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5 Psychology Hacks That Increase Website Conversions

Making your website easily navigable and congruent with the way the human brain operates will go a long way toward inducing your customer to purchase.
5 Psychology Hacks That Increase Website Conversions
Image credit: Westend61 | Getty Images
Guest Writer
Co-founder at Arkenea
6 min read
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Human psychology plays a massive role in determining the kind of experience a visitor to your site has. Website design optimization that makes use of the principles of psychology and neuro-marketing has a significant impact on the conversion rate of your website.

Knowledge of how the human brain works and the psychology behind actions is essential for getting people to click on a call-to-action button on your website and for ensuring that your CRM's pipeline is filled to the brim with fresh leads.

A lot of research is currently taking place in the field of psychology, giving us insight into psychological hacks that get your website visitors to take action and eventually convert. Here is a list of strategies that you should keep in mind when you design your website.

1.) Keep the design distraction free.

According to the theory of cognitive fluency, a person is more likely to prefer a simpler task that requires less strain over a complex task that requires more mental processing. If your SaaS website happens to be easy to understand and intuitive to navigate, the chances of conversion increase.


Our brain battles with chaos. The principles of minimalistic design ensure that your website appears to be free of distracting elements. Organizing the content on the website in a viewer friendly manner ensures that visitors to your website can easily navigate through without feeling overwhelmed by chaotic information bombarded at them.

Simple visual design has two benefits. First, it prevents visitors jumping away from the site because they are overwhelmed by complexity. Secondly, a distraction-free design ensures that visitor’s attention is directed exactly where you want it to go, thus improving the chances of conversion.

2. Limit the number of choices.

Hick’s Law states that the time taken for an individual to make a decision is directly proportional to the number of possible choices available.The human brain goes for a toss when it encounters choice abundance. When offered excessive choice, it ends up getting overwhelmed, and decision paralysis occurs, which hinders the decision making capacity.

In a research study popularly known as the "paradox of choices," a higher number of choices increases the number of visitors, but the actual conversion or buy decision remains low. On the other hand, when the number of options available are less, the number of people stopping by reduces, but the actual conversions taking place increase.

Related: Crave-Worthy Products Is How You Cut Through the Paradox of Choice

Have a clear, doable call to action (CTA), and make sure that areas where your provide options to your visitors (for example, the checkout page or the pricing page) have limited choices available.

3. Create a sense of urgency.

Urgent situations compel us to take action. Urgency also evokes aversion to loss, popularly known as the "fear of missing out." When used in moderation and in combination with a stellar offering, a sense of urgency is an effective technique to push visitors to act, increasing conversions.

Showcasing a scarcity works well for creating a sense of urgency in the visitors at your website. Provide something of value for a limited time, say free e-books or a free e-learning course for a limited period of time, and you have managed to make your potential customers more likely to complete the task rather than clicking away from your website thinking, “I might do it later.”

4. Lead them on the path of least resistance

The website design needs to be intuitive and easily navigable. This can be done by ensuring that the website design and placement of the different elements follows the "law of past experience." Our previous experiences influence our interpretation of our current experiences, and any detraction from known experiences hinders the visitor’s attention.

Related: 189 Words That Get Your Customer's Attention Every Time

A user’s natural behaviour while browsing any website is to read the contents on the screen in an F-shaped pattern. Placing the contents of the website along the top and left border of your website has the maximum chances of capturing attention. Placing the important elements along the “F” gives the visitors a path of least resistance and guides them through your website.

You want to make the process as simple as possible to make sure that a visitor gets converted into a customer. Make the checkout process seamless, optimize the form fields to require only the minimum information for lead capturing, essentially remove any step that may cause friction and prevent the user from finally converting.          

5. Leverage human emotion.

Effective use of relevant images creates emotional resonance with visitors, helping them to resonate with your brand. Humans are continually on the lookout for other humans, on a subconscious level. Make use of human imagery not only to leverage human emotion but also to direct a visitor's attention where you want it.

For example, if you have an image in which a person is looking in the direction of your CTA button, the visitor’s attention would automatically get directed there, as they follow the gaze of the person in the image subconsciously.

Having happy faces on your website creates emotional resonance with your brand and helps visitors connect as well. Using customer’s pictures as social proof along with testimonials is also a great tool for building trust and credibility and for pushing the visitors on your website to click and convert.

There is no single formula to ensure a successful website design that brings in conversions for your business. Using the power of psychology to understand and leverage human emotions is a great tool for bringing in conversions. Try out these psychological hacks on your website, do A/B testing and figure out what works best for your company.

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