How successful online businesses create urgency: 10 examples
Human beings are primaeval at times. Successful e-commerce websites play on our basic human emotions to great effect. Marketers skilled in conversion rate optimisation are developing techniques to override rational behaviour in order to create urgency and increase conversion rate. In this blog, we take a look at ten examples of how online sites create a sense of urgency to speed up consumers’ decision making:
As a school kid I dreaded the lunchtime ritual of picking football teams. Captains would be chosen to pick the teams and as someone in the line up you hoped to get picked early. I, like many other kids, was deeply worried about being one of the last to be picked. The message could easily be put another way: “you’re no good at football.”
With hindsight it feels likes a small thing to get worried about, but there are some very basic yet fundamental human emotions at work here:
- Hunter / warrior competitiveness
- A need to be liked and / or be successful
- A desire to be on the right / winning team
These emotions are the very ones that marketers want to tap into because they will often override rational buying behaviour.
These are the emotional buttons you need to press to speed up your decision-making process on your website. Creating a sense of urgency in the mind of the consumer is a proven approach to increasing conversion rates. The specific techniques include:
- Limited sales period
- Only X left in stock
- If you order in the next X minutes/hours you can have it tomorrow
What these approaches have in common is that they play on the fear that consumers have of missing out on opportunities – particularly those they perceive to be of financial or rarity value. Our innate competitiveness means we are compelled to consider such an offer simply because we know that someone else will.
Equally, consumers love the feeling of having successfully bought a product or service under a limited promotion or offer. Most people like being a “winner”.
Example 1: Amazon
Amazon has delivered a double whammy on this page. I’m particularly interested in learning R (an open source statistics package) at the moment and having found this book on Amazon they gave me a number of reasons to purchase. However there are two in particular that challenge me to buy now (or very soon). Firstly Amazon advises in bold green there are only 5 left in stock. Secondly (and this is one that gets me every time) if you order in the next 22 hours you will get this book by Saturday.
Example 2: daFlores.com
daFlores.com is one of the largest florists in Latin America. To prod site visitors into action they added a clock to all the product list pages indicating how long was left to order to receive same day delivery. This had two benefits: 1) To promote its same day delivery service, 2) to increase conversion rate – which it did by 27%. Not bad for just adding a clock!
Example 3: Moo.com
The business card sector is ruthless at the best of times, with a large number of suppliers to choose from. Although the offer is not as good as the banner suggests, Moo.com are offering a 2-day turnaround on your business cards if you order before midnight. For the time-poor business person this is a very compelling message.
Example 4: Republic
Everyone likes getting a discount especially when it is 20%, so when you see the words “Last Chance!” (even if it might not be entirely true) you feel inclined to at least investigate further. The combination of a time-closed offer and money-off is the cornerstone of many successful promotions.
Example 5: Argos
Argos, like many companies, is keen to dispose of previous season’s stock as quickly as possible. It may not be the prettiest page but the copy and the constant indication of how many products are left in each category increases generates more sales.
Example 6: Dell Auctions
Auction sites are exemplars for creating a sense of urgency. Not only are consumers presented with good offers which are time sensitive they are competing against other people which adds that extra level of tension and excitement – a great way to sell off a lot of old stock.
Example 7: ADT
We found this example in one of Avinash Kaushik’s latest blogs. Avinash liked this page for a whole host of reasons but the one element he highlighted was the top red banner. Firstly the site had detected where Avinash lived in the United States and then calculated how long he had left to put his order in for a security system relative to the opening hours of the ADT office. Simple but highly effective.
Example 8: Harvest
Harvest is an SAAS (Software as a service) product offering a web-based timesheets service to businesses.
Like many SAAS companies, Harvest’s primary marketing aim is to get potential customers to try the product, because they believe that once the user has tried it they will want to use it permanently.
Therefore promotion of trial is often the focus with these types of sites. Notice the barrier to trial is minimal. The trial is free and no credit cards details are required. For someone who is investigating using such a timesheet product there are few barriers to trialling the product.
Example 9: CloudHQ
Cloud HQ is another SAAS product offering a cloud based service which enables syncing between a number of different cloud based services such as Dropbox, Google Drive and Evernote. CloudHQ have used every “sense of urgency” technique possible:
- Free trial
- No credit card required
- The annual fee is the cost of only 10 monthly fees (very common promotional technique amongst SAAS companies)
- For the premium product there is a discounted monthly or annual plan fee that is discounted for life if you take out the product by February 15th.
Example 10: ASOS
Finally – and this is my favourite – because it focuses on a slightly different conversion compared to the other examples.
ASOS has focused on one of the key issues consumers have with ecommerce sites – which is delivery and delivery charges in particular. For only £9.95 a year (which in itself is a limited offer) an ASOS customer is entitled to unlimited next day deliveries with no minimum order value.
I think this is very clever because it works on two levels. Firstly it uses similar techniques to the ones demonstrated in previous examples – a time limited offer. Additionally once the user is signed up I believe it will make them much more likely to purchase from ASOS than from competitor sites because they want to take advantage of their free delivery service which they have paid for.
It’s not often you see a sense of urgency technique trying to generate long term loyalty.
As always we welcome any comments and opinions. If you have any good examples of SAAS or e-commerce websites creating a sense of urgency to increase conversion rate, we would love to hear about them.
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