It's always important to cater to customers when creating your e-commerce site and its landing pages...

Prospects should always be able to find what they're looking for when they want it at every step of the buying process from research to the final purchase.

One of the best ways to meet your customers' needs is to look at the buying process from their perspective to understand what they're looking for at every point when interacting with your e-commerce site. Subsequently, you should have a strong understanding of a person's psychology when making buying decisions.

The following are some ways you can implement human psychology into your development process to create the ideal user experience.

Avoid Overwhelming Buyers with Choices

Choice overload is a simple concept: Consumers facing an overabundance of choices can become overwhelmed, leading to dissatisfaction with their final selection in many cases. For instance, a service package might feature a wide variety of options or a wide selection of products could feature various features, making it difficult to settle for just one option.

There are certain circumstances that could lead to consumers feeling overwhelmed with choice overload, including:

• Decision task difficulty - Consumers might feel pressured to make a decision quickly without thoroughly reviewing their options
• Choice set complexity - The variation of data that a person needs to look through when making a decision
• Decision goal - The consumer could be researching products and services and isn't necessarily ready to make a purchase
• Preference uncertainty - A person may not entirely understand what it is they want in a product or service category

While it may be difficult to control all of these, you can more easily control choice set complexity by structuring your e-commerce site in a way that helps limit their choices based on clearly indicated preferences. Advanced search functions and product comparisons can cater to shoppers' preferences and more effectively give them what they want.

Implement Visual Priming

You can use your website's colors and images to influence people's choices when browsing your online store in a technique known as "visual priming," in which a certain trigger in an image or background might cue someone to focus more on a specific product or feature.

A 2002 study published in the Journal of Consumer Research found how visual priming affected buyers' decisions. Specifically, each experiment in the study involved subjects viewing introductory webpages on an online furniture store with background images that were intended to inspire certain thinking patterns. Some color schemes and images using blue hues were designed to evoke comfort in the user while others with a greener background and images of money made consumers more price-centric in their thinking.

As a result of this "priming," consumers made certain decisions and looked at information about products based partly on the backgrounds they encountered. For instance, subjects who viewed the blue sky-themed background sought furniture based on comfort levels, while those viewing the green background looked for furniture options according to price.

Depending on your goals and the products you're trying to sell, you can also use visual priming to influence the buyer's decision more indirectly.

Use Social Influence

Informational social influence, or social proof, can greatly influence purchasing choices. Just take a look at businesses on Facebook and the number of Facebook friends who "like" certain businesses. If more friends like a company's page, you're probably more inclined to become a customer if you become interested in their products or services.

Your e-commerce website can take advantage of social proof techniques by including product or service reviews and testimonials from past customers. The more positive things people have to say about your business and recommend you, the more this will convince prospects to make a purchase.

Some websites even allow users to sort reviews based on customers who are similar to them according to factors such as age, gender, and clothing size.

Frame Consumers' Ideas

Using anchoring, you can frame buyers' ideas based on the first data point they encounter on your website or elsewhere. For instance, if you're looking for pricing for a type of shoe, you might come across one price and subsequently compare every other price to that initial dollar amount.

On your e-commerce site, you can provide users with a specific frame of reference for what is affordable vs. expensive. One of the most effective ways to do this is to create and display a comprehensive pricing table that highlights price points and the features included with them, which many websites include when selling service packages from "standard" to "premium" versions.

All of the methods discussed here can combine to influence buyers' decisions and align them with your business goals. If you're trying to sell one type of product or a series, try to implement visual priming, anchoring, and social influence without overwhelming the consumer with too many options. In the process, you can boost sales and increase customer satisfaction and retention in the long-term.

‍