Improve Conversion

In order to convert we must persuade real people to take action.

The science of behaviour online is still a relatively new field yet its roots lie in the fundamentals of consumer psychology.

In the field of retail marketing consumer product manufacturers and retailers have spent millions trying to get better results ‘in store’. Consumer goods businesses like Coca Cola, Procter & Gamble, Unilever & Mars understand what it takes to get the very best results for their own brands and are able to measure the elements that can affect sales such as the location of their product in the Aisle, whether they are at eye level or not, how well they sell when sold with related products and much more.

When a customer makes a decision to do something online the process they use may be relatively quick or take time, fundamentally though it is a cognitive process rather than a single event.

Both Sales people and Marketers have long been extolling the virtues of AIDA and this model continues to provide a compelling framework for persuasion online:

• A – Attention
• I – Interest
• D – Desire
• A – Action

Bryan Eisenberg highlights three critical questions that should be addressed for every page a website visitor sees as they perform a sequence of actions (e.g. ‘click to see our latest offers’) that result in the ultimate objective (typically a sale).

1. What action needs to be taken?
2. Who needs to take that action?
3. How do we persuade that person to take the action we desire?

He goes on to explain how these three questions are used to create a decision tree based on personality types rooted in Myers-Briggs personality types and further work by David Kiersey. From this Eisenberg categorizes how people make decisions online. Essentially the way people make decisions online can be divided into four distinct behavioural modes: