Increase eCommerce Revenue With Consumer Psychology
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Can consumer psychology improve your store?
If you feel your eCommerce store is underperforming, or that you are failing to gain as much exposure and customers as you wish, you may want to look at consumer psychology.
This article explains exactly what consumer psychology is, and how it can benefit your business.
What is consumer psychology?
The human mind is a complex construct. We are capable of deep thought processes, and our minds react subconsciously to certain triggers, such as sights, sounds, smells, and physical interaction.
It is possible to tap into this subconscious process to alter a person’s behaviour, persuade her to perform certain tasks, or simply invoke certain feelings and emotions that could result in specific actions.
This is the basic idea behind consumer psychology – the notion that a customer’s behaviour and actions can be altered based on psychological factors.
Businesses regularly use consumer psychology to improve their customers’ experiences and, of course, to improve sales and revenue. If you understand how your customers behave and why they make certain choices and purchases, you can tailor their shopping experience accordingly to yield better results.
Here are a couple of examples:
- Statistics and research show that people remember 80% of what they see as opposed to only 10% of what they hear. A business could use this psychological trait and create predominantly visual marketing.
- The colour red creates an association of energy and urgency. This is why sales tags are often coloured red in an attempt to increase the likelihood of a purchase.
As you can see, consumer psychology is a powerful tool and can truly add a new dimension to your business.
How can consumer psychology help you increase ecommerce revenue?
An ecommerce site is a captive piece of marketing – you know exactly what your customers are looking at, and you can customise every aspect of the website if required. This gives you a great amount of freedom, and there is a lot of potential to use consumer psychology to your benefit.
Starting with simple changes, you could utilise specific colours in your imagery and Call to Action to invoke different emotions, such as yellow to promote optimism and blue to create a sense of security.
Furthermore, it is well known that customers prefer imagery as opposed to large sections of text. You can use this preference to improve the content of your website and create a more engaging experience for your customers.
These are just a few small examples of how consumer psychology can improve your ecommerce store but there are many more.
How Groupon Harnesses Consumer Psychology
Groupon uses a myriad of techniques to tap into customers’ psychology and improve their experience. Take a look at the Groupon website to see how different colours are used to draw a visitors’ attention. They use two simple techniques that clearly make a large difference.
- Firstly, it highlights the exclusivity of the deals which creates a sense of urgency for the customer.
- Secondly, it fosters a herd shopping mentality. Users can see how many other people have purchased a coupon, which can help sway their decision and prompt a sale.
Our consumer psychology infographic has even more ideas!
It will help you to understand how and why consumer psychology can help you increase ecommerce revenue both online and offline.
- Conscious versus unconscious shopping
- What the human brain remembers
- How color affects shoppers
- How sounds affect shoppers
- The influence of signage on shoppers
- Scents affect on shoppers
- Famous brands/stores use consumer psychology
- Online shoppers decision-making processes
- Shopper personas
by Benjamin Ligier
Benjamin is a CRO Expert at Convertize. He is passionate about design, web marketing and consumer psychology.
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