Clever Tactics That Boost Conversions (and Why)

Small differences can be persuasive.

Which option would you choose:

• Trip to Rome
• Trip to Paris + $1

Both options are so unique that $1 is meaningless.

But choose again:

• Trip to Paris
• Trip to Paris + $1

Well, now it's different. If options are highly similar, a minuscule difference can matter. Highlight similarities between your product and a competitor, then show a positive difference in your product.

You just need a tiny difference.

Consider a smartphone with a 30-hour battery. Customers are equally tempted by any competitor with a longer battery regardless of the size difference (e.g., 31-hour, 40-hour). It's called positive contrast scope-insensitivity (Voichek & Novemsky, 2024).

Customers initiate a comparison:

• Hmm, is this option better or worse?

But they prematurely stop this assessment if the option is better:

• If better: Great!
• If worse: Hmm, by how much?

Ultimately, features are rarely evaluated by how much they're better. Only by how much they're worse.

How to Apply

• Prioritize New Benchmarks. Customers are insensitive to the size of advantages. Once you surpass an industry metric, focus on beating a new metric. Persuade customers with the number of benchmarks you beat, rather than superiority within benchmarks.
• Prioritize Weak Features. Weaknesses are influenced by severity, so prioritize features that are underperforming by a wide margin.
• Differentiate Any Feature. Folgers differentiated their coffee as flaked crystals, even though this feature was meaningless for taste. Likewise, a jacket with alpine class down fill seemed better than regular down filling even though customers were told that this feature was irrelevant to functionality (Carpenter et al., 1994).

• Carpenter, G. S., Glazer, R., & Nakamoto, K. (1994). Meaningful brands from meaningless differentiation: The dependence on irrelevant attributes. Journal of marketing research, 31(3), 339-350.
• Jia, Y., Ouyang, J., Dong, J. Q., & Jiang, Y. (2024). EXPRESS: Framing of Differences: Visual Product Frames Reduce Consumer Choice Deferrals. Journal of Marketing, 00222429241280224.
• Lee, M., Carswell, C. M., Seidelman, W., & Sublette, M. (2012). The design of product comparison tables and its effects on decision making. In Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting (Vol. 56, No. 1, pp. 1654-1658). SAGE.
• Sun, Y., & Mellers, B. (2016). Trade-upgrade framing effects: Trades are losses, but upgrades are improvements. Judgment and Decision making, 11(6), 582-588.
• Wen, N., & Lurie, N. H. (2019). More than aesthetic: visual boundaries and perceived variety. Journal of Retailing, 95(3), 86-98.
• Voichek, G., & Novemsky, N. (2024). Positive Contrast Scope Insensitivity. Journal of Consumer Research, ucae052.

Most products are multi-sensory.

Consider wine. It has color, fizz, fragrance, texture, and other traits besides taste.

Well, these sensory traits are embedded in the neural wiring of your concept for wine (Barsalou, 1999). By including all sensory traits in your product imagery:

• Your wine will be activated more intensely.
• Intense activation strengthens emotions.
• Stronger emotions motivate purchases.

How to Apply

• Display Scented Objects. In Walmart’s catalog, only 27% of scented products actually show the scented object in the product image (yet these products earn higher ratings; Sharma & Estes, 2024).
• Enlarge the Trigger. Add more flowers, etc. (Lyu & Huang, 2024).
• Strengthen the Trigger. Not all triggers are equal. Cleaning products are preferred with images of sliced lemons because you can see the inside juices, so you feel a stronger sensation (Sharma & Estes, 2024). Perhaps you could bolster cinnamon sticks with ground cinnamon (which exudes a stronger aroma).

• Add Videos With Sounds. Blenders and knives seem more powerful when they emit loud sounds (Ringler et al., 2021; Løkke‐Andersen et al., 2022).
• Include Sensory Words. Words like crumble and juicy can activate the senses more than images. In sponsored videos on TikTok, each additional sensory word was associated with 11k more likes and comments (Silva et al., 2021; Cascio et al., 2023).

• Barsalou, L. W. (1999). Perceptual symbol systems. Behavioral and brain sciences, 22(4), 577-660.
• Cascio Rizzo, G. L., Berger, J., De Angelis, M., & Pozharliev, R. (2023). How sensory language shapes influencer’s impact. Journal of Consumer Research, 50(4), 810-825.
• Chen, Y. C., & Spence, C. (2010). When hearing the bark helps to identify the dog: Semantically-congruent sounds modulate the identification of masked pictures. Cognition, 114(3), 389-404.
• Hattula, J. D., Herzog, W., & Dhar, R. (2023). The impact of touchscreen devices on consumers’ choice confidence and purchase likelihood. Marketing Letters, 34(1), 35-53.
• Løkke‐Andersen, C. B., Wang, Q. J., & Giacalone, D. (2022). User experience design approaches for accommodating high “need for touch” consumers in ecommerce. Journal of sensory studies, 37(2), e12727.
• Lyu, M., & Huang, Q. (2024). Visual elements in advertising enhance odor perception and purchase intention: The role of mental imagery in multi-sensory marketing. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 78, 103752.
• Ringler, C., Sirianni, N. J., & Christenson, B. (2021). The power of consequential product sounds. Journal of Retailing, 97(2), 288-300.
• Sharma, V., & Estes, Z. (2024). Seeing is smelling: Pictures improve product evaluations by evoking olfactory imagery. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 41(2), 282-307.
• Silva, S. C., Rocha, T. V., De Cicco, R., Galhanone, R. F., & Mattos, L. T. M. F. (2021). Need for touch and haptic imagery: An investigation in online fashion shopping. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 59, 102378.

Color often implies strength.

Saturated colors are typically used for:

• Storms on maps
• Warning signs
• Large amounts in graphs

Not surprisingly, researchers noticed that product images are more saturated for products that convey strength or potency (e.g., strong, powerful, effective; Labrecque et al., 2024).

And they confirmed a causal effect: More saturation? Stronger product.

For example, students used less hand sanitizer with a vibrant color because they believed a smaller amount was needed (Labrecque et al., 2024).

How to Apply

• Adjust Any Color. Need to convey a strong product? Increase the saturation of products, packaging, or backgrounds. A gray coffee maker seemed more effective with a saturated background.

Caveats: Reduce Saturation For

• Natural. A facial cleanser seemed gentler in a dull color (Labrecque et al., 2024).
• Eco-Friendly. Dull colors seem untouched by artificial dyes (Pichierri & Pino, 2023).
• Embarrassing. Saturation grabs attention, so customers believe that more people will look at them with a highly saturated product. They prefer private or sensitive products with dull colors (e.g., condoms were preferred in gray packaging; Zhang et al., 2025).

• Labrecque, L. I., Sohn, S., Seegebarth, B., & Ashley, C. (2024). EXPRESS: Color Me Effective: the Impact of Color Saturation on Perceptions of Potency and Product Efficacy. Journal of Marketing, 00222429241296392.
• Pichierri, M., & Pino, G. (2023). Less saturated, more eco‐friendly: Color saturation and consumer perception of product sustainability. Psychology & Marketing, 40(9), 1830-1849.
• Zhang, X., Wang, J., Gong, X., & Cheng, S. (2025). Avoiding attention: The impact of embarrassment on preference for low-saturation design. Journal of Business Research, 186, 114900.

Everything is quantified nowadays.

We measure:

• Movies by Rotten Tomatoes.
• Websites by Domain Authority.
• Babies by Apgar scores.

Dubbed quantification fixation, this focus on numbers has created an instinctive preference for numerical superiority. Even if these options are worse overall.

For example, customers prefer hotels that are superior on whichever metric — price or quality — is quantified. And researchers replicated this effect across 21 scenarios (Chang et al., 2024).

Ultimately, you can influence behavior by quantifying advantages. Some governments encourage healthy eating by quantifying food healthiness, like Nutri-Score ratings:

Perhaps catalogs should replace a visual continuum of stars with a single digit, like Airbnb:

A single digit will intensify a preference for quality (and typically higher prices).

Or you can curb harmful behaviors by restricting quantification. Perhaps social media companies should depict engagement visually instead of quantitatively:

Visual approaches can still convey the amount of engagement, yet this UI tweak might improve the mental health for billions of people by removing a key culprit in unhealthy comparisons — i.e., digits.

The authors said it best: When we count, we change what counts (Chang et al., 2024).

How to Apply

• Invent an Industry Metric. Is your bread softer than competitors? Show a softness score. Or any metric that aligns with your competitive advantage (e.g., crispiness, tastiness; Hsee et al., 2009).
• Show Unit Prices. You can nudge customers from a 4-pack of batteries to a 20-pack by showing the unit prices in which $0.70/battery is numerically cheaper than $1.20/battery (Yao & Oppewal, 2016).
• Write Precise Numbers for Accuracy. Round numbers feel vague and abstract. A project that takes 1 year seems like it could be delayed, compared to a project that takes 52 weeks (Zhang & Schwarz, 2012).

• Chang, L. W., Kirgios, E. L., Mullainathan, S., & Milkman, K. L. (2024). Does counting change what counts? Quantification fixation biases decision-making. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 121(46), e2400215121.
• Hsee, C. K., Yang, Y., Gu, Y., & Chen, J. (2009). Specification seeking: How product specifications influence consumer preference. Journal of consumer research, 35(6), 952-966.
• Yao, J., & Oppewal, H. (2016). Unit pricing increases price sensitivity even when products are of identical size. Journal of Retailing, 92(1), 109-121.
• Zhang, Y. C., & Schwarz, N. (2012). How and why 1 year differs from 365 days: A conversational logic analysis of inferences from the granularity of quantitative expressions. Journal of Consumer Research, 39(2), 248-259.

Attitudes are plagued with uncertainty.

Customers are unaware how they truly feel in many scenarios, often determining their attitudes by judging their behavior: Hmm, I'm eating. So I must be hungry.

You can influence attitudes by orienting attention toward these behaviors. For example, Netflix provides three ratings for their content:

• Not for me
• Like this
• Love this

All ratings are positive because any negative sentiment (e.g., Dislike This) would create a self-fulfilling prophecy: Hmm, guess I hate Netflix content. So why am I subscribed?

Replace Sorry With Thank You

Imagine that a contractor is 1-hour late. You might hear:

• Sorry for for the wait.
• Thank you for waiting.

Sorry reduces satisfaction because customers infer that something negative has happened to them, whereas thank you implies that customers are forgiving and patient. So they act forgivingly. This example has been replicated across dozens of scenarios (You et al., 2020).

Frame New Customers as First-Timers

WiderFunnel boosted conversions for a nonprofit by asking visitors to select an option. I'm a:

• Regular donor
• Occasional donor
• First-time donor

New visitors affirmed their identity as a first-time donor, which compelled them to donate. An option like "I've never donated" would have reinforced this passive inaction.

Rationalize Negative Behaviors

You always hear: It doesn't hurt to ask.

Well, it can hurt. If you reject or ignore a call to action, you might convince yourself that you dislike this brand: Hmm, why didn't I share their message? Guess I don't like them (Gvili & Levy, 2024).

Always rationalize inaction with a positive spin. If customers scroll to the end of your catalog without clicking any products, show a link to your Product Quiz. Blame their inaction on indecisiveness, not apathy.

Same with skipping behavior. Users who skipped an option to contribute to their savings account were less likely to contribute in the future because contributions seemed less important. Users needed to see a follow-up message that reinforced the importance of savings (Reiff et al., 2023).

Highlight a Customer's Loyal Behavior

Customers feel loyal to a brand if their actions resemble a loyal customer. Perhaps mention competing alternatives they've ignored:

...if a salesperson identifies a consumer who is likely to purchase an Apple iPhone, making them aware of a Samsung promotion could cause them to experience resistance toward that offer and result in the purchase of supplemental services like insurance as well as branded accessories (Pratt et al., 2023).

• Gvili, Y., & Levy, S. (2024). Vive la résistance: a boomerang effect of resisting incentivized eWOM on consumer trust. International Journal of Advertising, 1-23.
• Pratt, A. B., Robinson, S. G., Voorhees, C. M., Wang, J., & Giebelhausen, M. D. (2023). Unintended effects of price promotions: Forgoing competitors’ price promotions strengthens incumbent... Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 51(5), 1143-1164.
• Reiff, J., Dai, H., Beshears, J., Milkman, K. L., & Benartzi, S. (2023). Save more today or tomorrow: the role of urgency in precommitment design. Journal of Marketing Research, 60(6), 1095-1113.
• You, Y., Yang, X., Wang, L., & Deng, X. (2020). When and why saying “thank you” is better than saying “sorry” in redressing service failures: The role of self-esteem. Journal of Marketing, 84(2), 133-150.