Have you ever wondered how to turn all that website traffic you get into sales? You’re not alone. A lot of other businesses are in the same predicament. If you are running a website, it is important to make sure visitors are converting. That is, making a purchase or signing up for an email list.
You’ve landed on this page because you are interested in improving your conversion rates. We’re going to look at how you can use the BJ Fogg behaviour change model to do just that.
The BJ Fogg Model is a behaviour change model created by BJ Fogg, a Stanford professor and researcher, that has succeeded in changing people’s behaviours. It predicts the success or failure of behaviour, as well as research on how to cause users to take desired actions.
Marketers are increasingly relying on the model to improve their conversions.
What Is The BJ Fogg Model?
The Fogg Model is pretty simple to understand. It says that if you want someone to take a specific action, and take it consistently, there are three elements that need to be put into place:
Motivation
Ability
Trigger
Let’s discuss them one by one.
Motivation: The Why
There are fundamental reasons why people perform certain actions. These reasons are their motivation. The motivation can either be physical, emotional, or social. Three core drivers make up the element of motivation:
Sensation: Sensation is a physical level of motivation. It includes pleasure, pain, and hunger for something. They drive immediate action. Human beings will instinctually engage in activities that bring them pleasure while avoiding things that bring them pain.
An example is offering your visitors an incentive if they perform a certain action on your website, such as a free ebook if they sign up for a newsletter.
Anticipation: This is emotional and consists of feelings such as hope and fear. Visitors will follow your Call-To-Action (CTA) if they anticipate something coming out of the action. You can do this through results-driven content, products, and services. Give your audience a solution to their problems.
For example, if you’re selling an online course, taking it up would equip users with skills and certification that increase their chances of getting employed.
Sense of Belonging: Social cohesion is an important need. Human beings have the need to be accepted and belong to a community. Users will purchase your products if they enable them to maintain or fit in with a given status. When users are also part of an active community, not only do they more eagerly engage with content, but they look to other community members to interact with as well.
Example: Lululemon Athletica has grown into a global brand by building a community that empowers customers to lead a healthy, active lifestyle. Community members get a chance to join a free yoga class or attend one of the brand’s other larger festivals and events.
It’s very difficult to create motivation in users who lack it. So your goal shouldn’t be to boost motivation, but find which of the three drives motivate them the most and tap into it.
Ability: The How
Even with high motivation, visitors won’t convert if they lack the ability to do so. If the desired actions are outside of your user’s ability, it will be a difficult and complicated endeavour to get them on board. Always make it easier and simpler for them to follow through on the CTA. For example, long complicated forms can discourage visitors from signing up for your newsletter.
Find the biggest hurdle to your target audience converting into paying customers and eliminate the hurdle. Is it information, experience, or pricing? Amazon found that customers were abandoning their carts because of the elongated transaction process and introduced a 1-Click Purchase option that simplified the process.
Some of the biggest factors that limit users’ ability include time, money, physical effort, social deviance, and non-routine behaviours.
Triggers: The When
Once you have the motivation and ability in place, triggers are the last piece of the puzzle. They inspire your visitors to action. Triggers are all about timing.
According to Fogg, there are three types of triggers:
Signal: When the users’ motivation and ability are both high. This is the easiest trigger and all it needs is the right CTA at the right place.
Facilitator: When users have high motivation but low ability. For example, elderly users might not be comfortable making purchases online.
Spark: When users have a high ability but low motivation. A value proposition that taps into the user’s emotions can do the trick here. Keep everything simple, brief, and minimal.
Effective triggers, no matter how small, can lead to repeat customers. We see this all the time with eCommerce websites. The magic is in building your triggers accordingly.
The first trigger should always be easy to accomplish, for example, following your brand on social media or signing up for your newsletter. Then you can follow up with another trigger to push the user further down the sales funnel. This may include giving users a beta version of your software as a free trial if they watch a short video about it.
How To Use The BJ Fogg Model To Increase Conversions
Consumer purchasing behaviour is a combination of all three elements.
Purchasing Behaviour = Motivation x Ability x Trigger
Visitors need the motivation to perform an action (needing a new pair of shoes). Ability will give them the tool they need to perform the action (examples include a mobile-friendly website, impressive web design, etc). Then the trigger pushes them to complete the action (an effective CTA).
But unless you understand the thinking behind your users’ motivations, ability, and triggers, it’s difficult to get them to convert into paying customers with your impressive user experience, clean web design, and content marketing. This is why you need to create buyer personas.
An effective buyer persona will help you to answer the following questions:
Motivation: Can what we’ve done motivate our visitors to perform our desired action (sign up or make a purchase)?
Ability: Have we eliminated all the limiting factors such as time and money that would hinder our visitors from taking the desired action?
Triggers: Are our CTAs prompt and effective enough to encourage visitors to take the final desired action?
Once you’ve answered YES to all three questions, then you’re ready to leverage Fogg’s behaviour model for your next marketing campaign to grow your sales.
Example:
You’re running a Facebook ad campaign to increase sales for your online shoe store. While your ad is well-designed, initial analysis shows that it isn’t achieving the desired results.
To improve the conversion rates, you first need to figure out what would motivate your target audience to click on your ad. You can do this by instilling a sense of community. Display the ad to “sneakerhead” communities and tailor it to their preferences. Then ensure that your website doesn’t impede their ability once they click through the ad to your site.
Add product filters to the catalogue so visitors can find the right pair of shoes with the least number of clicks possible.
Finally, when the visitors get to their preferred product page, have an effective trigger (CTA) such as “Add to cart” that will encourage them to complete their action. You can even add incentives such as a discount on the purchase if it’s made within a given period of time.
Case Study
Expert Accountants & Business Consultants was experiencing low returns due to low lead generation and conversion rates. Their website lacked smart features, CTAs, and had broken 404-error links.
Salt Marketing built a cross-channel strategy to help the firm boost its lead generation. We segmented the different businesses that the company was targeting according to their niches and then developed buyer personas and launched specific social ads suitable to them. We also improved the user navigation across the website.
The website did not only register an increase in traffic but also a growth in lead generation and conversion rates.
We Can Help You Leverage The BJ Fogg Model To Grow Your Sales
We are good at three things:
Creating effective buyer personas that help you to understand your target audience’s purchasing behaviour
Eliminating factors that limit your visitors’ ability (web design, content marketing, eCommerce website development)
Building effective triggers (CTAs, SEO, social media marketing, PPC advertising)
We can help you to increase your conversion rates in 2022. Get in touch today!
