Every web site we build is opti­mized for 6 crit­i­cal psy­cho­log­i­cal triggers.

Use these trig­gers to inspire vis­i­tors to become leads and leads to become customers.

Note: With this power comes great responsibility.

It’s the hol­i­days, so we thought we’d share some of our strongest strate­gies with you.

There’s a $474,500,000,000+ hol­i­day pie to be split over the next 35 odd days. Here’s to mak­ing your cut a big one.

Psy­chol­ogy is an essen­tial ele­ment of mod­ern sell­ing. Under­stand­ing what trig­gers peo­ple to buy makes the dif­fer­ence between a sale and a fail­ure. A desire to buy involves more than logic — it involves emo­tion as well as deep human psychology.

Accord­ing to mas­ter copy­writer Joe Sug­ar­man, 95% of buy­ing deci­sions are sub­con­scious and “know­ing the sub­con­scious rea­sons why peo­ple buy and using this infor­ma­tion in a fair and con­struc­tive way, will trig­ger greater sales response — often far beyond what you could imagine.

“Much of the knowl­edge in this tac­tic comes from two experts in the sci­ence of psy­cho­log­i­cal per­sua­sion. The first is Robert B. Cial­dini, a Pro­fes­sor of Psy­chol­ogy at Ari­zona State Uni­ver­sity. Cialdini’s book, Influ­ence: Sci­ence and Prac­tice is per­haps the sin­gle most impor­tant book on busi­ness one could read.

The sec­ond expert is Joseph Sug­ar­man, the best-selling author and top copy­writer who achieved leg­endary fame in direct mar­ket­ing and ran a highly suc­cess­ful mail-order com­pany in the 1980s.

Joe learned on a mass scale which ad approaches worked and which ones didn’t. He stud­ied the ads that achieved a high degree of suc­cess, and dis­cov­ered that they were clearly suc­cess­ful because of cer­tain under­ly­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal triggers.

He iden­ti­fied 30 of these trig­gers that acti­vate psy­cho­log­i­cal forces buried deep within the sub­con­scious brain, and cause peo­ple to buy. His book, Trig­gers, is also highly rec­om­mended. You can check it out here:

http://www.psychologicaltriggers.com/

Before we build or launch any new web­site we ana­lyze our busi­ness con­cept to see how well our idea will sell.

Our frame­work for this dis­cus­sion is based much on the works of Cial­dini and Sug­ar­man. In this tac­tic, we’ll share with you how we think about prod­ucts and how to design web­sites that con­vert based on the under­stand­ing of human psychology.

How pow­er­ful can these fac­tors be? In the words of Joe Sug­ar­man: “I recall a time when I applied one of these sub­con­scious devices by chang­ing just one word of an ad, and response dou­bled. I refer to these sub­con­scious devices as psy­cho­log­i­cal “trig­gers.” A psy­cho­log­i­cal trig­ger is the strongest moti­va­tional fac­tor any sales­per­son or copy­writer can use to evoke a sale.”

The Six Fac­tors of Influence

When design­ing a new site and busi­ness model we develop our site around 6 ele­ments of influ­ence iden­ti­fied by Cial­dini. These are psy­cho­log­i­cal fac­tors that help make a prod­uct desir­able and push peo­ple to want it.

Is it uneth­i­cal to use these fac­tors? It depends on what you’re sell­ing. If your prod­uct is flaky and use­less and you refuse to honor guar­an­tees and refunds, then you’re being uneth­i­cal. But if you sell a prod­uct that’s of high qual­ity, you pro­vide a fair way for con­sumers to return the prod­uct if they are not sat­is­fied and only make claims that you can meet — then you’re being fair. These 6 fac­tors, how­ever, can be manipulated.

When you read about these tac­tics and under­stand how they work, you’ll also help make your­self immune to uneth­i­cal busi­nesses that chose to use them to unfairly sway buyer behavior.

Here are the six fac­tors of influ­ence. As you read this, we want you to think about how each of these fac­tors can be used to enhance your site, prod­uct or service

• Com­mit­ment and Consistency
• Reci­procity
• Social Proof
• Lik­ing
• Author­ity
• Scarcity

We’ll dis­cuss each fac­tor in detail in this tac­tic and show you how to use them to boost your sales. Let’s start with Com­mit­ment and Consistency…

This report is longer than a blog post should be, so to con­tinue read­ing, head over and down­load our PDF. It’ll only be avail­able through Wednes­day the 28th. Go ahead and make Decem­ber a spe­cial month.

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About the Author

Mike is an internet marketer at MindValley responsible for running marketing tests, designing product launches, and leading an eCommerce project.

Check out other posts by Mike W.

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