How to Increase Conversion Rates: 3 Painfully Obvious Ideas You Haven’t Considered

There are thousands of blogs and articles that talk about conversion ideas and insights. I’ve been doing this for the last 13 years, so trust me when I say that I’ve read them all. I’ve also been practicing conversion optimization for clients for the last 11 years. We’ve tested hundreds of ideas. We’ve learned dozens and dozens of things about buyer psychology. Here are my top three lessons. If you follow the three lessons, you will dramatically increase conversion rates on your site, in your email marketing, in your ad campaigns, and so on.

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For those of you who learn better with video, I made this:

3 Actionable Insights to Increase Conversion Rates

1. Zoom out and work on your story. Our philosophy:

Marketing is nothing but storytelling.
∴ effective marketing is nothing but believable storytelling.

This is why your story really matters. But you have to continue working on it to make it really great. Don’t be scared to take the advice of outsiders. Don’t take their advice to edit your story; rather, use outsiders to discover what parts of your story resonate the most.

Here is a detailed post on how to craft a compelling story.

2. Focus on new buyers. Marketers do a lot. They are constantly running from one shiny object to the next. It’s exhausting. Not only does this kill all progress (since they are going in circles), but it also makes them lose sight of the most important segment of shoppers: new visitors aka potential new buyers.

Why New Buyers Matter So Damn Much

Databox surveyed marketers. They found that, on average, 68% of site visitors are new visitors (source). This means if you can’t convert the new visitor/buyer on your site right now, there is only a 32% chance you’ll see them again. Luckily there exists a marketing secrets article that’ll help convert visitors on their first visit.

3. Be a student of buyer psychology.

We erroneously assume shoppers buy for rational reasons. This is why marketers focus so much on features and benefits. But this isn’t how shoppers buy. Shoppers buy for deeply emotional reasons. Often, these reasons are so amorphous that the buyer can’t even articulate them. Dr. Eric von Hippel has written extensively on this topic.

Frictionless Commerce has a 9-point process to influence, convince and convert new visitors to your site. Here is the list of buyer psychology triggers you will need to master:

1. People are skeptical of things that seem “too good to be true”
2. They find expertise sexy
3. They root for people who beat the odds
4. They are fascinated by surprising details
5. They are visual animals
6. They need motivation to break habits
7. They love personalized experiences
8. They like knowing they’ve stumbled onto something rare
9. They have negative thoughts that must be addressed

Specific examples of each can be found here.

Together, mastering these 3 strategies will unlock the power for increasing conversion rates across your business.

Next Steps

This marketing lesson to increase conversion rates was an appetizer. The main course is where the magic is. Now that you’ve seen a glimpse of something very few marketers know the next logical step is to pull back the curtain and see marketing secrets the world’s best marketers want to keep to themselves.