The Neuroscience Behind CRO

With an array of design features and form considerations, landing pages can be challenging to get exactly right. A/B testing can tell you a great deal about your website, but you can't forget about making a human connection.

It's easy to rely on technology to drive marketing efforts forward, but this may not be the most successful technique.

If you want website visitors to take a particular action, you need to think about what will motivate them to do this.

Neuroscience is starting to gain more attention in the marketing field.

How Neuroscience is Impacting Marketing

Although traditional marketing has always depended on outward actions as a measure of effectiveness, neuroscientists have pointed out there's a great deal that goes on in the brain that makes a campaign succeed or fail, according to Fast Company.

To understand what really drives consumer behaviors, marketers need to dig deeper. Because of this, "neuromarketing" is becoming a new trend in the industry, which means the study of neurological responses to promotional messages.

While this concept may seem highly complicated, you don't have to study countless brain scans to understand the response to your landing pages. One of the reasons neuroscience is so applicable in marketing and advertising is because humans can control their own happiness and make choices. People clearly see rewards, so they can view the value of their choices. Many actions tie back to this basic instinct of wanting to be rewarded.

Many brands that succeed at applying neuroscience concepts into their marketing efforts prioritize purpose over revenue. These companies focus on creating a high-quality product with their target audience in mind.

For example, outdoor outfitter Patagonia promotes its contributions to environmental sustainability campaigns, which appeals to its target customers. This approach has paid off - Patagonia has tripled its profits in the past five years, despite prioritizing customer concerns. It's effective: People are willing to pay a higher sticker price for a jacket because part of the cost is donating to sustainability efforts and they feel good about the purchase.

Neurological insights could prompt a major shift toward more customer-centric marketing content if this approach is implemented correctly.

How You Can Apply Neuroscience to a Landing Page

Before you can start applying psychological insights across all your marketing efforts, you can start with your landing pages to improve conversion rate optimization. This is the first step in making stronger emotional connections with customers.

Although neuromarketing is just coming into vogue, it's important to remember the human brain's wiring has changed very little in the past 50,000 years, as Retail Online Integration noted.

However, it's easy to get wrapped up in new technology and forget what actually drives human behavior. Even though marketers have new ways to reach their target audience, it's important to focus on customer motivations first rather than the systems themselves.

With that in mind, here are some tips on how to boost landing page CRO and get the results you want from your marketing efforts:

First Impressions Really Count

Consumers are likely to fixate on the first thing they see, especially price. On product pages, it may be effective to list the most expensive items first and scale down to the less costly products. This makes it seem lower-priced products seem like a fair compromise. In addition, context is extremely important and should be a consideration in any Landing Page Design.

How information is presented will impact visitors' decisions, such as whether they stay on your website, follow your call to action or fill out a form. You need to consider how visitors arrive on your site. Depending on the banner ad, they may have certain expectations when they get there.

If the context is wrong, your landing page won't be very compelling.

Humans Still Belong to Tribes

Like we said, human motivations haven't changed for the past 50,000 years. People still take their personal affiliations very seriously. This means marketers need to maintain a good sense of exactly their target audience is. If you cater to more than one consumer segment, it's important to design unique landing pages that speak to each group's concerns and interests. Tone is really important to convey your message.

Visuals Spark Quick Decisions

As mobile technology becomes more pervasive, visual information is more important in marketing. As the adage goes, a picture is worth 1,000 words. Half of the brain is devoted to processing visual data, which means this information can be absorbed more quickly than text.

People pay attention to motion first, graphics second and text third.

It's important to keep this in mind if you include animation on your landing pages because it can distract from text conveying critical details at the top of the page. Because people are bound to notice images, you should avoid generic stock images when possible. This can also detract from compelling copy. Consider dropping animation unless it's directly relevant to your call to action.

Consumer decisions and behavior are closely tied to the science that makes up our brains. Understanding what drives these actions can make for more effective, high converting landing pages. Presenting clear choices to website visitors can make your call to action more likely to convert. Make sure your message is tailored to your target audience for the best results.

How do you use landing pages to make an emotional connection with visitors?