CRO Testing Shows Power of Urgency Tactics in E-Commerce

Conversion Rate Optimization Results for Urgency Tests – Infographic

When you create a sense of urgency, you give people an incentive to buy immediately.

CRO Testing Shows Power of Urgency Tactics in E-Commerce – An infographic by the team at Ignite Visibility

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There are two ways to create a sense of urgency in your CRO testing:

• Fear of loss – limited time to buy
  • “But now and get free shipping!”
  • “This sale ends at midnight!”
• Scarcity – limited quantity
  • “Hurry! Only 2 items left in stock!”
  • “Registration closes once we reach 100 attendees!”

Case Study: Creating a sense of urgency increased conversions by 332%

Marcus Taylor of Venture Harbour launched a type of Groupon deal for musicians. In the CRO testing, he gave away $1,250 worth of products for just $69 for 100 hours.

He tried two variations:

• Variation A – no sense of urgency text
• Variation B – fear of loss sense of urgency text (“Time left to download”)
• The conversion rate of Variation B was 3x higher than Variation A.
• After implementing the variation to all visitors, conversions increased from 3.5% to 10%.

“If you do your job right, customers have to feel guilty if they don’t buy right now.” – Joseph Sugarman, AdWeek Copywriting Handbook

“Opportunities seem more valuable to us when their availability is limited.” – Robert Cialdini, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

A 1975 study showed that people value items more when they’re scarce. Researchers put a jar filled with 10 cookies in front of participants and another jar with 2 cookies in front of a separate group of participants. Even though the cookies and the jars were the same, the participants valued the nearly empty jar of cookies more.

5 Specific Types of Urgency to Use in E-commerce CRO Testing

• Time-based urgency
  • Order now and get it by [Date]
  • Limited time offer (“10% off the entire site for the next 60 minutes!”)
  • Live auction or countdown – works best for webinars or events that will happen on a specific date
    • Page Expiration Robot
    • Scarcity Builder
  • Limited Edition Items
• Quantity Based Urgency
  • Limited quantities

Be Careful! Creating a Sense of Urgency Can Backfire!

• If it’s a bad offer, it doesn’t matter how much urgency you add
• If you make a statement that isn’t true (“we’ll sell out in the next few days”), the customer will know you’re lying and you’ll lose the sale
• Don’t create artificial scarcity (holding low quantities in inventory just to keep up the appearance of scarcity)
• Remember: urgency does not equal persuasion!

Sources

• http://www.sellbrite.com/blog/5-top-urgency-tactics-you-can-use-to-boost-ecommerce-conversions-today/
• https://vwo.com/blog/use-urgency-scarcity-increase-ecommerce-sales/
• https://econsultancy.com/blog/63680-15-ways-ecommerce-sites-can-use-urgency-to-increase-conversions/
• https://blog.kissmetrics.com/urgency-to-fuel-ecommerce-sales/