Website persuasion tips: Review

Some Persuasion Techniques To Consider

As a small business owner, your biggest area of interest is quite obviously conversion. And I mean having to convert those hundreds of visitors to your website into loyal customers or followers depending on what you have planned to accomplish.

Unfortunately marketing is not the way we used to know it some years ago. There are so many factors at play in this era of the internet. In the eras gone by it didn’t require much to get a loyal following of people.

But now, you must always have your thinking cap on. And not just any ordinary thinking cap, but a cap that is digital in design and is lined with some persuasion variables. Then you will be ready to work online.

As I continue to sharpen my digital marketing skills through the courses I am taking at CXL Institute, I have come to understand from what I am learning that there’s more to this digital marketing.

In the past week I have learned so much about the various persuasion principles out there. The CXL course on Psychology and Persuasion has components on online persuasion tips.

As one who has chosen to help small business owners succeed online, it is imperative that one understands what they are doing online. For the entrepreneur, it is not just about lumping images and text on the website and crossing your fingers that visitors will convert into whatever we intend to achieve.

The website must have a process. Not just any process, but one that has a clear step-by-step follow through. If there’s a definite offer or call to action that you have on a page, there must be a clear guide or funnel from ‘start to finish’, so to speak.

You will need persuasion techniques to accomplish the desired effect which is to convert that all important visitor into a prospect or customer. You will need to think through the entire process or the funnel right there on that web page.

In this earlier post, commencing my digital marketing journey, I talked about the seven Cialdini principles. That article contains some persuasion tips but here in this post I want to say that the bar on persuasion is raised higher.

The stuff on Persuasion Techniques is not for the fainthearted. This is very serious business. This lesson is very technical. One requires to concentrate and to be focused in all the thinking faculty or else it will be impossible to understand the technical jargon.

Equally, it’s important that persuasion techniques are understood clearly in order to make use of them practically. So much must converge in order for the persuasion to take place.

If it’s a web page you are designing, you should give attention to the buttons, triggers, layout, etc. These play a cardinal role in focusing the visitor correctly to achieve the intended persuasion.

Is it any wonder then that your website visitors don’t stay that long upon landing on your page? It’s the focus. If there’s too much to look at, it can be confusing. Equally, if there’s no focused flow on a web page your visitor will just hit the back arrow to go elsewhere.

Let’s Look At Some Persuasion Techniques

The Focusing Effect

“We can only pay attention to a few things”

CXL Institute

This is what I have learned.

From the onset, focusing is about attention. When your visitor lands on your digital asset (whether this is a landing page, sales letter, or any other) how are they being led from ‘start to finish’? I mean is the copy path clear enough to follow?

According to the Focusing Effect, humans’ ability to scan is limited. We tend to make choices based upon the few things that are more conspicuous than others. This kind of attention is the focusing effect.

This is what the experts advise to do:

So let’s put matters into perspective. We are talking conversion here. That’s the key. In doing so let’s look at the following;

Online Persuasion Tips

1. When you have decided on your Unique Selling Positions (USP), ensure your visitor’s focus is not scattered. Don’t show too many USPs let the focus be only on the most important ones – safely just about three or less.
2. When you are pretty certain about which USP is the most unique, emphasize it so intensely that your prospect’s focus will be ‘blinded’ to all other aspects they are looking at.
3. The concept is not just to focus on the best variables on the page but also some others that can be differentiated from those carried by your competitors.
4. Remember that you are looking at nurturing your prospect/customer, so there’s need for you to stress the big change that the buyer will experience after they have purchased the product.

That’s the bit that goes with the focus effect. Now let’s examine another persuasive technique I have learned.

Context Dependent Memory

“We tend to forget things when we’re out of context.”

CXL Institute

This is also referred to as cue-dependent forgetting and remembering. In other words, people are not good at remembering things that are out of context. We also tend to easily remember stuff where the variables in the original learning took place. I mean when the original context factors become available.

So then, when you get to use the same factors in your context, such as colors, pictures, content all across your web assets, it will help you tremendously when it comes to re-targeting.

Using the same contextual factors will help your visitors/prospects to recall your products and brand easily.

In this persuasion technique of context-dependent memory here are some

Online Persuasion Tips to go with this technique

1. Typically, you will try to build a consistent context flow of your web assets across platforms and websites. The factors or cues must be the same.
2. If you have a repeat visitor, use the same content/context factors to remember them from the last visit.
3. If you want the visitor to remember your brand or offer from their last visit, setup contextual cues which will be available to them when they visit again. This is very important.

Conclusion

By and large, what I am picking up from my CXL learning is very fundamental. There are things I thought I knew hence took for granted. The stuff that I have picked up I am seriously considering implementing in my digital marketing journey.

But I must also say that some of the topics are initially pretty hard to assimilate but as I get deeper into the lessons I see that I can manage.

If you are a small business owner just getting online, I can help you to get settled with your online business. Let’s Talk. Get in touch.