Need help deciding which Session Replay tool is best for your business? Is Hotjar or Clarity sufficient or do you need a more advanced tool? This article will answer those questions and ensure you get value from your Session Replay tool. Whilst...

Why Consumer Behaviour? When you want to make a new product or create a marketing campaign, the most important thing is consumer behaviour. Their behaviour and habits as well as their decision making process is what defines your next...

Why Do Psychological Tactics Work? Psychological tactics boost conversions because studies have shown that 90% of consumers’ buying decisions are influenced by emotions. In almost any case, a website will try to sell a product or a service....

Conversion killers are often caused by designers and webmasters copying trends and ideas they see on other websites. Many of these ideas are then implemented without a proper evaluation of how they influence user behaviour and conversion...

Have you read Inside the Nudge Unit – How Small Changes Make a Big Difference? A majority of people understand the basic principles of an experiment as they probably had to conduct one or two when they were at school. Unfortunately once people...

We all know that the timing of a request or intervention can have a huge influence on the response we get. This is why timely is an important element of EAST (EASY, ATTRACTIVE, SOCIAL, TIMELY) and other behavioural change frameworks. EAST was...

In my first post on optimising gambling sites I covered the psychology behind using bonuses as an acquisition tool. In this post you will learn about the challenges of optimising account creation and registration forms. Regulation Forms and...

Why is it when most people make New Year resolutions they don't change their behaviour? According to the psychologist BJ Fogg, the reason most attempts at behavioural change fail is that we don't create new habits. However, marketing is all about...

This post will talk about 7 Neuromarketing hacks to skyrocket your success and how to apply this knowledge to your own blog. Would you believe me if I said that deep inside we are still those savages who lived in caves and walked around in leather...

In a report on A/B testing Martin Goodson at Qubit suggests that "most A/B winning test results are illusory". Andre Morys at Web Arts goes even further and argues that “90% of test results are a lie.” If their estimates are correct then a lot...

Many organisations offer their best customers exclusive rewards to acknowledge their value and to reduce churn amongst their most valuable customer segment. The entourage effect suggests this exclusivity can sometimes harm the effectiveness of a...

If you want to improve your website conversion rate it’s essential that you understand the behaviour and motivations of your visitors. If like me you run a start-up and have a very limited budget. You might think you can’t afford user...

Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) is on a roll but is a silo mentality undermining the effectiveness of CRO? Companies are falling over themselves to recruit CRO specialist. Yet few companies are getting the uplifts in conversion that they...

Averages are everywhere in digital marketing. Mobile designers use average thumb size to determine button height and project teams often base decisions on the average user. Many metrics are also based on averages such as click-through rates, open...

How many times have you completed a task or arrived somewhere without thinking about how you achieved it? That's your subconscious mind in action, making fast and automatic decisions with little or no conscious awareness of the decisions we...

Behavioural change is not easy. Have you ever tried to change a long-standing habit or create a new habit? Perhaps you tried to give up smoking, eat fewer sugary foods, start taking regular exercise, or just spend less time on social media. It’s...

Do you want to use Behavioural Science to boost conversions? In the book, The Growth Strategy That’s Being Ignored, Paul Rouke and other contributors argue that for conversion rate optimisation (CRO) to be a significant driver of...

Survivorship Bias & Website Optimisation: During World War II, researchers at the US Centre for Naval Analyses were given a difficult problem to solve. They were asked to reinforce US bombers to reduce aircraft losses over enemy territory....

Sub-Conscious Motivations Are Hidden From Us: Neuroscience suggests that up to 95% of our decisions are made by our emotional sub-conscious brain. Yet most research targets the conscious mind. To understand implicit (psychological) goals it is...

The Power of Commitment & Consistency! Why is commitment and consistency one of the most powerful and persuasive techniques? Why would people ignore long held opinions and follow a course of action against their own best interests? What...

What is Narrative Fallacy? and have you noticed social media’s obsession with the habits of successful people? How politicians suggest simple solutions to complex problems and the appeal of magical ‘silver bullet’ fixes? People like to...

What is the Bandwagon Effect? The bandwagon effect is a psychological tendency where the adoption of ideas, products or behaviour increases with the uptake (or perceived uptake) by others. This means the propensity of people taking up the...

Top Blog Posts - What Happened in 2016? Below are some of the top blog posts in 2016. This has been a great year for Conversion-Uplift as I now offer conversion rate consultancy services to a range of organisations. I also migrated from Tumblr...

Bonuses on Gambling Sites: Until I moved to Gibraltar, the self-proclaimed home of online gambling sites. I had not given much thought to the challenges of optimising gambling sites and how they use bonuses to attract new customers. I previously...

Learn the psychological secrets of Pokemon Go’s success! In just two weeks Pokemon Go, the augmented reality smartphone game designed by Niantic, achieved over 21 million active users in the US, more than Candy Crush did at its peak. The...

Marketing is a Discipline! In a recent podcast, Rory Sutherland, of Ogilvy and Mather UK, said that the second client marketing departments are "reduced to 'MarComs' marketing is almost lost". So why do organisations think...

Does Usability Research Measure Reality? Usability research is essential for checking whether a site or app is intuitive and easy to navigate to create a great customer experience. It helps inform our decisions about the choice architecture....

Do Images of Beautiful Women Influence Behaviour? Images of beautiful women are often used on websites to get attention and sell products. This is probably because sex is one of our strongest and most basic instincts. We sometimes make decisions...

Conversion Optimisation Strategy: Poker is a game of strategy and just like conversion optimisation unless you have a clear strategy you are sure to lose. When I was optimising a major poker website and app I decided I needed to get under the...

Low-contrast text is a concern because much of the information we glean from a website is in the form of letters, words, sentences and paragraphs. They communicate how the site can help visitors complete a task or achieve a goal. This is...

This post explores the science of how culture influences website design and conversion rate optimisation. Marketing is about persuading visitors to take action. But what if your visitors come from a range of different countries and cultures? Will...

Labels are helpful right? Without labels we are unable to categorise products, services, websites, cars, even people and many other things. I keep coming across websites and apps that use icons without labels. Are they completely mad or do they...

Here are twelve brilliant digital marketing books that will give you insights into conversion rate optimisation, marketing, design, usability and the psychology of visitor behaviour. These are excellent books for helping you define your strategy...

Names and the psychological associations they hold are so deeply rooted in our psyche that we are magnetically drawn towards the concepts they embody. These associations are so strong that they can result in behaviour that is automatic and totally...

To encourage visitors to undertake a new behaviour on your website, such as making a first purchase or playing a game. You might want to offer something to reward that activity. But when should you provide a reward and how do you encourage...

11 Psychological Instincts To Grab Visitor Attention: Instincts are triggered by our brain to alert us to threats. We are programmed to respond to some instincts, such as fear, without any conscious thought to protect us from harm. Fear and...

Why Are Voice of Customer surveys fundamentally flawed? Voice of Customer (VoC) surveys are a popular, but deeply flawed for organisations to monitor customer preferences and levels of satisfaction. They follow a standard process of using...

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman: Every time I revisit Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow I discover new insights and learn more about human behaviour. I gleaned more from the introduction to this book than the entirety of many...

Why do people use focus groups to evaluate new designs? "Focus groups are not usability tests" says the usability expert Steve Krug in his book Don't Make Me Think. But focus groups are also a very flawed method of research for evaluating any...

Are Emotional Benefits Important? Marketing people often talk about connecting emotionally with the target audience. Brands want to engage with us at an emotional level. They encourage us to like them on Facebook. Indeed, research often brings...

The Psychology of Cognitive Load: To improve the user experience it is essential to understand how visitor behaviour is influenced by cognitive load. User behaviour is largely intuitive and is heavily influenced by how easily a task or goal is...

Are People Consumers? Marketers and researchers often use the term ‘consumer’ to describe customers and prospects. We conduct consumer research, and measure consumer awareness of brands. We also have consumer confidence measures as if they...

Can most of the things we buy really be the result of the behaviour and opinions of other people, whether openly or through covert imitation? This challenges conventional thinking about how people make decisions and common assumptions that...

Why Do People Cooperate in Social Networks? What underlies the evolutionary success of the human race and allows social networks to function? In the book I’ll have what she’s having by Bentley, Earls and O'Brien, the authors’ assert that...

Do People Act in Isolation? People do not act in isolation, they connect with many people though highly complex social networks, this influences our behaviour. In ‘I’ll have what she’s having’; Mark Earls and his co-authors explain how...

What Drives Consumer Behaviour? Consumer behaviour is a complex process which behavioural economics is now helping us to better understand. Most marketing theories on consumer behaviour is based on models that do not fit the purpose. As a...

Why do people suffer from loss aversion? As anyone who has bought stocks during a bull market will know, making a quick profit is great. But making a loss is difficult to stomach! Behavioural scientists call this loss aversion. People are...

There is a perception that decision making in financial services (FS) is far more rational than with fast moving consumer goods. FS products have more long-term consequences. Decision making is emotional and impulsive. This view is strongly held...

How Does The Brain See A CAPTCHA? CAPTCHA's are a popular way of stopping bots or machines interact with certain elements on a website. But how does a person's brain react to a CAPTCHA? To understand this we need to consider how people make...

Conversion rate optimisation is about persuading visitors to convert. Persuasive content that utilises psychological triggers can help you significantly improve your conversion rate. Outlined below are 17 conversion optimisation tips and techniques...

What is not invented here bias? Even in the digital age new ideas and innovations can take a long time to be adopted by organisations that could benefit from them. Why is this? Not invented here bias refers to where “If I (or we) didn’t...

Why are focus groups problematic? When I first set out as a client-side Customer Insight Manager focus groups were frequently suggested to me as a suitable exploratory method of research. Initially this wasn’t a problem. I was new to the...