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We're actively using 3 principles of influence from Cialdini in our SaaS-product[1] (we also refer to it as 'CaaS', Conversion as a Service). Basically we make

We're actively using 3 principles of influence from Cialdini in our SaaS-product[1] (we also refer to it as 'CaaS', Conversion as a Service). Basically we make persuasion available for the small- to mid-size online shops by providing a tool that integrates tightly with your (shop)backend. Based on data-analysis from your visitors (we ask for a small JS-snippet on each of your pages) we try to predict, by using machine learning, which visitor is sensitive to what kind of messaging at what particular time. Examples: Scarcity: "3 products left in stock", "order within 2 hours and 13 minutes and we'll ship your order today" Social proof: "23 people bought this product today", "the last order of this product was 3 minutes ago" Authority: "Recommended by institute x" We're seeing uplifts in conversions rates from 5% to sometimes 200% (on average 10-15%). Key is timing and finding out what works best for a certain type of visitor. So, for example, shopping at your lunch break often results in a certain behaviour on a shop (ie. going directly or through the shortest route to your desired product) which implicates a sensitivity for a scarcity message. On the other hand, shopping in the evening (more time on your hands) tells us (but not always) that you're maybe more inclined to make a good comparison between products. A social proof message helps the most in that case. It's a simplified version of the reality but you get the idea :-) The tool is easily integrated in shop software (Magento et al) and usable for the less tech savvy users. The messaging is delivered through non-intrusive pop-ups (maybe you've seen them) and are fully configurable on for example: referer, time of day, position, layout, animation, type of visitor, country, etc etc. We also have an integration with Google Analytics to track performance. You can try us for 30 days free, shoot me an email at bart[at]conversify.com, mention HN, and I'll give you 15 extra days for free. [1] https://www.conversify.com https://www.conversify.com

afandian 12y ago
(EDIT: I understood the messages to be misleading, reply says they are true) This walks a line between helping the customer to make decisions manipulation (I'm being generous here). If I saw an online store doing this I would think less of them (again, being generous in my language) and go somewhere else. Also I can tell the difference between real scarcity (like an eBay auction timer out) and simulated scarcity... ... is what I like to think happens. Obviously it works and the chances of me, or anyone else who thinks the same way, being exceptional is probably slim.
- bartkappenburg 12y ago
  We are not simulating scarcity, we are integrated with the shop's backend and show real stock. If a shop owner wants to lie about his stock that's his responsibility, but hey, he also can do that without our tool. The tool only enforces certain usps or charateristics of the shop at the right time.
  - afandian 12y ago
    Good to know. I assumed they were lies: there's a lot of scumbaggery in sales, so it's perhaps a natural assumption.
    - bartkappenburg 12y ago
      No problem. Also, the shop wouldn't gain anything in the long run if they were telling lies. We measure conversion over multiple sales and that shop would see poorer performance for that message compared to our control group.
    - agumonkey 12y ago
      Some website are playing blurry lines games so much. They do use time / stock limited "flash sales" to trigger buying. Then relaunch a new flash sale a few minutes after. Most of the time you won't notice it, you're either busy looking at other stuff or just went off the web because you spent enough money. I even thought it was a page refresh bug until I understood the pattern.
  - larrys 12y ago
    Here is another one you can add that I have found works with sales that I make (although those are big ticket sales). Attach some proof of what others payed in higher prices. As in "10 people paid $x for this last week".
    - bartkappenburg 12y ago
      Thanks! Will try that with one or two of our customers, shall I let you know our findings?
gort 12y ago
Are the messages true?
- bentcorner 12y ago
  I'm guessing that the messages are tailored to whatever pushes the buttons the best. For example, if only one person has ordered today but it was 5 minutes ago, then show the "this product was last ordered 5 minutes ago" message instead of "1 person has ordered this today". Or, if there's lots in stock, then show the "you'll get this tomorrow" message. I don't think it would be hard to make the messages selectively true.
  - bartkappenburg 12y ago
    Yes, that's basically how it works ;-)
beachstartup 12y ago
very interesting. i know for a fact i am influenced by scarcity messages. i can feel my pulse quicken a bit when i'm shopping and it says there's 1 or 2 products left in stock.
- zem 12y ago
  i can't remember if i cultivated this consciously or not, but when i see a scarcity message i think "well, if i'd hit this site a few hours later it would have been gone; might as well assume i did that and save my money". anything worth having will still be there later.
smutticus 12y ago
You're a scumbag.
- valar_m 12y ago
  Why? To me this just sounds like intelligent marketing. If it's not lying, what's wrong with tailoring the message to the audience?
  - xnull6guest 12y ago
    Couldn't the same be said about manipulating a child or someone with a mental disorder? That you are tailoring the message to the recipient, that it's a smart strategy to get what you want? I not really sure I like that analogy but what I'm trying to say is this: there is an information and power asymmetry. While one side has people working 40-hour weeks, using marketing techniques exploiting gaps in human attentiveness developed over generations, with machine learning algorithms crunching data on that person to find their most effective lever - at the other side of the table sits someone hapless and ignorant that they are the target of covert forces. No person, no matter how rational or smart or educated, can stand up to manipulation that they aren't informed about. It's like calling sleeve cards a smart blackjack strategy. It is. It absolutely is. But the misgivings of the parent are't misgivings about the effectiveness of the strategy. And to take it further, do we want businesses competing on who can manipulate customers into coming to them? Isn't the whole point of competition that businesses are supposed to try to make better and better products to attract business? What you have today are identical products made overseas by child labor being sold by two stores, where the two stores compete on brand, labeling and customer advertising because at the root their product is identical. Is that optimally functioning Capitalism?
    - charlespwd 12y ago
      I understand where you're coming from. But that's kind of a slippery slope argument. It is based on the premise that manipulation is evil. Manipulation isn't evil. Let's consider for a minute an event where persuasion psychology is used to have someone buy services from a personal trainer. This PT helps the lad. She becomes healthier, happier, and fit as a result. Isn't manipulation good, in this case? What if your product is awesome and makes people's lives better. Isn't it your moral imperative to market it to people? Isn't it moral to manipulate people into using and buying it if it makes their lives better? Am I trying to convince myself here? Maybe. But I was reading "The Ultimate Sales Letter" this morning and there's a passage in it which says > "ALL Successful Selling is by Nature and Necessity manipulative" That's just how the game is played (?)
MarkMc 12y ago
I wonder whether for some merchants the best message will always be "1 product left in stock" and therefore it is in the merchant's interest to restock only one item immediately after every sale...
- bartkappenburg 12y ago
  Funny you mention it, it is actually a little more complex in practice. The 'soft spot' for number of items left in stock is somewhere between 2 and 5 (135 left in stock makes one postpone the buying decision obviously ;-)). The problem with 1 left in stock is that people are responding well to scarcity in general but often don't like to be pushed toward a decision right now.... this is counter effective.
  - kardos 12y ago
    The other problem with "1 left in stock" is that I might want to buy two, and if you claim to have only one, I'll go to another site rather than order from you and wait an unknown amount of time for you to restock
    - bartkappenburg 12y ago
      Yes, that also plays a part in the effectiveness of the message.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  Yeah, I usually distrust any stocking information - unless my need is urgent or I'm after some unusual item (like something handmade rather than manufactured) I assume a) that it's BS and b) that if it's that popular, it'll be back in stock soon enough, or available elsewhere. The social proof of seeing other people order, oddly enough, I find much more persuasive even though it's just as subject to manipulation. Maybe I'm just jaded from the ubiquity of 'hurry in, this offer can't last' advertisements on TV, on the weekly coupon junk mail that shows up in the mailbox and so on. I always wonder why car dealerships make such a huge thing out of their sales, given that they seem to occur on almost a monthly basis.
TeMPOraL 12y ago
I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I applaud how you turned those principles into a well-packaged, professional product with metrics, studies and whatnot. On the other hand, when I get subjected to those I feel like being... manipulated, to put it generously. Regardless, your comment and the subthread it started gave me a product idea - an adblock-like plugin that would remove all such manipulative elements from online shops. Basically, it would cancel out all your hard work ;). But hey, it's an arms race between salesmen and consumers.
- bartkappenburg 12y ago
  Thanks for the compliment ;-), regarding your feeling of manipulation: I think it's impossible to block all persuasive tactics in general. Let's take for example social proof: a set of positive reviews and their respective number of stars mentioned at let's say a product listing is a form of persuasion that, if taken out, makes the listing far less valuable. Is that something you would see that the persuasion-blocker would remove from sites? ;-)
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    Fair enough :). The problem of manipulation is something I can't really wrap my head around completely. To add another example supporting your point, I do at times care about scarcity information (especially when I need something within next week or two and I can't risk shop running out of a product and not restocking it fast enough) - but your comment reminded me that those can easily be gamed (especially if seller is less than honest). I honestly don't know how to reconcile my own ideals with day-to-day capitalism. Brick&mortar stores all around not only manipulate, but sometimes blatantly cheat people. I realized recently that I probably couldn't open a store myself - my own conscience would run me bankrupt pretty quickly. I'm not made for this age ;).
  - tjradcliffe 12y ago
    If a persuasion blocker removed reviews from sites nothing of value would be lost, at least to first order. For any book on Amazon, for example, 90%+ of the reviews are zero-information, because they either are entirely about the reviewer ("I thought this book was great/sucked/whatever" in various long-winded guises), are paid shills, compare the book unfavourably to another one by the same author (will will also have reviews comparing it unfavourably to another one by the same author) or are incoherent. I've long thought that a review-sanitizer wouldn't be that hard to build that filtered out large numbers of reviews using what amount to anti-span techniques. Con-artists like you suggest that a more general counter-measures approach would be worthwhile. You may object to being characterized as a con-artist, but you are precisely using algorithmic techniques to gain the mark's confidence so you can manipulate them to your own ends. That is the definition of a con-artist, and it's quite different from ethical salespeople do, based on my own experience in sales. So here's a question: how would you deploy your algorithmic knowledge in a way that focused on qualifying rather than closing? The goal of an ethical sales-person is to qualify people in the channel, because a fully qualified lead is a closed sale. It may be a quite similar process, but you're asking a fundamentally different question. Not "how can I manipulate the lead to close" but "how can I identify the lead's needs and ability/willingness to pay?" Maybe it's not possible, but if websites focused on this rather than confidence tricks (which is what you are using) people would probably be much more willing to part with their money (the book "Getting Into Your Customer's Head", which is probably somewhat dated now, gives a fair idea of the approach I'm talking about.)
CurtMonash 12y ago
I'm hearing time-of-day dependencies from a number of companies. It seems to be a major thing.
spiritplumber 12y ago
I messaged you, let me know.
amirmc 12y ago
If you can hook in FB data then you might be able to figure out so much more about the users/visitors (what's more likely to work for a given visitor). I'm impressed by the product/service but I'm so jaded about 'being gamed' that I'm always cynical when I buy online.
rasz_pl 12y ago
so you are a digital used car salesman scum, nice
pombrand 12y ago
In what case(s) did you get a 200% increase in conversion, and what's your explanation of that effect?

afandian 12y ago

(EDIT: I understood the messages to be misleading, reply says they are true) This walks a line between helping the customer to make decisions manipulation (I'm being generous here). If I saw an online store doing this I would think less of them (again, being generous in my language) and go somewhere else. Also I can tell the difference between real scarcity (like an eBay auction timer out) and simulated scarcity... ... is what I like to think happens. Obviously it works and the chances of me, or anyone else who thinks the same way, being exceptional is probably slim.

bartkappenburg 12y ago
We are not simulating scarcity, we are integrated with the shop's backend and show real stock. If a shop owner wants to lie about his stock that's his responsibility, but hey, he also can do that without our tool. The tool only enforces certain usps or charateristics of the shop at the right time.
- afandian 12y ago
  Good to know. I assumed they were lies: there's a lot of scumbaggery in sales, so it's perhaps a natural assumption.
  - bartkappenburg 12y ago
    No problem. Also, the shop wouldn't gain anything in the long run if they were telling lies. We measure conversion over multiple sales and that shop would see poorer performance for that message compared to our control group.
  - agumonkey 12y ago
    Some website are playing blurry lines games so much. They do use time / stock limited "flash sales" to trigger buying. Then relaunch a new flash sale a few minutes after. Most of the time you won't notice it, you're either busy looking at other stuff or just went off the web because you spent enough money. I even thought it was a page refresh bug until I understood the pattern.
- larrys 12y ago
  Here is another one you can add that I have found works with sales that I make (although those are big ticket sales). Attach some proof of what others payed in higher prices. As in "10 people paid $x for this last week".
  - bartkappenburg 12y ago
    Thanks! Will try that with one or two of our customers, shall I let you know our findings?

gort 12y ago

Are the messages true?

bentcorner 12y ago
I'm guessing that the messages are tailored to whatever pushes the buttons the best. For example, if only one person has ordered today but it was 5 minutes ago, then show the "this product was last ordered 5 minutes ago" message instead of "1 person has ordered this today". Or, if there's lots in stock, then show the "you'll get this tomorrow" message. I don't think it would be hard to make the messages selectively true.
- bartkappenburg 12y ago
  Yes, that's basically how it works ;-)

beachstartup 12y ago

very interesting. i know for a fact i am influenced by scarcity messages. i can feel my pulse quicken a bit when i'm shopping and it says there's 1 or 2 products left in stock.

zem 12y ago
i can't remember if i cultivated this consciously or not, but when i see a scarcity message i think "well, if i'd hit this site a few hours later it would have been gone; might as well assume i did that and save my money". anything worth having will still be there later.

smutticus 12y ago

You're a scumbag.

valar_m 12y ago
Why? To me this just sounds like intelligent marketing. If it's not lying, what's wrong with tailoring the message to the audience?
- xnull6guest 12y ago
  Couldn't the same be said about manipulating a child or someone with a mental disorder? That you are tailoring the message to the recipient, that it's a smart strategy to get what you want? I not really sure I like that analogy but what I'm trying to say is this: there is an information and power asymmetry. While one side has people working 40-hour weeks, using marketing techniques exploiting gaps in human attentiveness developed over generations, with machine learning algorithms crunching data on that person to find their most effective lever - at the other side of the table sits someone hapless and ignorant that they are the target of covert forces. No person, no matter how rational or smart or educated, can stand up to manipulation that they aren't informed about. It's like calling sleeve cards a smart blackjack strategy. It is. It absolutely is. But the misgivings of the parent are't misgivings about the effectiveness of the strategy. And to take it further, do we want businesses competing on who can manipulate customers into coming to them? Isn't the whole point of competition that businesses are supposed to try to make better and better products to attract business? What you have today are identical products made overseas by child labor being sold by two stores, where the two stores compete on brand, labeling and customer advertising because at the root their product is identical. Is that optimally functioning Capitalism?
  - charlespwd 12y ago
    I understand where you're coming from. But that's kind of a slippery slope argument. It is based on the premise that manipulation is evil. Manipulation isn't evil. Let's consider for a minute an event where persuasion psychology is used to have someone buy services from a personal trainer. This PT helps the lad. She becomes healthier, happier, and fit as a result. Isn't manipulation good, in this case? What if your product is awesome and makes people's lives better. Isn't it your moral imperative to market it to people? Isn't it moral to manipulate people into using and buying it if it makes their lives better? Am I trying to convince myself here? Maybe. But I was reading "The Ultimate Sales Letter" this morning and there's a passage in it which says > "ALL Successful Selling is by Nature and Necessity manipulative" That's just how the game is played (?)

MarkMc 12y ago

I wonder whether for some merchants the best message will always be "1 product left in stock" and therefore it is in the merchant's interest to restock only one item immediately after every sale...

bartkappenburg 12y ago
Funny you mention it, it is actually a little more complex in practice. The 'soft spot' for number of items left in stock is somewhere between 2 and 5 (135 left in stock makes one postpone the buying decision obviously ;-)). The problem with 1 left in stock is that people are responding well to scarcity in general but often don't like to be pushed toward a decision right now.... this is counter effective.
- kardos 12y ago
  The other problem with "1 left in stock" is that I might want to buy two, and if you claim to have only one, I'll go to another site rather than order from you and wait an unknown amount of time for you to restock
  - bartkappenburg 12y ago
    Yes, that also plays a part in the effectiveness of the message.
anigbrowl 12y ago
Yeah, I usually distrust any stocking information - unless my need is urgent or I'm after some unusual item (like something handmade rather than manufactured) I assume a) that it's BS and b) that if it's that popular, it'll be back in stock soon enough, or available elsewhere. The social proof of seeing other people order, oddly enough, I find much more persuasive even though it's just as subject to manipulation. Maybe I'm just jaded from the ubiquity of 'hurry in, this offer can't last' advertisements on TV, on the weekly coupon junk mail that shows up in the mailbox and so on. I always wonder why car dealerships make such a huge thing out of their sales, given that they seem to occur on almost a monthly basis.

TeMPOraL 12y ago

I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I applaud how you turned those principles into a well-packaged, professional product with metrics, studies and whatnot. On the other hand, when I get subjected to those I feel like being... manipulated, to put it generously. Regardless, your comment and the subthread it started gave me a product idea - an adblock-like plugin that would remove all such manipulative elements from online shops. Basically, it would cancel out all your hard work ;). But hey, it's an arms race between salesmen and consumers.

bartkappenburg 12y ago
Thanks for the compliment ;-), regarding your feeling of manipulation: I think it's impossible to block all persuasive tactics in general. Let's take for example social proof: a set of positive reviews and their respective number of stars mentioned at let's say a product listing is a form of persuasion that, if taken out, makes the listing far less valuable. Is that something you would see that the persuasion-blocker would remove from sites? ;-)
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  Fair enough :). The problem of manipulation is something I can't really wrap my head around completely. To add another example supporting your point, I do at times care about scarcity information (especially when I need something within next week or two and I can't risk shop running out of a product and not restocking it fast enough) - but your comment reminded me that those can easily be gamed (especially if seller is less than honest). I honestly don't know how to reconcile my own ideals with day-to-day capitalism. Brick&mortar stores all around not only manipulate, but sometimes blatantly cheat people. I realized recently that I probably couldn't open a store myself - my own conscience would run me bankrupt pretty quickly. I'm not made for this age ;).
- tjradcliffe 12y ago
  If a persuasion blocker removed reviews from sites nothing of value would be lost, at least to first order. For any book on Amazon, for example, 90%+ of the reviews are zero-information, because they either are entirely about the reviewer ("I thought this book was great/sucked/whatever" in various long-winded guises), are paid shills, compare the book unfavourably to another one by the same author (will will also have reviews comparing it unfavourably to another one by the same author) or are incoherent. I've long thought that a review-sanitizer wouldn't be that hard to build that filtered out large numbers of reviews using what amount to anti-span techniques. Con-artists like you suggest that a more general counter-measures approach would be worthwhile. You may object to being characterized as a con-artist, but you are precisely using algorithmic techniques to gain the mark's confidence so you can manipulate them to your own ends. That is the definition of a con-artist, and it's quite different from ethical salespeople do, based on my own experience in sales. So here's a question: how would you deploy your algorithmic knowledge in a way that focused on qualifying rather than closing? The goal of an ethical sales-person is to qualify people in the channel, because a fully qualified lead is a closed sale. It may be a quite similar process, but you're asking a fundamentally different question. Not "how can I manipulate the lead to close" but "how can I identify the lead's needs and ability/willingness to pay?" Maybe it's not possible, but if websites focused on this rather than confidence tricks (which is what you are using) people would probably be much more willing to part with their money (the book "Getting Into Your Customer's Head", which is probably somewhat dated now, gives a fair idea of the approach I'm talking about.)

CurtMonash 12y ago

I'm hearing time-of-day dependencies from a number of companies. It seems to be a major thing.

spiritplumber 12y ago

I messaged you, let me know.

amirmc 12y ago

If you can hook in FB data then you might be able to figure out so much more about the users/visitors (what's more likely to work for a given visitor). I'm impressed by the product/service but I'm so jaded about 'being gamed' that I'm always cynical when I buy online.

rasz_pl 12y ago

so you are a digital used car salesman scum, nice

pombrand 12y ago

In what case(s) did you get a 200% increase in conversion, and what's your explanation of that effect?