How to increase the conversion rate of the landing page of the site using the psychology of desire

Creating enticing offers for the consumer is not such a difficult task. All you need to do is understand what drives your potential customers. As soon as you figure out what they really want, you will have tools to create offers that will simply be impossible to refuse. Below is a translation of an article by Aaron Bischel, which contains several psychological techniques used by successful companies to stimulate the desire to purchase their products, as well as tips on how to optimize landing pages and marketing campaigns.
How does the psychology of desire work?

Understanding the essence of desire psychology at a theoretical level will help you put it into practice to work with your landing page. In his book The Advertising Effect, Adam Ferrier, a consumer psychologist, explains that desire contains two basic elements: an individual motivating reason and social norms.

Individual incentives Most

people are motivated to have fun and avoid pain.

In the context of your marketing campaign, desire arises when people see how your product or service can help them enjoy or relieve pain.

Social norms

It is clear that people are unlikely to look for something that will bring them pleasure or relieve pain without thinking about the consequences. Man is a social being by nature, and everything that we do is done with an eye to social norms.

That is why, before doing anything, we think about the following:

1. How will our act look from the outside?
2. What is customary to do in such cases?
3. Do those people whom we consider valid and authoritative do the same?

To arouse interest in your product, you will need to take into account both individual motivating factors and social norms.

You will need to demonstrate to potential consumers how your product or service will relieve pain or bring more pleasure to their lives. You will need to convince your target audience that when buying your product / service, people make the only right choice.

Now that the mechanism of desire has become clear, let's take a look at how successful companies use the active power of these psychological techniques to create a truly effective campaign to market products.

How Airbnb creates a seductive image of its services with beautiful images.

Airbnb, a popular website, is working on the attractiveness of its service using beautiful images.



With the help of professional photographs that most effectively demonstrate the benefits of the product, this company employs the individual motivational causes of a person so that he chooses exactly their service.

Airbnb pays for the services of professional photographers to take pictures of places that the company offers to visit without charging a fee for this from the owners of the property. The company recognizes the importance of the attractive power of beautiful photographs.

This strategy has been incredibly successful for the company. At a presentation at the annual The Lean Startup SXSW festival (quick testing of ideas), Airbnb representatives emphasized the important role of this tactic in the rapid growth of their turnover to $ 10,000,000: The

number of nights booked through the site



2008 - launch of the project. 2009- introduction of professional photos.

Professional photos significantly increased the interest of potential customers in their services, the number of rental housing through Airbnb has increased dramatically. All this gave rise to the phenomenal growth of the company.

How can you use this principle to increase website conversion?

When adding a photo of your product or service to the landing page, use only professionally made pictures. So you can increase the individual motivational reasons for visitors.

SurfEasy has achieved this success by offering its product to protect personal information on the Internet.



SurfEasy encrypts Internet traffic on your smartphone, tablet or computer. This means that your personal information is completely safe !

Adding a professionally made photo of a person relaxing and enjoying a cup of tea, they played on the desire of each of us to feel rest and showed how their product can contribute to this, thereby creating an individual motivating reason.

How Apple creates a temptation by displaying its products in a specific context

Apple creates a desire to buy its products, showing them in action.



Traveling has changed my attitude towards life. Every time I learn something new and I am always happy to share my discoveries with others

As part of its recent “YourVerse” campaign for the iPad, Apple has created a beautiful promotional page to show how people use the iPad in a variety of situations and improve their lives.

Demonstrating the product in operation, the iPad manufacturing company shows potential buyers how this device can bring pleasure to their lives, stimulating the desire to buy this product.

Showing products in action, show potential buyers how it can bring them joy.

Moreover, Apple creates a sense of social norm, attracting significant and ambitious figures, for example, the author of travel essays Cherie King. Reflecting how she takes pictures using the iPad, Apple plays on the tendency of people to observe the influential and famous in search of patterns of behavior. They create a social norm - even celebrities find the iPad the best way to capture the most significant moments of life.

How can you apply this principle by increasing the conversion of the site

? By inserting images or screenshots of your product or service on the landing page, show them in the context of how they can help you enjoy or get rid of pain.

The Pittsburgh Institute for the Arts has successfully accomplished this landing page task for its design courses.



Using the background image of students creating modern graphics, they demonstrate how design lessons motivate students to achieve excellent results by creating individual motivational reasons for potential clients and encouraging them to enroll in classes.

How Campaign Monitor motivates its potential customers by displaying logos

Campaign Monitor e-mail marketing platform encourages its potential customers by displaying the logos of its most famous clients on the landing page.



Send beautiful letters and get results

By adding logos to renowned customers such as Facebook, Apple, eBay and IKEA, Campaign Monitor plays up to social norms and individual motivations. People like to use the same service as successful companies. This creates the feeling of another step towards success.

How you can use this principle on your landing page

If there are widely known clients in the list of your clients, reflect this information on the landing page.

It does not have to be recognizable by all brands - it is enough that your audience will know these companies and have a positive attitude towards them.

The analytical company KISSmetrics uses this technique on its landing page:



Featuring the logos of its successful and famous clients such as Adobe, Intel and eBay, KISSmetrics arouses the desire of its potential customers to use its service along with these world famous brands. Thus, individual motivating factors arise.

Publish a list of your famous customers on your landing page and create a desire to use your services, that is, increase conversion.

How InVision App creates an attractive image of its products by publishing customer reviews.

Prototyping and organizing workflow platform. InVision App attracts consumers of its service by publishing reviews of satisfied customers.



While the advertising text on the page eloquently tells about the advantages of using this service, reviews add credibility to advertising assurances.

In addition, reviews and recommendations create a social norm for the use of InVision, demonstrating how other successful companies use the product and beating the respect that people have for these companies.

How you can apply this principle on your landing page

If possible, collect feedback from your customers in order to publish them on your landing page. To increase relevance and effectiveness, ask them to emphasize the benefits of their products, as reflected in the material on the landing page. Correctly structured polls will be effective in this, which will help minimize the time that the visitor spends on answers and get useful first-hand information.

Think about the place where the reviews will be located. When ContentVerve removed the reviews from the bottom of its landing page and placed them in the middle, the conversion rate increased immediately by 64.53%.



Your page visitors will react differently to the different location of reviews on it (it all depends on where they are in the buying process) - start experimenting today and you will notice a significant increase in conversion.

How Xero Arouses the desire to buy its products, showing the number of customers

The online accounting program Xero creates the desire to use its product, showing the number of small enterprises using this platform.



Reflecting the information that 300,000 small businesses use their service, Xero plays on the fear of people to miss something. Website visitors may worry why their company is not a Xero user. This creates individual incentive reasons to subscribe to receive this service and get the same satisfaction from its use as other organizations.

Stimulate people's fear of losing profit by showing them how much the organization already uses your services.
How you can apply this principle on your landing page.

If you have an impressive number of customers using your services, reflect this number on your landing page.

Use a language that creates individual incentives by cultivating in potential consumers the feeling that they are missing out on benefits that are available to similar businesses and even competitors.

The InVision application effectively uses this technique on its page:



By emphasizing that 160,000 designers use and love the InVision application, this company makes potential customers think that they are missing out on the benefits that are available to their competitors.

Do not forget to test

Understanding the psychology of desire and borrowing some techniques from successful brands, using the principles of persuasion, you can make small changes to your landing pages, which will positively affect the level of conversion.

Remember that your audience is slightly different from the audience of these large companies. The psychological techniques that work for them can be counterproductive for you. Confirm your hypotheses by A / B testing your changes.

Which of these psychological methods will you test first? Let me know in your comments!

This post is a modified excerpt from “How to Get Better Marketing Results with Beautiful Design”, a detailed guide for marketers on how to create a beautiful landing page, website or email campaign with a higher conversion rate.

Good luck, Aaron Bischel.