Imagine you've just launched a website for your new business. You spent hours working on the design, weeks crafting the copy, you've just hit publish, and people start to visit. Dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of people come to your site.
Yet no one becomes a customer. Nobody buys and your business fails. This is the unfortunate reality for most websites. Most sites struggle to convert visitors into sales. Even I struggle with this. Thousands of people visit nudgepodcast.com every month, yet only a handful buy my course each month.
So I reached out to someone who knows far more about website conversions than me for help. I'm Thomas McKinley. I'm the founder of Science Says. What I love about Thomas is that his advice isn't built on opinions. It's built on science. It's not generic or vague. It's specific and it all originates from peer reviewed scientific studies published in high quality scientific journals.
What I do with my team of marketing PhDs is that we analyze the latest scientific research in marketing and translate that into practical recommendations that marketers can implement in practice.
Today, Thomas will talk through every tip he has on designing the perfect website. His advice is specifically for websites that sell software known as SAS websites, but I think it's also relevant to anyone with an e-commerce site. Today, we'll cover 10 science-backed insights to build the perfect website. All of that coming up.
The podcast I'd like to recommend today is the D2C pod brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. D2C pod is a podcast about all things direct to consumer. The show covers everything for starting, growing and optimizing e-commerce stores for D2C brands.
They talk with founders, marketers, platforms, creators, and marketing and growth agencies to cover topics like brand building, social media, influencer marketing, website conversion, and much, much more. So go and listen to D2C Pod wherever you get your podcasts.
Okay, let's get started with a website problem I had while working as a marketer at tech companies. While at Buffer and Hotjar, I designed websites that sold software, but I always struggled with my messaging. Should I keep my descriptions generic to cover all the value buffer and hotjar provided? Or should I be clear and specific? I asked Thomas.
What researchers found is that often when you're describing service as something, let's say more or less generic, the messaging is not particularly specific. So if we take an example, somebody arrives and lands on your homepage and sees that you are a video editor. Okay, great. That kind of describes you a bit, but it could be everything or nothing.
researchers found is that you should be much more specific. Okay, let's take a similar example. Let's say you are an image editor. This is AI Wiz, an automated image background remover for $79 per year. Immediately, you have a product which is very clear, what is the value I get from it? How much it will cost me?
I shouldn't describe this podcast vaguely. I shouldn't say it's got thought-provoking conversations with experts. Instead, I should say it's bite-sized 20-minute interviews with the world's best behavioral scientists. The four researchers in their 2011 study found that these specific descriptions always beat vague descriptions.
The research found that, yes, people are more likely to buy. They're more likely to pay a higher price for your product. And they'll even be happier with their purchase after their bought it, because they already knew in the first place what they were most likely to be getting from that.
So read your website, remove any vague generic language, and be specific. It'll boost your sales. But how specific? Let's say we've got 15 great features we want to sell. Or for nudge on my website, I've got at least 20 podcast episodes that I'm proud of. Should I share and showcase them all?
Let's take an example of one of the experiments that was done in the study. They compared two bundles. The first one was you can get an iPod with that you will get a free iPod cover and you will get a free song download. Versus just the iPod and the free cover with no free song download.
The researchers asked marketers, okay, which of these options do you think would sell best? 92% of marketers said option A, the one with most features, the one including the free song. But guess what happened when they asked people how much they would pay for one versus the other? Potential customers were willing to pay, on average, 30% more for option B, the option without the free song and with fewer features or benefits.
The researchers, Shu and Carlton, named this study threes a charm, but for alarms. They found that listing three benefits would be more persuasive than listing four. Why is this? Well, Thomas says it's because listing too many features will dilute your stronger features.
What happens is that say you have some excellent features, really, really good ones like the iPod and arguably the free cover for the iPod is a pretty good benefit. But you're putting in like one which is just nice to have, like the song, that averages out and takes down the excellent features and changes like how people perceive the whole offer that you're giving.
When you showcase your best features alongside your average or your good features, you're diluting your strengths and you'll be perceived as worse overall. So on my site, I should only highlight the three podcast episodes that set me apart from the competition, not the 20 episodes that I love.
Okay, that's easy, but there was something I was worried about. My review rating on Apple and Spotify, it's not 5 stars, it's 4.9. I wondered if I should include this blemished rating on my website or if I should hide it. So, I asked Thomas.
In general, what I would recommend, try to show what is your average review. You might feel hesitant if you don't have this perfect rating of five out of five. Well, here's the good news. People don't expect you to be perfect. In fact,
They're suspicious of you if you are perfect. One specific study researchers compared the ratings of between 4.5 to 5 stars and between 4 and 4.5 star rating and the lower part. So those with 4 to 4.5 stars ratings had higher sales than the ones with the 4.5 to 5 star rating.
This study, titled Too Good to Be True, found that sales go up and peak at between 4 and 4.5 stars, then lower slightly again when the rating hits 5 out of 5 stars. If a product's average rating is perfect, people tend to think that the reviews are too good to be true. They suspect that the company could have manipulated them. This is fantastic news for me because it means my 4.9 star rating isn't a blemish, it's a blessing.
Next up, Thomas shared an ingenious tactic that many highly converting websites seem to use. He says, you should show a before and after image so visitors can see what their life was like before using the product and what it'll be like after using the product.
So, for example, you show a disorganized email inbox on the left, and you're a tool that helps people organize and be more productive, and you show the organized version on the right. If you want to maximize this effect, there's some other research which also found that you can also include intermediate steps to show progression. Weight loss adds, you know, instead of just showing directly the before and after, if you start showing images of in between, it seems way, way, way, way more credible.
Researchers Che and Hogg showed this to hundreds of participants in their 2013 study and found that these before and after images increased viewers liking and willingness to pay. And it's not just for products. Thomas says you should list your pricing plans from left to right as well.
I would recommend that you display your lowest price on the left and then start going up as you go towards the right. We expect and assume things on the left to be smaller, so smaller numbers are supposed to be on the left, so we associate that with the fact that the price will be lower.
So in some of the experiments in this research, people, for example, thought that prices were up to 9.5% higher for products that were placed on the right-hand side.
I've mentioned before that menus listing higher priced beers first will increase sales due to the high anchor. But this doesn't work for product pricing plans that are listed from left to right on websites. Thomas says it's due to our association with left to right. We expect to see smaller numbers on the left. So if we see a high number on a left like a expensive $50 premium plan, then we actually perceive the price of all of the remaining products to be
9.49% higher on average according to the study. But there's another tip hidden within here. When we show these different pricing plans from left to right that gradually increase in price, well, when we do that, Thomas has a suggestion.
He says, rather than sharing the outright price, for example, the standard plan is $50 and the premium plan is $60, we should show the price difference. So, the standard plan is $50 and the premium plan is $10 more.
Now, what researchers found that you should focus on the difference in price. And this feels cheaper than showing full prices. For example, when it was framed this way, people were 40% more likely to buy a bicycle, a more premium bicycle, which was $60 more than $150 more basic version, and two times more likely to subscribe to a larger New York Times subscription plan.
This 2019 study is titled When More Seems Like Less. The research has found that a premium plan will seem cheaper because a price difference of $10 seems less than a total price of $60. Most of us are rushed with limited attention so we see a low price and we act. But Thomas says this won't work for every product.
You need to be careful because this does not work for more expensive, what are called high involvement purchases because people at this point will stop and really calculate the prices themselves.
Showing the price difference on a premium versus standard Tesla won't work. When the prices are in the thousands of pounds or thousands of dollars, consumers are just far too price aware. But for a shaving foam monthly subscription or weekly meal delivery kit, this tactic should work. But I had a question, should we offer a free trial? And if we do, how long should we offer it for? Well, I asked Thomas after this quick break.
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Hello and welcome back. You're listening to Nudge with me, Phil Agnew. Now, all of us know that free trials can increase sales. We know that test driving a car will make us more likely to buy. But how long should that trial last? I've worked at companies where we've offered a free trial for 30 days. Is that too long?
They tested three trial lengths, seven days, 14 days, and 30 days. They found that the shortest seven days led to 5.6 higher conversions, 6.4 better retention,
and 7.9% higher revenue, which is very significant. Why? They defined and then they hypothesized that because of the short time window, people are encouraged to immediately try the product and its features instead of just waiting, okay, I'm going to do that next week when I have a little bit more time.
I anyways have 30 days of free trial. People learn to become are more likely to become power users of your product because they really need to sit there and learn the features quickly. And once they know how to use your product, of course, they're more likely to use it more. This is a 2022 study published in the management science journal, but there is one thing the study didn't test.
One thing to note about the study, and this is something that you may want to try and test, is that the shortest length that they tested was seven days, but they did not test shorter trials. So maybe a three-day trial or a two-day trial, even a 24-hour trial, might bring even better effects, or it might just be too short and might backfire.
The study found that the more intensely people use a product during the free trial, the more likely they are to buy it. So shorter trials create a sense of urgency, which leads to more intense product use. So a super short trial could work for your business. But as always, it's worth trying it out for yourself.
This conversation about free trials reminded me of a bit of a raging argument I had at one of the previous companies I worked. The CEO was desperate to limit the features in the free trial. He was sure that giving customers too much would stop them from upgrading. But the chief product officer disagreed, saying that the free trial users should be able to access everything. I've always wondered in this argument who was right. So I asked Thomas what he thought.
you should not limit the features of your free trial. People should be able to try anything or almost anything as much as possible. What you should do instead is limit the usage of each of the features, right? So maybe you only get three downloads during the free trial versus unlimited downloads. In one study, for example, designing trials, so in one of the experiments, designing trials in this way allowed the company to increase prices.
and revenue by 7.7%, which is massive.
This 2020 study titled Digital Paywall Design found that limiting usage not features boosted subscriptions by 31%. The reason why is pretty simple. Being able to sample all types of features allows users to better understand how willing they are to pay for your product. So my chief product officer was right. Now, what about retaining customers? I asked Thomas if he had any advice for companies looking to keep hold of their best customers.
One study found a very smart, relatively low-cost way to do that, and that is reward who has been with you for a long time with a free gift. Imagine you have a limited bandwidth for each of the plans that you're offering. You have a customer which has been with you for maybe two years. Send them a 20% free, higher bandwidth offer, just as a gift. The free gift is a way for them to justify and reinforce that
they made the right decision to choose you to be with you and by giving this gift not only are you making them happy but you help them justify the fact that they made the right choice to choose you.
This 2020 study is titled Customer Inertia Marketing and it showed that free gifts reduce the likelihood that a loyal customer will leave. If Netflix sent me a packet of fancy salted popcorn for my next movie night, I'd be far less annoyed with their inevitable price hikes and more likely to stick around. But there's a caveat. These free gifts, they won't work for everyone.
Now, one very important caveat here is do not give these two recent customers to quite new ones because if you do, they will actually be incentivized to leave and go and look for other such free gifts and rewards from your competitors. Do not give free gifts to recent customers. It will backfire on them.
Now, overall, I really liked this tip because it simply suggested that being nice to loyal customers seems to work. And Thomas had a similar feel good finding to end on. Look, any business can hit a rough patch, you know, or go through a downturn, or some it will, of course, maybe end in the in bankruptcy. But for many, they will actually then recover over time and then start growing again. What is the first thing that a business business will do when they're going through a rough patch?
they're going to start cutting costs. And that includes canceling subscriptions to your software, downgrading. So instead, what you should try and do is identify customers that are going through these rough patches, these situations, these downturns. For example, maybe ask them, hey, why are you downgrading? Why are you trying to cancel? In these cases, be very generous with them.
give them a downgrade plan which maybe only limits their features or how much they can use your product just by small bit. Even though it's not very profitable for you, try to keep them on this downgraded plan while they're going through the rough batch. This goodwill isn't just a nice thing to do. It's scientifically proven to work. What happens is that they will stay with you during this bad time for them.
Then when they start growing again, they won't go and start shopping around for other providers. What they're going to do is that they're going to start spending more and more on you more than they ever did before. They've dropped all those other providers. They're now with you. Their business is growing. You've nurtured a really, really good customer with some generosity when they were going through a rough batch.
This 2020 study by Ross, Malloy and Carlson found how on average customers offered generous downgrades when going through a hard time will stay with the company and end up spending more in three years' time dramatically increasing the overall revenue for the company. It's classic reciprocity in action. We return favours and stick with companies who do us good.
All right, let's recap. To build a better website inspired by psychology, you should productise what your software does and be specific. Highlight only your top three key benefits. Show the before on the left and the after on the right. Aim for and display a great but imperfect average rating. Order plans left to right and place your price on the left-hand side. Focus on the price difference of premium plans like $15 more.
Don't make your free trial longer than seven days. Limit usage not features in your free trial. Give gifts to long-time customers to increase their total lifetime value and offer generous downgrades to customers going through a hard time. These are 10 tips that I reckon can improve any website.
Okay, that is all for today, folks. I want to say a huge thank you to Thomas McKinley. He runs my favorite newsletter and the only newsletter I read every week. Here's what it's about.
My main goal with science says is to close the gap between the latest scientific research in marketing and what we're doing in practice. Why? Because I just found it absurd how us marketers in practice, what we usually do is decades old in terms of what is scientific knowledge. What we do is we analyze these latest research papers and transform them into these.
short, very practical recommendations and try to make it as easy as possible for you to put those into action.
So go and subscribe to science says it's fantastic. I've left a link to the newsletter in the show notes. Now, if you've enjoyed today's show, you might like the free bonus episode we put together. So Thomas has been on the show three times before he shared dozens of studies that could help improve your marketing. So to help you out, if you haven't, or even if you have listened to those previous episodes, I've combined all three of them into one trimmed down mega bonus episode.
On the bonus episode, Thomas tells me why I should tell people how many times the podcast has been listened to, what he learned from reading 74 different scientific papers, and how to create an irresistible offer. To get access to that bonus episode, all you have to do is click the link in the show notes of today's episode. Just enter your email address there. And once you do, you'll be sent straight to the bonus episode. If you're already a nudge newsletter subscriber, then just click the link in the email for today's episode and get access there.
Okay, I hope you enjoyed today's show. As always, I'll be back next Monday for another episode of Nudge. Cheers.
