“Put online shoppers in a queue? Are you crazy?” At Queue-it we often hear this gut reaction. Even though waiting in line is an accepted part of everyday life, many hoped queues would be obsolete in our digital world.
But besides keeping your website from crashing, the best virtual waiting rooms bring unexpected benefits by tapping into psychology. When you follow the latest queue psychology research, you put visitors at ease and create a smooth experience. And by harnessing social proof, you can boost conversion rates and increase sales.
Not all waiting experiences are created equal. Academic studies show how people feel when they wait matters far more than how long they wait.
Harvard Business School professor David Maister discovered 6 cornerstone principles that determine customer experiences when waiting in a queue. These powerful rules of psychology are baked into Queue-it’s virtual waiting room.
80%
of customers are willing to wait online for up to an hour to make a purchase if the wait is fair and transparent
Even if customers are in love with the product they’re queuing for, the wait can seem torturous if they have no distractions.
Online queues have an advantage over physical queues as customers aren’t limited by the need to stand in line. Queue-it can notify your visitors by email when it’s their turn in line, freeing them up to do other things while they wait.
Think about when you enter a restaurant. Sometimes the wait to be greeted by the waiter can seem worse than the wait for your table. The start of the transaction is the end of the wait, so make sure people feel like they’ve started.
Queue-it lets you embed files, links, and videos about your products on the waiting room page, so visitors feel like they’ve started the buying process. The iconic Queue Man progress bar also shows visitors a discrete start and end, so waiting becomes re-conceptualized as progress.
Picture making a call and being put on hold. Compare your stress level when you’re told what number you are in queue to when you hear hold music on a loop. Which is more stressful?
With Queue-it you show your visitors transparent wait information, like estimated wait time and position in queue. This informs your visitors and reduces anxiety by showing the line is indeed moving.
Humans look for explanations behind all things, so the lack of an explanation is frustrating.
Queue-it lets you tailor the waiting room introduction to explain the wait to your visitors in your brand voice. This calms nerves in ways that “technical difficulties” messaging can’t. And with Queue-it you can send real-time messages to customers in the waiting room, keeping them updated and informed.
Put yourself in your customers’ shoes. They really want the concert ticket or pair of sneakers they’re waiting in line for. That in itself is already anxiety-provoking.
Preemptively address any anxieties, rational or not, in your marketing communication and the waiting room intro. And keep them updated in real time with Queue-it’s waiting room communication pane.
It’s true that with a waiting room not all visitors wanting to access your site will be able to. But remember, the alternative is that your website crashes and no one can access it. Customers who wait will be most driven to buy, raising your conversion rates and likely increasing your average order value, too.
"Because there was a queue, we saw an enormous increase in conversion rates. People think, “Now that I’m on the site, I really need to buy something"."
Joost van der Veer, CEO
Psychology tells us humans are very influenced by what others think and do. We look to others for “social proof” to guide our behavior.
Queue-it room shows visitors how popular a product is. By being provided a queue number and other wait information, visitors know and see that what they are waiting for is also valuable to others.
"A side-effect that we realized was that conversion rate had increased at a level much higher than the reduction in visitors to site, increasing revenue - especially when one of the potential outcomes during peak is server overload."
Administrator of IT and Services, G2Crowd Review
