Conversion Optimization: Psychological Tactics

I was reading this thinking "this all seems very sensible, I could use this". Then I got to "TACTIC 10: Force Visitors to Accept / Reject Your CTA". A few sites do this. One of the more obnoxious ones says "No, I reject these free books". That's a sure-fire way to get your tab closed and build some bad feeling for free. I can get this code example somewhere else. The google search tab is still open.

(That's only my opinion. Perhaps I'm just on the wrong side of the statistics.)

Also, I think tactic 18 is illegal in the UK.

Re: Conversion Optimization: Psychological Tactics

#5

Post by sweezyjeezy » Thu, Sep 24, 2015, 5:18 PM UTC

This article is misleading. The writer constantly says, 'x increased conversions by y%', and then when you look at the cited articles, you see that in fact they are talking about clickthrough rate, which is a bit meaningless on its own.

In all my time working in e-commerce I have seen no evidence that basic UI changes such as wording, button colours, small page layout changes etc. provide any measurable uplift in actual conversions.

Re: Conversion Optimization: Psychological Tactics

#6

Post by capnjngl » Thu, Sep 24, 2015, 5:40 PM UTC

sweezyjeezy wrote: post #5

This article is misleading. The writer constantly says, 'x increased conversions by y%', and then when you look at the cited articles, you see that in fact they are talking about clickthrough rate, which is a bit meaningless on its own. In all my time working in e-commerce I have seen no evidence that basic UI changes such as wording, button colours, small page layout changes etc. provide any measurable uplift in act…

I've done some CTA wording tests for a client selling event tickets. We tried "Buy Now" vs "Find Tickets" - "Find Tickets" gave us a huge lift in revenue (not just clickthroughs), probably because the language was less committal and was more successful in driving traffic down the funnel. /anecdote

Re: Conversion Optimization: Psychological Tactics

#7

Post by blumkvist » Thu, Sep 24, 2015, 6:27 PM UTC

sweezyjeezy wrote: post #5

This article is misleading. The writer constantly says, 'x increased conversions by y%', and then when you look at the cited articles, you see that in fact they are talking about clickthrough rate, which is a bit meaningless on its own. In all my time working in e-commerce I have seen no evidence that basic UI changes such as wording, button colours, small page layout changes etc. provide any measurable uplift in act…

This. I haven't seen meaningful lifts from changing button colors, wording or all these things I read on guru blogs. Most (all) of the tests I've seen reported on blogs fail miserably at the statistical test, not to mention no DoE, no blocking, no theory and a thousands other things that made the test invalid.

The only way I can see that a change in colors or wording would provide a lift is if the original was confusing, which shouldn't be the case.

Re: Conversion Optimization: Psychological Tactics

#8

Post by eagle1 » Thu, Sep 24, 2015, 7:53 PM UTC

Articles like this (do this get X% lift in conversion) should not be treated as a gospel, only as a collection of ideas to test with your offers and on your traffic. Mileage may vary.

Re: Conversion Optimization: Psychological Tactics

#9

Post by Silhouette » Thu, Sep 24, 2015, 9:29 PM UTC

afandian wrote: post #4

I was reading this thinking "this all seems very sensible, I could use this". Then I got to "TACTIC 10: Force Visitors to Accept / Reject Your CTA". A few sites do this. One of the more obnoxious ones says "No, I reject these free books". That's a sure-fire way to get your tab closed and build some bad feeling for free. I can get this code example somewhere else. The google search tab is still open. (That's only my o…

Yes, a few of the shadier ideas here would definitely be borderline or outright illegal in the UK now. In fact, that applies across Europe, since Directive 2011/83/EU started coming into effect in the member states.

Basically, anything that involves pre-selection or requiring someone to actively opt out of something that will cost them money is likely to be on shaky ground (as, IMHO, it should be).

Re: Conversion Optimization: Psychological Tactics

#10

Post by vfrogger » Thu, Sep 24, 2015, 10:18 PM UTC

blumkvist wrote: post #7

sweezyjeezy wrote: post #5

This article is misleading. The writer constantly says, 'x increased conversions by y%', and then when you look at the cited articles, you see that in fact they are talking about clickthrough rate, which is a bit meaningless on its own. In all my time working in e-commerce I have seen no evidence that basic UI changes such as wording, button colours, small page layout changes etc. provide any measurable uplift in act…

This. I haven't seen meaningful lifts from changing button colors, wording or all these things I read on guru blogs. Most (all) of the tests I've seen reported on blogs fail miserably at the statistical test, not to mention no DoE, no blocking, no theory and a thousands other things that made the test invalid. The only way I can see that a change in colors or wording would provide a lift is if the original was confus…

While I generally agree with you. I have seen adwords tests where extremely minute changes in wording caused statistically significant increases in conversion. The biggest had to do with a campaign with the word "seeds". For whatever reason, changing the plural seeds to a singular seed doubled conversion.