This is the second post in a six part series that looks at Robert Cialdini’s 6 Principles Of Persuasion and identifies areas in which they can be used to increase a websites conversion rate. Want to know more about this series? Read the Introduction post.

What is the principle of Commitment?

The principle of commitment is also often called the principle of consistency.

Cialdini believes that we as people have a deep desire to be consistent. This is the reason once we have committed to something, we are more likely to go through with it.

What this means is that once we have made an initial commitment or taken a certain stand/position on a topic we are much more likely/willing to agree to requests that are consistent with our earlier commitment or stand-point.

Commitments are more powerful when they are public or known by others as people believe they have to continue to be seen to be consistent with their earlier actions/commitment.

This makes for a very powerful tool for marketers or for people who are looking to get others to take a specific action.

How to execute the principle of Commitment?

In order to execute the principle of commitment you have to attempt to get people to make a small commitment that is in some way related to the larger commitment that you are looking to achieve further down the line.

Here is an example used by Cialdini that shows hoe the commitment principle can be executed:

A group of people were provided with a cancer awareness ribbon and were asked to wear it for a week. The majority of this group believed it to be a harmless request and so wore the ribbon for a week. A while later after some time had past, these same people were asked to make a donation to help fight cancer. The people who had been asked to wear the ribbon for a week gave more than people who had not been asked to wear a ribbon. Why? Because they had publicly been showing that they were ‘cancer-fighters’ when asked to donate they believed that had to stay consistent with that commitment and made larger than average donations.

The trick is to get that commitment early and then build on it later on to get the person to take the action that you would like them to take.

The aim is to get the person you are looking to persuade to see themselves as something/someone they want to be and make them make that commitment. For example you can tell someone that they are an intelligent person, then later on you can say how intelligent people do x,y,z so they should to.

Car salesmen will aim to get visitors to their forecourts to test drive a car, as once the visitor has made the commitment to take the car for a drive, they are more likely to continue that onto a purchase.

One of the most common practices used by people selling services online is to offer a free-trial of their service, possibly for 30 days. Once the visitor has made that initial low-risk commitment at the start they are then more likely to becoming paying customers once their trial is over. This is a practice you can clearly see in action over at Visual Website Optimizer:

I hope that you now have an understanding of the second principle of persuasion: Commitment. If you are still struggling to understand then feel free to post your questions in the comment section below. If you are already implementing this principle why not share the approach that you have taken below so that others can learn from it. And finally if you are struggling to come up with that killer idea on how you can carry out this on your website then post your detail below and I will help you out.

Now please make that small commitment to my blog and > Subscribe via RSS < By doing so you will be able to get the rest of this series of posts and lots more ideas, tips and tricks to help you convert more visitors into customers on your website.

This is the first post in a six part series that looks at Robert Cialdini’s 6 Principles Of Persuasion and identifies areas in which they can be used to increase a websites conversion rate. Want to know more about this series? Read the Introduction post.

What is the principle of reciprocity?

Robert Cialdini identified that our natural instinct as human beings is to return favors to others. This works on the basis that we want to treat people in the same manner in which they have treated us. Put simply it is the ‘you scratch my back and I will scratch yours’ principle.

The principle of reciprocity is all around us and we encounter it on a daily basis and in most cases we do not even notice. How often have you sent someone a Christmas card, only because they sent you one first. How about the times when you have been out for a drink with friends and someone buys you a drink, you feel obliged to buy one for them later in the evening.

By using the principle of reciprocity you can make people feel obliged to make a purchase from you or take a desired action of your choosing by first giving them something in advance.

How to execute the principle of reciprocity?

If you have been browsing the Internet for more than 10 minutes today then I am 90% certain that you have already seen this principle in action on a website that you have visited.

The most common practice used by website owners to trigger the reciprocity principle is to give away a free ebook/guide/software on their website. The free item needs to be closely matched to the goals of your website, so if you are in the niche of selling running shoes, then you could provide a free guide helping people to increase their running speed to beat their personal bests in their next race. Once the visitor has downloaded the guide, they will then have triggered the reciprocity principle meaning that this visitor is more likely to make a purchase from you now or in the future.

A good example of this in action is over at Conversion Rate Experts Blog, they have a clever CTA in their sidebar that offers visitors the chance to download a free conversion rate optimization toolkit:

In order to trigger the principle of reciprocity on your website you need to think about what you can do for the visitor before what the visitor can do for you. You need to look into ways of offering a product/service to the visitor for free so that once they have received this gesture from you, they will feel obliged to return the favour to you.

If you are struggling to come up with idea, here are some suggestions:

• If you offer a software as a service, could you consider offering the visitor a 30 free trial, or the ability to download a limited version of the software for free.
• If you are in the auto insurance niche, you could consider offering a free guide on how to reduce your fuel consumption to save money.
• If you are in a service industry could you offer a free guide/whitepaper on the topic to expand your visitors knowledge of the key areas of that field.

These are just a few broad examples to help get you thinking about what you could offer your visitors, every niche is difference and every website is different but I am yet to come across a website where we have not been able to think up something to offer visitors for free to launch the reciprocity trigger.

I hope that you now have an understanding of the first principle of persuasion: Reciprocity. If you are still struggling to understand then feel free to post your questions in the comment section below. If you are already implementing this principle why not share the approach that you have taken below so that others can learn from it. And finally if you are struggling to come up with that killer idea on how you can implement this on your website then post your detail below and I will help you out.

To ensure that you don’t miss out on the rest of this series > Subscribe via RSS

If you work in the world of Online Marketing, Conversion Rate Optimization or any form of business then there is a very strong chance that you have heard of Robert Cialdini‘s 6 Principles of Persuasion.

Over the next few days I am going to be sharing a series of blog posts that looks at each of the six steps in more details and provide examples of how you can apply them on your websites to increase conversion rates.

The 6 Principles of Persuasion were born back in 1984 when Cialdini published a book called “Influence: The Psychology Of Persuasion” – If you have not read it, then I would strongly recommend grabbing yourself a copy. Since their first appearance back in the 80′s the principles have been adapted to work in many niches and walks of life and in more recent times have become an important part of an Internet marketers toolkit.

“People’s ability to understand the factors that affect their behavior is surprisingly poor” – Dr Robert Cialdini

When you are looking to get someone to convert on your website, you are attempting to persuade them into a desired action. By applying the 6 principles of persuasion you can greatly increase your chances of turning that browser into a new customer, all with only a few simple but effective tweaks to your current website. You can learn how to hack into the visitors decision making process and pull them in the right direction.

Over the course of this series of posts I will introduce you to each of the principles of persuasion and give you guidelines on how you can apply them to increase your websites conversion rate. Here are the 6 principles:

• Part One: Reciprocity
• Part Two: Commitment
• Part Three: Social Proof
• Part Four: Authority
• Part Five: Liking
• Part Six: Scarcity

I would advise that you subscribe to the RSS feed to ensure that you do not miss out on this exciting series of posts that are certain to help you increase your conversion rates.