Imagine for a moment being able to read your customers’ thoughts and find out what it is that catches their attention as they browse through your product pages. It would be extraordinary. This way, you can find out what drives them to place an order. The good news is that neuromarketing has been doing this for some time, and it can help you keep your e-Commerce going.
What Is Neuromarketing?
Neuromarketing is a field of marketing that uses the results of neuroscience to optimize advertising. In other words, neuromarketing opens the map of the weights, observations, and decisions in the customer’s brain, thus allowing them to understand how purchasing decisions are made. You have probably noticed that necessities (egg pasta) are located down the aisle in most supermarkets. Surely more than once, you have put in your cart some products that caught your attention on your way to pasta, the only product you wanted to buy from the beginning.
Neuroscience studies the behavior of the human brain about a purchase decision. For this, it makes use of scientific procedures such as electroencephalogram) and Eye Tracking, effective in measuring buyers’ emotions and attention and memory levels in the face of different marketing techniques. The results show that there are neuromarketing techniques applicable to any e-Commerce to facilitate your consumers’ shopping experience and generate more sales and conversions.
Ten Neuromarketing Techniques To Increase Your Online Store Sales
When a consumer opens an online store page, certain parts of his brain are activated, causing him to feel accepting or rejecting the store. This happens because, as a general rule, the first 4 seconds of viewing are enough to decide whether the appearance of the online store is professional and encourages you to continue browsing or not. The colors, the structure of the content, the images, the categories, the usability of the site, etc., are all factors that come into play during the decision.
Create Attractive Visual Content
A picture is worth a thousand words! Visual content is one of the central stimulants while making a decision. Do not forget that the user does not come into direct contact with the product in an online shop. Therefore the only way to persuade the customer to purchase is through a quality image that catches his attention.
- Offer various images of the same product: in this way, you allow your customers to see the product in 360 degrees. The more pictures you have, the more transparency you will convey.
- Show product details: Give your visitors the ability to zoom in on images to see every detail and make them feel like they have the product in their hand.
- Show the product in action: Show the product in everyday situations. By doing this, the customer can view the product in his daily life.
If you invest in quality product images, you will appeal to the visitors’ emotions and thereby stimulate their desire to purchase.
But What Exactly Is Neoteny?
It is proven that there are universal canons of beauty already starting from the Paleolithic. The preference for simplicity, curves, order and symmetry is predominant in humans. Most animals, including humans, are born with a rounded forehead and large eyes, a natural principle that causes emotions that activate adults’ maternal and protective instincts. This fact is called neoteny.
These round shapes awaken the affectivity of adults towards children or puppies. Some thoughts that the toilet paper video ad above may have been “oh how nice the puppy” or “what a nice idea”, and maybe “We want to buy it”. Neoteny is helpful in advertising and marketing to awaken their visitors’ emotions and thus activate the desire to purchase. Many brands are aware of this human “soft spot” for babies and puppies and use neoteny to appeal to shoppers.
Avoid Distracting Advertising
If the consumer shopping experience is interrupted due to a lot of advertising on your website, you will cause a feeling of rejection and saturation in the user. If you include a lot of call-to-action in your store, the result is likely that the visitor ignores them. Having so many points grabbing his attention, the user will be overwhelmed and won’t know which one to choose. Same with pop-ups and windows that open. Do not abuse them, and use them on a few occasions to guarantee the customer a pleasant shopping experience.
Collaborate With Influencers
Influence marketing leverages a person’s social media awareness to increase the visibility and reach of a brand or product. 9 out of 10 companies choose to collaborate with influencers to get their target group and increase brand awareness. The percentage of buyers who rely on recommendations from influencers on Instagram constantly increases.
Make A Limited Time Offer
With the approach of difficult times or scarcity, there is a tendency to stock up on goods (think, for example, of the purchases of toilet paper with the Coronavirus outbreak). A similar effect occurs with limited-time discounts. The limited offers and the products that are about to run out generate a sense of urgency in the consumer, leading him to buy the product Immediately. You can offer a significant discount in your store with a time limit, such as a banner on your homepage, or by showing the number of products remaining on the product page.
Be Transparent About Pricing
Imagine that you are about to complete a purchase, and at the time of paying, you realize that the initial price of the product has increased due to VAT, shipping, etc. How would you react? You would probably think twice before completing the purchase. Nowadays, many online shops are still not clear about prices, and they continue to show at the end of the buying process a different price than what appeared at the beginning.
Here too, once more, the feeling of rejection of the user manifests itself, which causes the number of abandoned carts to increase. Make sure you provide visitors with all the information they need. Be transparent with the prices, and indicate the total cost of the product from the beginning.
Tell A Story About Your Products
Surely you have already heard of storytelling. You know that a story behind your e-Commerce or your products gives users a different perception of your store. If the shop has a story behind it, it goes from being a regular shop to a shop with character, which sets you apart from the competition and allows you to sell your products at a higher price.
Show Recommended Products
As an online buyer, it will have happened to you more than once that you have seen a product that did not entirely convince you, you have looked at the “recommended products” section, and you have found a product that immediately made you fall in love and that you have ended up buying. Without a doubt, this section serves as a source of inspiration and makes the purchase decision easier for the user. This neuromarketing technique makes the user feel comfortable while browsing your store.
And the most important thing: with this technique, you make the customer spend more time in your shop, and consequently, the possibility of adding products to the cart increases. You can give different names to this category: “recommended products”, “other users have bought”, “similar products”, “maybe you will also like it”, “customers who have seen this article have also seen”, etc. Be careful when including “recommended products” and not abuse them.
The customer may end up seeing products they don’t want, which will cause them to feel lost and negatively impact the user experience. This category must be related to the product that the customer wanted to buy from the beginning. This technique aims to make available to the customer the products we think they might buy, given the purchasing decisions they have made so far.
Show The Best Selling Products
This section is also of great use to, once again, facilitate the customer’s purchase decision. The famous “top sales of the week”, for example, serve as social proof.
Use Psychological Pricing
In neuromarketing, the so-called psychological prices are all those that end with decimals such as “95” and “99”, or even fees with whole numbers that end with two “9s”, such as 499. These have two main advantages:
- They lead the consumer to perceive that he is paying less
- They are associated with the concept of offering
Use The Right Words
The word “free”, for example, is beautiful. If you use it in your online store on certain occasions, you will retain more than one customer. Some examples where you could use keywords are:
- Free shipping and delivery
- Take part in the top x and win.
- All for half the price
- The second free article
- “Add to cart “instead of “buy.”
Conclusion
Neuromarketing techniques are very effective in creating emotions in the consumer and thus increasing the level of loyalty in your store. They allow you to make the most of your products, improving users’ shopping experience to lead them to buy eventually.