How To Increase Your eCommerce Conversions

As an eCommerce business owner, it can be tough knowing how to get online visitors to take the actions you want. For example, your business may have a really insightful blog, but customers don’t seem to want to sign up for it. So, how can you motivate them to take the next step?

To help you out, let us explain The Fogg Behavioural Model. It uses a simple formula to persuade site visitors to behave in a desired way to benefit your business.

In short, Fogg’s model relies on three elements to work cohesively across each of your webpages to encourage conversions for your business online and persuade visitors to act, rather than click away and to never be seen again.

It is all based on the equation: Behaviour = Motivation, Ability and Triggers (B=MAT). Basically, our behaviour is determined by these three factors.

What does this actually mean? Let us break it down for you.

Motivation

We need motivation to act. Consumers need motivation to even look for your site let alone follow through with a conversion. It’s what initially drives consumer behaviour.

The Fogg Behavioural Model defines motivation in three ways:

Sensation - Seeking pleasure and the avoidance of pain,

Anticipation - The sense of anticipation for the after effect of an action,

Social Cohesion - People want to feel part of a group which leads into the desire to invest in products that will make them feel like they belong in said groups.

Ability

How easy have you made it for a consumer to understand something, complete an action or find what they’re looking for on your page?

Simplicity is vital in increasing ability and decreasing perceived difficulty of the action you want from your site.

Consumers respond well to simplicity. The simpler you make processes and to find what they’re looking for, the more likely visitors are to follow through on an action and stay motivated.

Triggers

To seal the deal you need to grab a visitor’s attention by prompting them. Remind them what they came for and refocus their actions.

Within the model, Triggers are defined as:

Facilitators: Bringing it back to the idea of making everything easy for the conversion to take place. Make it easy for someone to have access to the service provided.

Sparks: Increasing the value of the conversion increases motivation. For example, offering a discount when someone signs up to your newsletter makes someone more motivated to do so.

Signals: A signal is basically a reminder, a simple trigger to prompt your desired conversion such as a banner or pop-up.

So how can this help your business?

Subscribing to a newsletter or blog is already pretty easy for the client (high ability). But consumers don’t normally want to sign up to these things in fear of an inbox filled with spam (low motivation). So, if you add value in your call to action, like a discount code or free resource when visitors subscribe (trigger), a visitor’s motivation will increase and will be more likely to sign up.

Likewise, you may already be offering some clear value e.g. a cheaper home loan rate (high motivation), but the required action may seem like too much effort e.g. too many forms to fill out (low ability). Then the solution should be to focus on conveying to the visitor that the process is simple. By showing your client that you can make it easy for them (your trigger), you will see an increase in conversions.

By applying The Fogg Behavioural Model and focusing your triggers towards the right area (ability or motivation), you’ll be able to successfully help your online visitors take the actions you want.