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Countdown Pressure

If your visitors believe they will miss out on a great deal if they don’t take action, it can motivate them to buy. If not used properly, however, it can damage your credibility.

That means . . .

DON’T USE A COUNTDOWN IF THE OFFER DOESN’T REALLY EXPIRE!

If you're running a special 5-day-only sale, by all means make it clear to your customers so they don't miss out. Use the time constraint to profit, but take the sale down at the deadline if you want people to believe you in the future.

I've seen all kinds of phony sale countdowns. If you know anything about coding it isn't hard to figure out if it's a real deadline or fake. Even if you don't know coding, all you have to do is open the page in another browser. If the countdown starts over, it's not a real deadline. I won't buy from anyone using fake deadlines. If they lie about that, they can't be trusted.

Different methods are used to get the deadline across to your customers. If you are a little tech savvy you can use an actual script that places a visible "countdown" on your page. This will show your customer exactly how much time they have left to get in on your special offer. A quick search at any search engine for "countdown script" will give you plenty of options.

For a simpler, but still effective approach, you can use the CSS "text highlighter" code to draw attention to the sale deadline. This simply places a different background color behind your text. Here’s how:

That code will create a yellow background color behind the text inside the heading tags. If you want the deadline posted within the flow of text, rather than set apart using a heading, simply place the style code in a span tag instead.

Here’s what that looks like:

Sale Ends on May 22

Stands out like a sore thumb, eh?

This tactic works because people generally don't like to miss out on something want, or even something they think they might want. If your product is what they want, and they think there's a chance they won't be able to get it or that it will cost more if they wait, it can prompt some to take action.

Note that this tactic has been abused by sketchy marketers, so you really need to be transparent about it. This tactic is only recommended when you are really running a time sensitive offer.