Psychology tips to generate more sales on your Shopify store

Sometimes increasing traffic to your Shopify store can be quite challenging. You want the people that visit your webshop to actually buy something. Many factors influence the chance that a visitor will pursue a purchase. This doesn’t mean you should literally do everything to get people to buy something. The last few years many companies (especially digital) are using all kinds of techniques to get more sales, some of which were not very ethical. Instead of helping you make a choice you want to make, they trick you into doing something they want you to.

This concept is called ‘’Dark Patterns’’. Consumers are increasingly becoming aware of these techniques, hurting long-term customer satisfaction and their brand image.

In this blog, we will give you some insights into how to improve your website conversion rate without tricking your visitors into doing something they might not want to.

1. The Mental Model 

   One important thing to remember when optimizing user experience to increase sales is the mental model. Mental models are basic assumptions that people create over time. This means that there are specific expectations that were created in their minds on how or where something should be or work. For example, most people walking into a grocery store would expect apples to be in the fruit aisle.

   
   Same goes for web shops. People assume the shopping cart is at the right top of the page. When this is not the case, you fail to reflect on peoples thought process (mental model). As a webshop, you should always try to reduce the amount of time visitors spend on thinking and trying to figure out your store. In life, this is not as easy, as not everyone shares the same mental model, but with good research, you should be able to figure out what most of your visitors' mental model is and how to stay in line with that. For example by using tools like Hotjar to get a good understanding of your visitor's behavior. With Hotjar you can understand what your visitors want and do on your site by visually representing their clicks, tabs, and scrolling behavior.

    

    

2. Be Cautious with an Overload of Choices 

   We want to make the process of buying as effortless as possible. This means we should not overload our visitors with too many options. We want to provide our visitors with a variety of choices so they can pick the one that fits them best. But all with all it is true that not everybody knows exactly what suits them best, and so they have to think about it. If there are too many choices out there, the thinking will take more effort, more time and energy and might have a negative impact on the purchase decision. And again, the more time and effort the greater the chance they will give up and leave.

   
   

   Furthermore, reducing the number of products is a good way to improve the ease of inventory, logistics, and fulfillment. Keep in mind though, that this refers to products that have no significant distinction because that is when choosing can be hard. So there is nothing wrong with keeping many products, as long as they are very distinct and have a clear difference.

   
   

   By using the analytics tool of Shopify you can find out which products are going well and are popular and which

   ones are not, to be able to make a better selection of the products you will be offering.

    

3. Invest in Including Social Proof to Your Shop

   A lot of decisions are made on an emotional level. So before purchasing something on your website they have to completely trust your liability and professionality. This starts with the complete appearance of your store, to succeed in the first phase of this trusting process. Most of the time right before they buy the take a few more steps to gain more trust, and that’s reading up on some reviews. According to Invesp 90% of consumers read online reviews before purchasing. They even claim that customers are willing to spend 31% more on a business with excellent reviews. To include this to your store there are a variety of apps and plugins like Yotpo.  

So, go ahead and give it a try. With these tips you will be able to make the whole process of buying something from your website a lot more easier without tricking someone in doing something they don't want.