4 Neuroscience Insights That Can Increase Conversions

In marketing, we often get so caught up with technology that we fail to focus on the insights we can get from learning more about decision making and psychology. We forget that the human brain hasn't really evolved in the last 50,000 years. So while technology changes, what we're mapping it on does not. Below are four things about the brain and how it works that retailers can apply to increase marketing effectiveness:

1. Making choices tires the brain and can make subsequent decision making difficult. When presenting choices, differences should be obvious. People can easily make decisions if they can identify how one option differs from another. Most e-commerce companies are proud that they carry everything, but that can be a problem. A huge number of similar choices will overwhelm consumers, leading them to not making a decision at all.

What you should do: Guide customers through the use of wizards. Embody your knowledge of what's important about the choices visitors have to make in a set of simple questions. Then, in every step of the guided experience, give them a limited amount of clear choices. Don't make visitors infinitely drill down or scroll to look at thumbnails, grids or a list of products.

2. We anchor on the first thing we see. Context matters. How brands present information and what precedes them or how they prime someone to make a decision matters.

Consumers anchor on the price, and the order that they see the price makes a big difference. You're bound to sell more if your price scale goes down. For example, if you were showed a $10 tie first, then a $50 tie, you'd be unwilling to pay five times as much. However, if you see a $1,000 suit first, you may consider paying one-twentieth of that to get a tie.