SCIENCE BEHIND THIS IDEA

The ??Sunk Cost Fallacy?? or ??Irrational Escalation?? cognitive bias are the same psychological phenomenon, where humans refuse to give up on something they already invested so much time and money in. We get attached and give things we have owned for quite some time or put some hope into, a higher value.

The way you can use this to your advantage is by reminding your customers or prospects how much time they already spent using your product or service. You don?t want to trick them into investing more money or time into a sinking ship, but you do want them to reconsider giving up on your company and reevaluate whether it?s worth it to move to another service.This way you can make them more reluctant to leave and improve your retention rates.

What to test

For your prospects, on Variant A, or your current page, you ask them to fill out a profile. But when they decide to stop filling it out and leave your website, there is no pop-up window telling them how much time they already spent on creating their profile and researching your company. Instead, there?s the generic ??Are you sure you want to leave this page??? pop-up question and that?s that.

Variant B, or the test version of your page, displays a pop-up which tells the prospect how much time they already spend on their profile and how close they are to completing it. The generic ??Are you sure you want to leave this page??? question is replaced by a pop-up window which states: ??You already spent 23 minutes working your profile with us. Are you sure you want to quit? You already completed 70% of your profile and will be done shortly!??