How to increase the conversion rate of a landing page using the psychology of desire

Creating enticing offers for the consumer is not such a difficult task. All you need is to understand what drives your potential buyers. As soon as you understand what they really want, you will have the tools to create offers that you simply cannot refuse. Below is a translation of Aaron Bischel's article, which contains several psychological techniques used by successful companies to stimulate the desire to acquire their products, as well as tips on how to optimize landing pages and marketing campaigns.
How does the psychology of desire work?

Understanding the essence of the psychology of desires at the theoretical level will help you put it into practice to work with your landing page. In his book “The Advertising Effect” (“Advertising Effect”), Adam Ferrier, a psychologist specialized in consumer behavior, explains that desire contains two basic elements: an individual incentive and social norms.

Individual incentives
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Mostly people are motivated to have fun and avoid pain.

In the context of your marketing campaign, desire arises when people see how your product or service can help them enjoy or relieve pain.

Social norms

It is clear that people are unlikely to look for something that will bring them pleasure or will relieve them of pain, without thinking about the consequences. Man is by nature a social being, and everything that we do is done with an eye on social norms.

That is why, before doing anything, we think about the following:

1. How will our act look from the outside?
2. How to act in such cases?
3. Do those people whom we consider to be valid and authoritative do the same?

In order to generate interest in your product, you will need to consider both individual incentives and social norms.

You will need to demonstrate to potential consumers how your product or service will relieve pain or bring more pleasure to their lives. You will need to convince your target audience that buying your product / service, people make the only right choice.

Now that the work mechanism of desire has become clear, let's take a look at how successful companies use the current strength of these psychological techniques in order to create a truly effective campaign to promote products to the market.

As the Airbnb company creates a seductive image of the services by means of beautiful pictures.

The popular site Airbnb works on the attractiveness of its services, using beautiful images.



With the help of professional photos that most effectively demonstrate the benefits of the product, this company uses the individual incentives of a person so that he chooses his particular service.

Airbnb pays for the services of professional photographers to take pictures of the places that the company offers to visit, without charging the owners of housing facilities for this. The company is aware of the importance of the attractive power of beautiful photos.

This strategy has been incredibly successful for the company. At the presentation of the annual festival The Lean Startup SXSW (rapid testing of ideas), representatives of Airbnb emphasized the important role of this tactic in the rapid growth of their turnover up to $ 10,000,000:

Number of nights booked through the site



2008 - the launch of the project. 2009- introduction of professional photos.

Professional photos have greatly increased the interest of potential customers in their services, the number of rental housing through Airbnb has increased dramatically. All this gave a start to the phenomenal growth of the company.

How can you use this principle to increase website conversion?

When adding photos of your products or services to the landing page, use only professionally taken pictures. So you can increase the individual incentives of visitors.

SurfEasy has succeeded in this by offering its product to protect personal information on the Internet.



SurfEasy encrypts Internet traffic on your smartphone, tablet or computer. This means your personal information is completely safe !

Having added a professionally made photo of a person relaxing and enjoying a cup of tea, they played on the desire of each of us to feel at ease and showed how their product can contribute to this, creating, thereby, an individual incentive reason.

How Apple creates the temptation to showcase its products in a specific context.

Apple creates a desire to buy their products, showing it in action.



Traveling changed my attitude to life. Every time I learn something new and I am always happy to share my discoveries with others.

As part of its recent promotion “YourVerse” for the iPad, Apple has created a beautiful promo page to show how people use the iPad in various situations and improve their lives.

Demonstrating the product in operation, the iPad manufacturer shows potential buyers how this device can bring pleasure to their lives, stimulating the desire to buy this product.

Showing products in action, show potential buyers how it can bring them joy.

Moreover, Apple creates a sense of social norms, attracting significant and ambitious figures, for example, the author of travel essays Cherie King. Reflecting the way she takes pictures with the iPad, Apple plays on people's inclination to watch influential and famous in their search for patterns of behavior. They create a social norm - even celebrities find the iPad the best way to capture the most significant moments of life.

How can you apply this principle, increasing the conversion of the site

When inserting images or screenshots of your product or service on a landing page, show them in the context of how they can help you get pleasure or get rid of pain.

The Art Institute of Pittsburgh successfully implemented this task landing page for its design courses.



Using the background image of students creating modern graphics, they demonstrate how design classes stimulate students to achieve excellent results, creating individual motivations for potential clients and encouraging them to sign up for classes.

How Campaign Monitor encourages potential customers by displaying logos

The e-mail marketing platform Campaign Monitor encourages its potential customers by displaying the logos of their most famous customers on the landing page.



Send beautiful letters and get results

By adding logos from well-known clients such as Facebook, Apple, eBay and IKEA, Campaign Monitor plays on social norms and individual motivations. People like to use the same service as successful companies. This creates the feeling of another step towards success.

How can you use this principle on your landing page

If the list of your customers has a well-known, reflect this information on the landing page.

It does not have to be recognizable by all brands - it’s enough that your audience will know these companies and have a positive attitude towards them.

Analytical company KISSmetrics uses this technique on its landing page:



Showing the logos of its successful and famous clients, such as Adobe, Intel and eBay, KISSmetrics excites the desire of its potential customers to use their services, along with these world-famous brands. Thus, there are individual incentives.

Publish a list of your famous clients on your landing page and create a desire to use your services, that is, increase the conversion.

How the company InVision App creates an attractive image of its products by publishing consumer reviews

The platform for prototyping and organizing workflows of the InVision App attracts consumers of its service by publishing reviews of satisfied customers.



While the advertising text on the page eloquently tells about the advantages of using this service, the reviews add credibility to advertising assurances.

In addition, feedback and recommendations create a social norm for using InVision, demonstrating how other successful companies enjoy the product and playing up the respect people have for these companies.

How can you apply this principle on your landing page

If possible, collect feedback from your customers in order to publish them on your landing page. To increase relevance and efficiency, ask them to highlight the benefits of their products, as reflected in the material on the landing page. Effective in this will be correctly compiled polls that will help minimize the time that a visitor spends on answers, and get useful information "first-hand".

Think of a place where reviews will be located. When ContentVerve removed the reviews from the bottom of its landing page and placed them in the middle, the conversion rate immediately increased by 64.53%.



Visitors to your page will react differently to the different location of reviews on it (it all depends on where they are in the process of buying) - start experimenting today and you will notice a significant increase in conversion.

How Xero makes you want to buy your products, showing the number of buyers

The online accounting program Xero creates a desire to use its product, demonstrating the number of small enterprises using this platform.



Reflecting the information that 300,000 small businesses use their service, Xero plays on people's fear of missing something. Site visitors may worry about why their company is not a Xero user. This creates individual incentives to subscribe to receive this service and get the same satisfaction from its use, like other organizations.

Spur the fear of people to miss the benefits by showing them how much the organization is already using your services.
How you can apply this principle on your landing page.

If you have an impressive number of customers using your services, reflect this number on your landing page.

Use language that creates individual incentives, by cultivating in potential consumers the sense that they are missing benefits that are available to similar businesses and even competitors.

InVision application effectively uses this technique on its page:



Stressing that 160,000 designers use and love the InVision application, this company makes potential customers think that they are missing the benefits that are available to their competitors.

Do not forget to test

Understanding the psychology of desire and borrowing some tricks from successful brands, using the principles of persuasion, you can make small changes to your landing pages, which will positively affect the conversion rate.

Remember that your audience is somewhat different from the audience of these large companies. The psychological techniques that work for them can be counter productive for you. Confirm your hypotheses by A / B testing your changes.

Which of these psychological methods will you check first? Let me know in your comments!

This post is a modified excerpt from “How to Get Better Marketing Results with Beautiful Design”, detailed instructions for marketers on how to create a beautiful landing page, website or email campaign with a higher conversion level.

Successes, Aaron Bishel.