Consumer psychology has always played an important part in driving their purchase decisions.
NB: This is an article from Staah
Let’s look at how you can use this buying psychology to improve conversion rates.
Give Fewer Choices
According to experts, too much of a choice can be a bad thing. When faced with too many choices, the consumer can be left overwhelmed and undecided because they always feel there is a better choice to be made.
One way to overcome this is not displaying all your room rates and add-ons on one page. Create meaningful consumer journeys that take people from seeing room types to adding on services they may want and then choosing the most relevant rates. Don’t saddle it all on them in one big lump that’s difficult to consume.
Another popular tactic is pre-selecting a default option on the booking engine; there is a strong theory behind the power of defaults and how it allows you to steer people into buying. From a user stand-point, it’s the easiest thing to do and if you combine with your lowest room rate, your chances of selling are much higher.
Help Your Consumer Tide over the Remorse of a Purchase
It’s a universally accepted trait; consumers always question their purchase decision. Even if they have spent hours, days and months researching and reading online reviews before buying.
In order to help guests overcome this remorse, there are a few things you could do before, during and after booking.
For instance before they book, display your online reviews clearly. STAAH’s ReviewMinder widget can easily put in front of users what your other guests are saying about you – managing reviews doesn’t get simpler than this! Make your cancellation policy clear, highlighting it in bold for guest reassurance. When they are booking, make the form as easy as possible with minimum fields to fill. Lastly, after the booking is completed, send emails to confirm the booking and then to remind them of the travel closer to date. Show them you care.
Go for Round Figures
$100 is much simpler for the human brain to process than $99.99, especially in a day and age where consumers are bombarded with information and have a diminishing attention span. The $99.99 could easily become $9999 and be missed. Make your room rates and discounts easier to compute if you want to sell more.
Bring in Urgency
A number of studies have shown the positive effects of getting urgency into a sale. It can boost sales by more than 90% according to some studies! It is based on a simple principle that if a product is in short supply or available for a limited time, it has higher value during that time period.
You can capitalise on this by using tactics like a timer for your sale (eg. sale ends in 48 hours) rather than an end date to your offer. Or show how many other users are purchasing the same offer.
Use Emotions
Travel is deeply rooted in emotions such as fun, freedom and excitement. Often emotions drive the last-minute bookings as a spur-of-the-moment thing. To win more bookings, you need to use these emotions to your advantage. Use copy that inspires – who them via rich media and words what an exceptional experience you offer.
