Cognitive distortions of sites visitors - increase the conversion

Amante Inc

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At its core, conversion optimization is pure psychology. Make sure that you understand how people think and what motivates them in the decision-making process. Using this knowledge, you can optimize marketing effectively.

Each of us has our own cognitive distortions that quietly and invisibly shape our world for ourselves. The human brain has a full set of tools for processing information that makes each of us to see things a little differently. Even people who consider themselves rational, and their actions - logically justified, have their own cognitive distortions of the world around them. It is so common, that you can be sure at 100%, that the majority of visitors to your website will have cognitive distortions. From a marketing perspective it can be very, very helpful.

Cognitive distortion is the concept of cognitive science, which means formulaic deviations or biases in thinking, arising on the basis of dysfunctional beliefs that are embedded in the cognitive scheme and are easily detected in the analysis of automatic thoughts. People tend to create their own "subjective social reality", according to their perception, and that their subjective reality may determine their behavior in society. Thus, cognitive distortions can lead to errors of judgment, illogical interpretations, or irrationality in the behavior in the broadest sense.

Here are the five cognitive distortions that you can use to increase conversions and make your website more efficient.

RESTORFF EFFECT

It is also called the isolation effect or human memory effect, and it is that the object, which differs from a number of similar items, is remembered by a person better than others. That is why many students have a habit to mark important lines in textbooks with a marker - they know that the information standing out from the rest of the text, is better memorized. This effect can seriously affect the conversion.

This effect can be used in the process of the site development to make customers pay attention to the details that you want to be seen and remembered. For example, the question of CTA-button design should be approached as carefully as possible. What color should be chosen for this important element? You can choose coloring, which will be in harmony with the design of the entire page, or bet on a large and bold text. In this case, it must be remembered that the effect of the German psychologist Hedwig von Restorff will only act if there is a certain contrast.

Similarly, decide the specific facts, that should be remembered by potential customers. Maybe you have statistics of success rates of customers who have used your products or services. Use fonts, colors and text formatting which will allocate the necessary information and attract the attention of the visitors. If you do everything correctly, then the likelihood of conversion will increase. Be sure to resort to such tools as Attention Wizard, which creates a heat map of attention and makes it possible to increase advertising effectiveness and identify problems with web pages loading.

POSITION EFFECT

The effect is that the first and last parts of the advertising message are memorized and securely fixed in the memory a lot more easily than the middle part. In addition, users can memorize the right side of the advertising message easier than the left one.

Do you place the customer's logos on your website? Do you list your features and benefits of working with you, using a bulleted list? Most likely, you list them in order of priority - starting with the most important item on the top of the list and ending with the least important at the bottom. If you have done so, immediately get down to reformat the list: important information should be exclusively at the beginning and end of the list.

FRAMING EFFECT

Framing effect, which was described by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in 1981, suggests that if a person is faced with the choice between 2 identical problems described one in a negative and the other in a positive way, the decisions taken, will be generally contradictory. Simply put, it is the manipulation of the object by means of the selection among its various definitions. By the way, this effect is used in neuroeconomics which studies decision-making process when choosing alternatives.

According to psychologists, negative experience is stronger than positive, and the losses are felt more painful than the joy of making a profit. Therefore, we can safely say that the fear of losing is more powerful. If a marketer tries to convince a potential buyer to do something (make a purchase, fill out a form, provide his e-mail, etc.), his messages will be focused on respecting the interests of visitors to the site. However, the framing effect says that you need to do otherwise. Namely you should tell a potential client what he will lose if he does not do what you expect from him. As experience shows, this strategy greatly increases the conversion rate.

EFFECT OF IMAGES SUPERIORITY

Another effect assumes that images are more powerful and memorable elements than text. But this does not mean that the users miss the "letters." But text information in combination with pictures is not only more attractive but also more meaningful.

But that's not all. People do not just remember visual images better, but also handle such information 60 thousand times faster than text. Do not see the images on the site only as design elements. You should think of them as means of communication. Each image that the user sees on your site, will form his first unconscious impression about your business, respectively. Conclusion - it is better to see once than to hear / read a hundred times. Use effect of images superiority to improve recollection and recognizability of the key information.

EFFECT OF IMITATION

This effect has different names: the effect of craze and fashion and even the effect of "bandwagon". We will never admit that we like to do what others are doing. And the more people, for example, will go to a particular site, the higher the chances are that even more visitors will come to the site. That is the effect of imitation that is responsible for all the "caprices of fashion" that makes us wear even those things that we swore would never wear.

This effect is ideal for social networking when users see that their friends liked a certain post or followed to a specific group, it is very likely that they will do the same. You can use «bandwagon effect» on your site, proudly telling how many customers you have served, publishing ratings and reviews, as well as showing the statistics of visits and registrations, which shows the popularity of the resource. Do not forget that a joke, ridiculed collectively, seems a lot funnier than it really is.

Conversion optimization has the psychological underpinnings. Sometimes things can go too far - into the quagmire of depth psychology, but it does not need to be afraid of. We must learn to persuade. It is necessary to understand how people think and what motivates them in the decision-making process. We should become a source of positive emotions - do not sell only a good product to your customers, but create a good mood with its help.
 
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