The act of conversion occurs deep within your prospect's mind. Understanding how consumers think is critical in a successful conversion rate optimization (CRO) or landing page optimization (LPO) program. This brief presentation offers a 10 minute glimpse at the psychology of conversion and how you can boost your CRO/LPO results.

1. 10-Minute Psychology Primer to Boost Your
CRO/LPO Testing Results
Presented by: Josh Braaten (@jlbraaten)
Search Snippets – July 26, 2012

2. 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

3. 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

4. Web Analytics Analysis: Find the top conversion
paths and find where the reservoir is leaking.
What’s wrong with this picture?

5. 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

6. 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.

7. Will Your Users Do It? Experiment with the many
age-old factors of influence and persuasion.
•Liking •Authority
•Social Proof •Scarcity
•Attractiveness •Authority
•Reciprocity •Trust
•Urgency •Sex

8. Additional Reading: