10-Minute Psychology Primer to Boost Your CRO/LPO Testing Results

Presented by: Josh Braaten (@jlbraaten)

Search Snippets – July 26, 2012

Emotion Beats Logic: The best website visits are emotional experiences, not rational encounters.

UK-based Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA): •“Campaigns with purely emotional content performed about twice as well” (31% vs. 16%)•“…those that were purely emotional did better than those that mixed emotional and rationale.” (31% vs. 26%)

- Brainfluence, by Roger Dooley

The Reservoir of Goodwill: Website experiences affect conversion rates and success bit by bit.

Every interaction with your website can fill or drain the reservoir. When it’s empty, you’ve lost your conversion.

Image source: flickr

Web Analytics Analysis: Find the top conversion paths and find where the reservoir is leaking.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Develop and Test: Create hypotheses using psychological factors, then develop testing plans.

Conversion rate psychology factors fall into two categories:

1. “Can do” = factors that influence a visitor’s ability to complete a task

2. “Will do” = factors that influence a visitor's willingness to complete a task

- Neuro Web Design, Susan Weinschenk

Can Your Users Do It? Use quantitative tools to find blockages, qualitative tools to understand them.

Tools can help identify barriers to task

completion and user satisfaction.

Will Your Users Do It? Experiment with the many age-old factors of influence and persuasion.

•Liking•Social Proof•Attractiveness•Reciprocity•Urgency

•Authority•Scarcity•Authority•Trust•Sex

Additional Reading: