look like a free information service or at least provide useful information along the way even in your product information sheets. You must be the opposite of an advertisement. An ad tells you quickly about the product, its features, and screams at you to buy. The opposite is a useful information resource. That keeps the prospect calm, gives them something useful, while subtly leading to the sale. Only at the point of sale is the sale asked for very clearly and bluntly. With this strategy you will be ignored far less and the client will read your material much more. Give people free, instantly useful information and entertainment and let that lead subtly but persistently to the sale. Keep it casual.

You should also try to use something that people have never seen before. Surprise them in this way and they will pay attention. For example, when making a banner, don't do it like everyone else does. Use a design trick that people haven't seen before. One trick that used to work very well and still works quite well is to make the banner look like one of those Windows 95 OK and Cancel buttons in response to a warning message. Or you can have a banner that appears to fall and shake (like in an earthquake). Anything surprising and unexpected works better because it bypasses the brain's filters.

By the way, a good reason to offer something free and useful is that it allows you to be a part of your prospects life. Once you have entered their life, you will be more readily accepted and can then work up to the sale.

Putting it all together

Well, there you have it. Now go back to your web site and re-examine everything about it. If you find that it really is very far off from what we have talked about, then you might want to re-build all of it. Whatever you do, make sure that you fully grasp what we have talked about here and apply it in full to your site. You cannot go about applying these selectively. That will only work half the magic. For example, a lot of webmasters are lazy or reluctant to offer free content and tools. Well, you must because most of these tactics depend on it. If you would like an example of how to apply this knowledge, have a look at www.positionweaver.com. Without free and instantly useful content that induces return visits, it is going to be very hard to effectively get people to return the required 5 to 7 times, make small yes decisions, and correct their cognitive dissonance. Like we said in the beginning, people run on a common psychological framework. Rules that you can live and succeed by.