The 7 Best Psychological Sales Tricks To Boost Conversions When Shopify Dropshipping

Many conversion boosting techniques and tactics are discussed in the ecommerce community, but very few of these methods are ever put to the test scientifically. In this article, we will outline 7 evidence-proven ways to increase conversion rate, revenue and average order value on your Shopify Dropshipping store by leveraging human psychology in an ethical way.

This article will not focus on unethical tactics such as fake scarcity or countdown timers, which we do not recommend to any dropshippers.

1) Lock Icon Inside Checkout Button Increases Conversion Rate By 17%

In a study conducted by PayPal, checkout buttons that had a lock icon on them to signify the security of the cart page had a 17% higher conversion rate than the exact same cart pages with a plain checkout button. This did not only apply to the cart page, checkout buttons with locks anywhere on a given site resulted in a conversion rate increase.

As you might guess, the presence of a security icon works to ease customer concerns over site safety, making them more likely to checkout and complete their purchase. This study has been repeated by companies such as MobileOptimized and always shows an increase in conversion rate compared to having no lock icon present on the checkout button.

There are several ways to implement this change on your Shopify Dropshipping store. If you are using Turbo Theme, this icon can be automatically turned on in your theme settings. Otherwise you can make some simple CSS changes to add a lock icon to your checkout button.

2) Boost Conversion Rate with Trust Indicators

When most people think of trust indicators, they think of trust badges in the checkout with Secure Payment Company Logos. However, this is only the beginning when it comes to creating an overall feeling of trust and security on your store. In this section, we will go through some of the top website trust indicators to add to your Shopify Dropshipping store.

Company Phone Number Visible

Having a company phone number visible resulted in a 7% conversion boost when split tested across 8 stores run by SaleSource staff, and we received similar reports from over 125 SaleSource customers.

The psychology behind this is that authoritative & legitimate brands typically have phone numbers to call for order help and therefore by having a number available to call, you associate yourself with larger, more established companies. To go the extra mile, we encourage also using a USA phone number, as the +1 extension is well known and trusted around the world.

You can rent a number for as little as $5 per month and send the calls you receive to a voice mail, which you can then listen to later to help respond to customer service inquiries.

Live Chat

We highly encourage having a live chat on your Shopify store, it is one of the most useful ways to directly communicate with customers. As an added bonus, a live chat helps to create trust between your brand and your customers by allowing them to talk to a real person, not a bot, in real time. Speaking to a real person who is passionate and knowledgeable about a given niche helps to boost conversion rate.

Live chat can also be used to close sales directly or help buyers place custom orders. It is also a quick and easy way to get feedback from customers on the things they like / dislike about your site, helping you iteratively improve your dropshipping store.

Trust Badges

Trust Badges have long been known to boost conversions and A | B testing shows they do so in almost every situation.

Psychologically, customers trust by association and familiarity — meaning once a buyer sees a brand they are familiar with (e.g. PayPal) and then associates the brand with trust and payment security, your brand also subconsciously receives some of that trust by association.

However, what are the right trust badges to include on your store? We would recommend the PayPal, Visa, MasterCard and AmericanExpress logos, which are synonymous with payment security & safety. You can also pick from a wide variety of others badges, however we’d recommend not going overboard by having too many trust badges as this can appear unprofessional and have the opposite intended effect.

Luckily, whichever badges you choose, there are plenty of free Shopify Apps that allow you to choose and arrange multiple badges and place them wherever you want to on your Shopify store.

Order Tracking / FAQ Page

Using an order Tracking App, you can allow customers to track their shipments directly on your store. This allows customers who have not purchased yet to be reassured that they can easily track their order at any time after they purchase.

According to Forrester Research, over 78% of customers ranked being able to track their order as “Very Important”. In addition to satisfying customers, it is also possible that having live order tracking on your store can boost sales — as paying customers return to your store and may plan or make their next purchase.

Also important, an FAQ page to help answer commonly asked customer questions is a great way to build trust by informing customers about details such as shipping, returns, refunds and other frequently asked questions.

3) Intentionally Selling Out Products To Increase Perceived Demand

While implying high demand using scarcity timers and countdowns can work, a much more effective method is intentionally listing products as sold out. There are two ways to do this, either using a legitimately sold out product or setting the stock counter to 0 for a product that you do not intend to make sales with (could be too expensive to sell or not a winner.)

This can be done on Shopify by ticking “Track Inventory” and setting “Quantity Available” to 0. In order for this to work well, you’ll want to set a custom collection sorting order, and place your sold out items next to the products you want to sell.

This works because your customers legitimately can no longer buy that product. Being sold out, or scarce, implies to your customer that there must have been high demand for those sold out products. In addition, multipe products being sold out implies that the same thing could soon happen to other products, encouraging commerce by using real scarcity.

While it’s important you do not go overboard with this technique, it can be very effective, boosting conversion rate by an average of 10% for any given product.

4) The Law of Reciprocity — Give Customers A Gift For Free

Customers love to feel like they’ve won or earned something, which is exactly why spinning wheel discounts and email popups work to increase conversion rate.

However, there are much simpler ways to qualify customers and then give them a gift. This can be done using different techniques, as long as the customer feels like they’ve earned the discount. Discounts that are given to everyone feel less genuine and are less effective at creating a feeling of reciprocity.

One of the simplest techniques is to give First Time customers a 10% discount code. Not only does this make customers feel like they’ve earned the discount by being a first time buyer, but also creates the aforementioned feeling of reciprocity — you’ve given them a free gift, so they are more likely to give back to your brand by purchasing a product.

More advanced techniques, like the Spin-To-Win wheel that collects customer emails or the “Spend X to earn Y discount” can be implemented if they suit your brand and use case.

5) Include Human Faces In Your Website Images

Notice how almost all major ecommerce clothing stores have human faces in their product photos? Humans have a subconcious, powerful reaction when they see other human faces — in particular, photos that include a direct gaze into the camera.

Psychologically, this can help increase familiarity and transfer the buyers brain from a logical to an emotional state. The overall effect is clear, human faces help break down trust barriers between your brand and your customers, and as such increase overall conversions.

6) Create a Product Narrative

Human beings love narrative — stories and tales are a key form of information sharing that could be vital to survival in hunter-gatherer times. While directly trying to tell customers a story about your product might take too long, an easy way to create a product narrative is to use a movement that is already well known and well established.

In this example, climate change is the problem and the movement of being eco-friendly and using bio-degradable materials is the solution.

Since this eco-friendly toothbrush is made out of bamboo, it does not contribute to plastic pollution. Showing how powerful narrative can be, the toothbrushes eco-friendlyness is one of its only features and yet this toothbrush is a global best seller, with over 20,000 orders on AliExpress.

Here are a few popular narratives that you can use to sell your product in 2020:

• Narrative that we spend too much time indoors on our phones — great for outdoors & camping products
• Narrative that our postures are unhealthy due to curving our nexts to view phone screens — great for posture correctors
• Narrative that children spend too much time playing video games — great for engaging puzzles and kids toys

7) Hit on Customer Paint Points & Show How Product Solves These

Psychologically, human beings are wired to focus more on negatives than positives. This is because, back in hunter-gatherer times, a negative outcome such as a failing to find food for the day or social rejection could lead to death.

Since customers are more affected by negatives, lucidly describing customer pain points and then showing how your product provides a solution can be an extremely effective way to sell your product.

In the above example, the description clearly describes the customer paint point by asking the question “Always make your shoes wet and dirty during rainy days?”, and then quickly follows up by showing the product that provides a solution in the form of a gif.

Another example is this dropshipping product marketed by KIDTE, who have posed their reflex trainer as an alternative to video games. Their viral video, aimed at parents, identifies video games such as Fornite as a distracting problem and offers the reflex trainer as an alternative. The video has gone on to receive over 5 million views on Facebook, making the Reflex Trainer one of KIDTE’s best selling products.

Final Words

Selling and human psychology are deeply related, and we hope this article has given you techniques you can implement to improve your ecommerce dropshipping store. Remember, while the methods written within this article are highly effective, they are only supposed to be the icing on the cake — a strong store with great products and great marketing is still needed as a base to help sell products in the first place.

If you enjoyed this article, please share it with other dropshippers so that they can begin and enhance their dropshipping journey also.

Originally published at https://www.salesource.io.