11 kinds of "influence" of internet users ' shopping

"Influence" can be defined as the force exerted on the thoughts and actions of others, the power to influence, persuade, and cause a change in someone or something. To influence others, you first need to find out what is affecting them. What makes them happy to buy? What do they care about? When we try to change people's thinking and behavior, we need to use some leverage.

But there is a problem: you cannot and cannot understand everyone, you cannot understand their life history and their preferences. In the Internet world, people are illusions. They unwittingly enter your site and end up with only one number in traffic statistics. Who visited your website? Who is browsing your Web content and checking your product?

If you don't know how to answer these questions, how do you intend to influence them? The solution is to find and analyze the general patterns of people's behavior or thought. These patterns are the indicators of how most people behave: by studying them, you will find ways to influence them without having to personally understand everyone or understand their preferences and motivation to buy.

I recently read Susan Weinschenk's "What drives them to click" (What makes Them click), a book that studies how both conscious and unconscious thinking patterns affect our online behavior. I find it interesting because it gives some scientific explanations for the strategy that many marketers use for the longest time.

This book is only 130 pages, because it is read by the general population, not experts, so it is very easy to read. But it also has the disadvantage that it has only a very general overview of the relationship between brain science and brain Science and the Web site.

Contrary to its name, it is more about psychology than web design/usability. If you read Robert Cialdini's work or other books about persuasion, you will easily understand many of the concepts mentioned in the book. Cialdini

I want to delve deeper into a few topics, because they do provide some useful tips that will help you improve your site immediately. I will summarize these techniques briefly. But before you start studying how to do a good job, you must first understand how the brain works.

Three-brain model----We have three brains, not a

The three-brain model, proposed by Paul MacLean in the 1960s to explain how the human brain evolved, is a simplistic understanding of the brain as an example of the Paul McLein of psychologists and neuroscientists. As the name suggests, we are not only one head but three. They are stacked on top of each other and are evolving at different stages of evolution. They are:

Old Brain. Also known as "R-complex" or reptilian brain. The main concern of the old brain is your survival, it can avoid the advantages and disadvantages. It controls instinctive survival behavior and controls autonomic functions such as heartbeat, digestion, exercise, and respiration.

Midbrain。 Also known as limbic systems or mammalian brains. It focuses on emotion, memory, and attention, and is the birthplace of emotion and positive/negative feelings. The midbrain, which includes the amygdala (tonsil) and the hippocampus, can associate events and emotions with the hippocampus, which converts information into memory.

New Brain. Also known as the cerebral cortex. This is the logical part of the brain that encompasses rational thinking, thinking and language and speech processing.

According to this theory, we can know that our new brain, the cerebral cortex, is conscious. But our midbrain (limbic system) and the old brain (the reptilian brain) are largely unconscious. Our unconscious can produce incredibly efficient, intelligent, and useful effects. Neuroscientists estimate that our senses feel like we can receive 11 million pieces of information per second, and our conscious brain can handle only about 40 pieces per second, and the rest is automatically audited by the unconscious brain.

The unconscious brain helps the conscious brain help you decide what to focus on, and your decision-making behavior is largely influenced by the unconscious brain. According to Weinschenk, the best sites should be designed to communicate with three of brains, both conscious and unconscious.

Such sites are most likely to encourage visitors to take action. How do I get a website to communicate with three brains? Here are a few steps you can take:

1, display the user's rating and comments

Let visitors rate and comment on your site, make sure ratings and comments are clearly displayed on the Web site or product page, and let users refine information such as gender, name, address, and occupation. This kind of evaluation is more interesting because it creates an instant image and gives an intuitive impression (for example, a 36-year-old mother from Boston).

So why do ratings and reviews work? The answer is social validation. When people make decisions, they often refer to how others do it, especially when they don't know what action to take. This is part of the unconscious urge within the midbrain.

When ratings and reviews are clearly shown, they can help to unwittingly trigger people's need for social validation while allowing their new brain to make reasonable and accurate choices. They work at both the conscious and the unconscious two levels: for rational thinking users, ratings and reviews are more trustworthy than profit-seeking ad copy.

2. Provide instant gratification and quick solutions

When deciding to make a purchase, we are often influenced by when we get the product (that is, satisfaction). In one experiment, participants were given two choices: either now get 5 dollars, or 40 dollars a few days later. The MRI company's report showed that the new brain or prefrontal cortex was activated at the thought of the need to wait.

The midbrain is activated when they think they can get the money right away. This suggests that the emotional midbrain will awaken when people think of the rewards that are immediately available to nine. You can use this even if you are not selling digital products or products that can be shipped the next day. You can activate the same emotional triggers in other ways, such as using the words "instant", "immediate" or "quick" to inspire the midbrain and integrate these words and other similar words or phrases into your site.

3. First call for the most important action

If you want a visitor to buy a particular product, make sure it is highlighted, as the first display product on the page (either at the top or at the beginning of the row/column). A study by an E-commerce website that sells tents shows that visitors choose the first tent on the page 2.5 times times more than other products. This is an unconscious preference. If you want to find each sales difference, do some similar tests on the site.

The idea behind this behavior is simple: the first to appear is always unconsciously considered the best. So even if you're not a supplier, it's a subsidiary or affiliate company that puts the products you want to sell first. For example, if you are promoting some of your products, make sure that others can see the products you are selling for the first time they log on to your site.

I've had some experience with affiliate websites, and I've noticed that you end up with a "winner" that will make your product a success. If you find that a product that is not in the most conspicuous position has made a better sales score than the other product, then change their position and the sales will rise.

4, the use of scarcity

Things are more expensive than rare. We prefer to get scarce things. Making a product "limited" by showing limited inventory or limited time is a useful tool that most Internet marketers and offline/online retailers often use. Because we usually feel good when we get valuable items.

The way to highlight scarcity is also important. I've found that some marketers combine scarcity and exclusivity to limit some visitors. The "inner circle" is widely used to provide a paid affiliate program to show exclusive premium value. Scarcity can be enhanced with exclusivity continuing to accumulate.

5. Establish reciprocal relationship through free gift

If someone gives you something that often triggers a feeling of debt, you unconsciously want to give something back to get rid of it. Try to trigger the visitor's "debt" feeling, you can give the product free additional function, free guide, free content, free download, free shipping and other content.

According to a study in the book, the number of people who are willing to fill out questionnaires is twice times more likely to be filled in after the visitors get useful free information, but don't let them fill out the form before they get information.

Does that mean you can get a better conversion rate by just releasing free content first? Studies have shown that this is not the case. But I suggest you do a test yourself to get some more accurate data to run your site.

From my experience, when I first offered value-added premium services, I did get high quality customers (via email opening and unsubscribe rates). If I lock the content and let people do only one act before they can access it, inevitably, some users will unsubscribe or never open the message. And I think now, reciprocity does play an important role in the audience's response.

6. Learning to use food, gender and risk

These three items are related to survival and appeal to the old brain. You can use the appearance of scary or sound scary headlines and pictures. The focus of the old brain is to make sure that you are alive, and that it can put your whole body and mind on a high alert when faced with a threat.

When your awareness of this consciousness improves, whatever happens to you, it will be ingrained in your memory. That's why TV commercials always use exciting dangerous scenes such as car chases, sky diving or sexy women to promote credit cards or beer.

If you use food pictures on your website, you will immediately attract the attention of the old brain, through facial expressions, body movements and other images to imply the existence of the product.

Does food, sex, and danger really appeal to the unconscious? Think about it. What attracts your attention when you're bored online? Many people are attracted to gossip news, food websites or thrilling content such as YouTube's breathtaking stunts, games, music videos, movie clips, extreme stunts, etc. You might prefer to solve math puzzles or read about knitwear, but not many people do.

How to integrate these several topics into your site is an interesting challenge. Cracked.com is a good example of how all themes (food, gender, danger) are constantly spinning, and its content and image selection are worth learning from.

7, limit options to strengthen the binding

Although people like to have a lot of choices, too much choice often leads to a lack of decision making by your visitors, and no action is taken. In the Book of "Choice of contradictions", this issue has been studied in detail.

So how do we solve this problem? You do not have to reduce the amount of inventory, you only need to highlight what you want to do.

My solution is very simple, that is, the product selection for your visitors. For example, some products can be included in the "editor recommended", "strongly recommended", or "top three" lists, which are highlighted on the Web site. Alternatively, you can create a wizard user interface that presents a problem to the visitor to determine which product is best for them, and the end result will show specific recommendations that meet their needs.

Our brains are subconsciously afraid of losing, so we make decisions to avoid losses, especially when we anticipate that the loss is painful or bad for us. Bundled products/Services can activate this fear of loss. This means that instead of having visitors select important products and then select other minor products, you sell bundled products and then let them cut the product from the final order, which is akin to "lost".

Many E-commerce sites implement different levels of bundling. In the case of Amazon, each product's page shows a bundle of discounts, rather than a bundled product instead of a single product, and most importantly, indirectly, by displaying the purchase data and methods of other customers, they promote the bundle.

8. Use "You" when talking to visitors

A quick way to get old brain attention is to use "you" frequently in text. The old brain is self-centered, focusing only on what is good for you, so it often unconsciously cares about how it can benefit.

This is a comparison of sales copy. The second one should be more appealing to you:

1th article: "This software has a lot of built-in features, you can upload, edit and store photos." In just a few steps, you can search for photos. “

2nd article: "You can quickly upload photos, arbitrary editing, fast save and share with friends." You can search for any photos in just a few steps. ”

In my opinion, the text centered on "You" is part of the personalized advertising strategy. You write text in their language, which requires you to know what your potential customers or target markets are like and what they want. Like talking to someone next to you, write the text in this tone, imagine that he is your potential client, your blog reader, your friend, and don't be afraid to connect their thoughts in jargon or in terms of internal terminology.

9, let your visitors make a commitment

People tend to take action after making small promises. Because a small commitment will inspire a character image that the person will strive to maintain in his future decisions. For example, putting someone on a small badge to strengthen their breast cancer awareness is an example of making small promises.

These promises will inspire an image of the ego, and they will think "I'm a person who cares about cancer patients." "In this way, they will be more willing to donate to breast cancer charities because the donation is in full agreement with the image they have presented." In fact, the donation behavior can not only maintain their image, but also make them feel good.

Your goal is to inspire the self-image of all visitors to the site, which will ultimately force them to take concrete action ——-buy, donate or subscribe. You can also use topics related to your product or website to test and investigate, simple typing, filling out or signing the agreement will enhance the customer loyalty to your website/company/brand, the more public commitment, the more loyalty.

It's easy to keep visitors loyal to your site, not to know their emails or votes. By simply commenting, you can easily make your visitors publicly available to your site; Polls and investigative work are just as important as the way you interact with your visitors. They were not just bystanders but participants in a group. Speed up the steps to complete this step and quickly move on to the next step.

I think it's important not to insist. Pursue what you want, as long as it is not an excessive requirement, others will respond and invest time, especially if you already have a mutually beneficial relationship.

10, the use of images to show similarities and attractions