Most web­sites are lit­tle more than dig­i­tal brochures that rely on users will­ing­ness to read end­less tomes of text, assim­i­late all the infor­ma­tion, and then to deter­mine what con­tent applies to them. They expect users to do most of the work and are sur­prised when their con­ver­sion rates fail. While web­sites are con­tent with a measly 2 per­cent con­ver­sion rate, any suc­cess­ful sales­per­son would have an anx­i­ety attack over such low num­bers. If you con­sid­er that most web­site vis­i­tors are warm leads (why else would they be on your site), any decent sales­per­son is con­fi­dent that they can close half of those moti­vat­ed buy­ers.

If we assume that just half of your vis­i­tors are tru­ly moti­vat­ed to buy your prod­uct, there’s no log­i­cal rea­son why you should­n’t be able to close half of those warm leads. That means your con­ver­sion rate should be 25 per­cent, not 2 per­cent. So why can’t you close like a sales­per­son? Because you don’t take advan­tage of the psy­cho­log­i­cal levers like a sales­per­son can. In the car sales busi­ness, it’s com­mon prac­tice to gain the con­fi­dence of a reluc­tant buy­er by touch­ing them on the arm or shoul­der. This sim­ple touch method psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly dis­arms an oth­er­wise hes­i­tant or defen­sive cus­tomer. While you can’t reach out and touch a web­site vis­i­tor, here are a few sim­ple psy­chol­o­gy-based UX strate­gies you can employ that have sim­i­lar dis­arm­ing and engag­ing effects.

1. Affordances Instead Of Instructions

Users don’t read instruc­tions! Any design should be intu­itive­ly obvi­ous to the intend­ed users. Instruc­tions are a prob­lem, not a solu­tion. If your site relies on instruc­tions, then there’s some­thing wrong with the design. The more your design relies on users read­ing and fol­low­ing instruc­tions, the more like­ly your site will suf­fer. How many times have you grabbed a door han­dle and instinc­tive­ly pulled on it only to have the door rat­tle but not open, then you see the lit­tle sign above the han­dle telling you to push? Think about it, some­thing as sim­ple as a door shouldn’t require instruc­tions. Putting a flat pan­el on the door instead of a han­dle invites and affords the desired action. You can only push on a flat pan­el. Your web­site needs to have the right con­trols and avoid any and all instruc­tions. Users are more like­ly to click on some­thing if it is intu­itive­ly obvi­ous what to do and what the expect­ed result will be. It’s even more suc­cess­ful of that expect­ed result is relat­ed to the users’ intend­ed objec­tive.

2. Outcomes, Not Features

Users want to solve prob­lems, not use a web­site. Rather than pro­vide a host of fea­tures that users must fig­ure out how to use, iden­ti­fy their key rea­sons for com­ing to your site and pro­vide but­tons or links for each of those key desired out­comes. This is referred to as “res­onat­ing with the users’ point of pain.” For instance, The Kel­ley Blue Book web­site offers but­tons that each lead the down a spe­cif­ic path and are labeled with each desired end result – How much is my car worth, what should I pay for a new car, etc. Each sep­a­rate path still sues the same car selec­tion fea­ture, but each in a dif­fer­ent way. Rather than expect­ing users to fig­ure out how to mod­i­fy that one fea­ture for each out­come, the site offers sep­a­rate paths, each using that one fea­ture opti­mized for that spe­cif­ic desired out­come.

3. Engagement Without Commitment

One of the most suc­cess­ful levers is to cre­ate emo­tion­al invest­ment in the prod­uct. Most web­sites have sev­er­al oppor­tu­ni­ties to do this, but instead rely on user com­mit­ment. For instance, requir­ing users to sub­mit an email in order to down­load a white paper fails more than it suc­ceeds, espe­cial­ly if you don’t pro­vide an abstract of the con­tent. Requir­ing users to com­mit clicks with­out giv­ing them an expec­ta­tion of what to expect dra­mat­i­cal­ly reduces the click-through rate. Giv­ing users a sense of what val­ue they will get for their click only slight­ly improves the suc­cess rate, but those suc­cess rates decrease with each click. Cre­at­ing emo­tion­al invest­ment is a well-known approach to engag­ing the user and tripling the click-through rates. For instance, allow­ing users to cre­ate some­thing of intrin­sic val­ue endears them to the site. On the ProFlow­ers site, we found that once the cus­tomer writes the gift card, they are eager to com­plete the trans­ac­tion. When we moved the gift card step to occur right after the bou­quet selec­tion, the con­ver­sion fun­nel spiked. ProFlow­ers has been a top con­vert­ing site since its launch in 1998 with con­ver­sion rates at 25 per­cent.