Want to increase your conversion rates? Some of the most effective marketing strategies stem from psychology and a deep-seeded understanding of how people think and what makes them tick.

1. Trust, Urgency, Action: How They
Increase Conversions
ConversionFanatics.com

2. Want to increase your conversion rates? From button color to pricing, there is a plethora—
almost an infinite array—of tweaks and adjustments you could make and split-test in order to
fully optimize your conversion rates.
Conversion rate optimization is easily a full-time job and then some. However, some of
the most effective marketing strategies stem from psychology and a deep-seeded
understanding of how people think and what makes them tick.

3. Regarding the principles and functions of the human brain and our emotional drives, three
essential ingredients stand out among the cocktail of elements that go into effective conversion
rate optimization. And they are straight up trust, urgency, and action.
Without these three components, your offers will not convert.
So how can you implement trust, urgency, and action into your offers and marketing
strategies? Let’s find out.

4. How to Foster Trust and Establish
Credibility
Given the number of companies trying to sell online and the vast amount of information
that exists, establishing a solid sense of trust and credibility within your brand is critical
to your success. If there’s any doubt about your company’s legitimacy or any hint of
spam or shady dealings, customers will pull a 180 on conducting business with you
faster than you can say the infomercial classic, “But wait! There’s more!”
Don’t be that business.
Establish trust and credibility, first of all, by actually being trustworthy and credible.
Second, highlight your reputable standing through things like social proof, testimonials,
and strong guarantees, for starters.

5. Here are the top 6 ways to instill brand confidence
in your customers:
1. Social Proof
You can demonstrate social proof via an active social media presence, case studies, and
customer testimonials, which can occur in either print or video form. Testimonials should
be strategically placed close to “stress points” for your customers, which include contact
forms and during the checkout process. You should never create a separate page just
for testimonials, however, as customers rarely visit these types of pages.

6. 2. Clear Contact Information
Clearly showing your contact information—a phone number, address, or live-chat
option—indicates that you are in fact “real” and you are ready to answer any questions
or concerns that your customers may have.

7. 3. Strong Guarantees
Offering a money-back guarantee helps eliminate any apprehensions your customers
may have about purchasing your product or service. Plus, it provides customers with a
sense of security that you are not going to just take their money and run. Typically,
offering longer guarantees—one year or more as opposed to 30 days—will yield even
higher conversion rates.

8. 4. Reviews
Your company’s reviews are not going to be found on your website; they are going to
be located on external websites that have no affiliation with your own. Accordingly,
positive reviews found on an independent source can carry a lot of weight in terms of
facilitating conversions.
Consider Yelp, for example. How many times have you perused Yelp reviews before
deciding which restaurant or bar to go to? Reviews are powerful and the potential
impact they can have on your customers is tremendous.
Of course, you can’t tell people what to write about you. But you can encourage
customers to write reviews if they had a positive experience and respond to any
negative reviews by offering to remedy any less than stellar transactions.

9. 5. Endorsements
Are there any well-known people in your city or town whom you could contact, perhaps
via Twitter or Facebook? If so, get in touch and ask them about endorsing your
company or offer. Affixing a celebrity or public figure to your business enhances both
brand recognition and your credibility—if Mr. Hot-Shot or Miss Big-Wig uses it, then
it must be good. According to FosterWebMarketing, “Video endorsements are best,
followed by a print endorsement next to their picture.”

10. 6. Local News Outlets
If you or your company has ever been featured or talked about on T.V. or in print, you
should include the logos of the news outlets that highlighted you on your website.
Doing so is like an instant shot of credibility, as it positions you as an expert within your
industry.

11. One Company’s Success with Signaling
Trust
Avangate, a digital commerce company, devised a series of tests in order to assess
which elements would not only increase its client’s conversion rates but also
“communicate value, reduce risk, and elicit trust from customers most effectively.”
Shannon Macleod: “To move the needle on revenue for [Avangate client] Movavi, and
find out the truth about what builds trust, we tested three different ways to show value,
reduce risk, and foster trust in Movavi’s cart.
• Greater emphasis on customer support, to show dedication in helping
customers derive value from the product
• A money-back guarantee, to “reverse risk” and give customers a chance to
verify value for themselves
• A Norton Secured icon, to show trustworthiness
We tested three combinations of the methods over the course of three weeks.

12. Variation 1: Customer support information and money-back guarantee:

13. Variation 2: Norton Secured icon with customer support information:

14. Variation 3: Norton Secured icon with the money-back guarantee:
Source for All Three Images

15. What do you think would have the greatest effect on conversion?
If you answered Variation 3, you’re right. The combination of a Norton Security icon and
a money-back guarantee provided the most significant uplift to conversion rates: an
impressive 5.5% with 95% statistical confidence.
Variation 1 also showed an improvement over the Control (4%). Variation
2 reduced conversion rates by 1.9%, a surprising result that reinforces the value of split
testing instead of just “trying a new idea.”
The winning combination provided 7.4% uplift in revenue per visitor, and the
combination of conversion improvement and annual revenue uplift is expected to
generate a 3.8X ROI on the cost of a 6-month CRO program—all from one simple test.
Such substantial results show the significant value of making small tweaks to enhance
the trustworthiness of your cart. If you care enough to signal trust, your customers will
care enough to make a purchase. It’s all about finding the best ways to do that.”

16. How to Create a Sense of Urgency
“Urgency is one of the most powerful aspects of human psychology…Urgent situations
cause us to suspend deliberate thought and to act quickly,” states Neil Patel
of MarketingLand.
Consequently, if you can instill a strong sense of this key brain feature on your website
and with your offers, you can incentivize your customers to do what you want and to do
it quickly.
“Many of the problems that affect conversions are issues of cognitive friction,” Patel
continues. Analysis paralysis sets in. People hesitate. Call-to-actions flatline. But stoking
the urgency flame limits the hemming and hawing and as a result improves conversion
rates.
Award-winning entrepreneur Marcus Taylor was able to increase the conversion rate of
his “Groupon deal for musicians” from 2.5% to 10.8% thanks mostly to the infusion of
urgency and scarcity.

17. Marcus Taylor: “Below are two variations that I A/B tested on the offer’s landing page.
As you’ll notice, the only difference is that one communicates urgency and how many
packages have been bought, where the other does not.
Image Source

18. This is one of the most impactful A/B tests I’ve ever run. The conversion rate of variation
B was almost 3X that of variation A.
Here’s what happened to our conversion rate as we gradually rolled out variation B to all
users. Our conversion rate went from ~3.5% to ~10%.
Image Source
Since running this campaign two years ago, I’ve become fascinated by the power of
urgency, and have found ways to utilize its power in many aspects of my strategy.”

19. Different Types of Urgency
Generally speaking, urgency comes in two primary forms: real and implied. Real urgency
occurs when an offer has either limited stock or an expiration date, after which point it
ceases to exist.
Groupon is a prime example of a website that relies almost exclusively on real urgency
to sell products and services, as evinced by the countdown clock appearing next to
offers indicating that only a limited amount of time remains before the deal is gone.
Image Source

20. Implied urgency, on the other hand, is more of a suggestion or a gentle nudge to
prompt customers to take action. Implied urgency occurs when marketers use words like
‘today’ and ‘now,’ suggesting that customers should make haste on an offer, but in
actuality, the urgency is contrived; it isn’t real.
Image Source
As you probably could have guessed, implied urgency typically isn’t as effective as real
urgency. But it doesn’t always make sense to use real urgency with your offers, as it may
feel inauthentic or forced, but that’s when implied urgency can be useful.

21. Here are the top 10 time-related words to
increase urgency:
1. Now
2. Quick
3. Fast
4. Never
5. Seconds
6. Again
7. Instant
8. Over
9. Rapidly
10. Approaching
Pepper your copy with these urgency-inducing words and see what kind of affect they
have on your conversion rates.

22. 6 Ways You Can Implement Real and
Implied Urgency
1. Real Stock Urgency
Stock urgency is often seen with flight and hotel comparison websites, such
as Kayak and Booking.com, but other types of companies also use it as a means to
compel customers to act fast before it’s too late.
When it comes to shopping for clothes online, I personally have been incited to act on
more than one occasion thanks to real stock urgency. One of my favorite stores, Express,
lets me know when an item in my shopping cart is running low. And nothing gets me to
whip out my credit card faster than seeing only one left in stock of my size or color
preference—knowing an item is running low can actually make me want it even more.

23. Amazon is another company that lets users know when their favorite items are running
low. Take this adorable kittens and puppies wall calendar for example
Image Source
Using stock urgency can be a highly effective technique, as it taps into people’s fear of
missing out, also known as loss aversion. Plus, it fosters a sense of credibility in a
product or offer by highlighting its popularity as a sought-after and limited commodity.

24. 2. Real Time-Countdown Urgency
Used especially with time sensitive offers, including vacation packages and event access,
time-countdown urgency pins customers against a ticking clock, forcing them to focus
on taking action sooner rather than later.
TicketMaster is an example of a company that uses real time-countdown urgency in
order to raise anxiety levels—the clock is ticking—and encourage customers to act fast
as they’re shopping for tickets.
Image Source

25. 3. Implied Urgency in Headlines
When people view your emails, blog posts, and advertisements, what’s the first thing
they see? The headline.
Consequently, infusing a sense of urgency into your headlines can be an effective
technique, and Marcus Taylor of Venture Harbour would agree.
Five years ago, the head of PPC challenged Marcus to come up with an AdWords ad
headline that performed better than his own. And despite Marcus’ lack of experience,
the headline that he created had a higher click-through rate than the department head’s
—and all it took was one simple tweak: He changed the word ‘today’ to ‘now.’

26. Marcus Taylor: “Since that fluke victory, I’ve repeated this implied urgency experiment
dozens of times, thanks to a handy WordPress title A/B testing plugin. The results show
a predictable pattern.
Image Source
As you can see, the ‘control’ headline with no urgency has a click-through rate of 0.77%.
Adding the word ‘today’ at the end of the headline increases the CRT to 3.94.
Unsurprisingly, reducing the urgency of this word to ‘this week’ or ‘this month’ reduces
the CTR. But strangely, increasing the urgency in this case also reduces the CTR. What
gives?

27. It turns out, that the right amount of urgency depends on the context. Very few people
want to reduce their bounce rate right now – but they would rather do it today than next
week.
However, when it comes to something a bit more emotionally provocative, such as this
post on how to start a blog that attracts 100,000’s of readers, suddenly people would
rather know how to do it now, rather than later.
Image Source

28. I’d love to give you a rule for using ‘now’ vs ‘today,’ but the reality is that it’s extremely
dependent on the context. In hindsight, common sense usually prevails, but the keyword
is that sense is usually i.e. not always.”
Check WordPress for plugins that can help you decide which option is best for you.

29. 4. Implied Urgency in Call-To-Actions
As with headlines, adding implied urgency to your transaction-based call-to-actions—
your ‘buy it now’ buttons—can significantly improve conversion rates.
In one case study, changing the call-to-action from ‘download this contract’ to
‘download this contract now’ resulted in a 147% increase in conversions. A little bit of
“now” can go a long way.

30. 5. Implied Urgency and the Responsiveness Instinct:
Neil Patel: “’Act now!’ It’s one of the most often-repeated phrases in
marketing literature.
In my opinion, it’s overused. It does, however, point to a very important
urgency-inducing reality: If you tell people, “You’re a prompt and
responsive person,” they will think “Yes. I am.” This subtle push towards urgency causes
them to act quickly than they normally would.
The ‘early bird specials’ offered by some restaurants or bars also cater to this tendency.
People like to think of themselves as prompt and responsive. They act in a way that
reinforces this belief.”

31. 6. Real and Implied Urgency Using Color
In the United States, along with many other Western countries, you’re taught as a child
to associate the color red with urgency and importance (stop signs, fire trucks,
ambulances). Accordingly, marketers often transpose this association into their design
elements by using red signs to indicate flash sales, for example.
As with anything conversion-related, however, color choices need to be split-test. Just
don’t be surprised if the red option garners the highest conversion rate.

32. How to Compel People to Take Action
Getting your visitors to take action is one of the most important components of
increasing your conversion rates. No action means no conversions. But in order to
compel people to take action, you also need to foster trust and create a sense of
urgency. It’s a package deal.
The most obvious way to compel people to do what you want is through a call-to-
action, which can involve adding a product to a customer’s shopping cart, downloading
a product or software, or requesting a free-trial or additional information.

33. Here are 4 techniques to create an effective call-
to-action:
1. Lay Out the Benefits
Users are always wondering what’s in it for them so you need to lay the groundwork by
identifying a problem, presenting a solution, and communicating the benefits that users
would achieve by taking action.
Skype is a good example of a company that’s doing this well. Placed above the call-to-
action download button, visitors see the following message, clearly explaining the
benefits of downloading and using Skype:

34. “Make calls from your computer—free to other people on Skype and cheap to phones and
mobiles around the world.”
Image Source

35. 2. Sweeten the Deal
A little extra can go a long way. Offering incentives, such as an automatic contest entry
or a free gift, can be very effective at inciting visitors to take action. Plus, there can be
something for you in it, too.
For example, you could create a call-to-action that lets visitors know if they spend $75
or more, as a gift, you’ll send them a free tote bag, which could include your company’s
name, logo, and website, thus turning your customers into walking advertisements for
your business!

36. 3. Use the Active Voice
If you want users to take action, you have to convey action with your words. Here is a
brief list of active words you might consider including in your call-to-actions:
• Register
• Call
• Buy
• Donate
• Subscribe

37. 4. Have a Small Number of Clear-Cut Actions
Your call-to-actions need to have laser-like focus as well as the utmost precision
regarding what you want visitors to do next. Too many steps and people will get
overwhelmed. Not enough clarity and people will get confused and give up.
Therefore, you need to limit the amount of choices and steps users need to make in
order to reduce the amount of mental bandwidth it takes—not that your visitors are
unintelligent; they are very intelligent. But the rest of their day—their work, their
families, their hobbies—already command so much of their attention that they want—
nay, they expect—their online transactions to be simple and straightforward.

38. Paul Boag: “By limiting the number of choices a user has to make we
reduce the amount of mental effort. Effectively you guide the user
around the site step by step.
The number of appropriate actions will vary from site to site. However, it
is not so much the number of actions as the distinctiveness of each.
Take for example pbwiki.com. They have three calls to action:
• Create a wiki
• View Demo
• Buy now
Although three is not an unacceptable number, there is not a clear distinction between
‘create a wiki’ and ‘buy now.’ What should I do first—buy a wiki or create one? I am
confused. A better approach would be to push the buy option later in the process once
the user has committed to building a wiki.”

39. Conclusion
A multitude of factors go into increasing conversion rates and each campaign is
different depending on the traffic source, offer, and audience. But fostering a sense of
trust, urgency, and action into everything you do and all the campaigns you run lays the
foundation for increased conversions.
So the next time you go to set up a landing page, craft a newsletter, or create a PPC ad,
consider how you can incorporate the trifecta of trust, urgency, and action.