Use the serial position effect to drive sales

Business Benefits

Boost sales by influencing the recall, behavior, and preference of your clients through deliberate product and message order. 


Position products with the best value and performance first.

Doing so anchors the experience and creates a memorable first impression. Other examples of first products to emphasize are your most profitable product or a product with plenty of inventory.

Emphasize the key benefits of a product first and persuasive extras like free shipping last.

This helps ensure the client will remember these points when deciding to make a purchase.

List product details and features before the price.

The customer will evaluate the product on its merits and pay less attention to the price tag.

Include links to products you want to emphasize first or last in a sequence.

Links at the top and bottom of a page are clicked more often.

Place items of the least importance in the middle of the page.

Clients will forget or ignore items in the middle because of the serial position primacy and the recency effects. Examples of the least important items might be those with low inventory, or products with a small profit margin.

Reduce the number of middle items by keeping the total products to a minimum and staying within one visual page.

This will decrease the number of forgotten items.

Include popup reminders such as Proceed To Checkout or Need Assistance? to encourage customers to make decisions quickly.

Faster experiences help customers recall product features and benefits more easily.

Repeat key messages multiple times, especially through the middle where clients are less likely to remember topics or products.

Key messages can include promotions or sales, timelines, or business information.

Repeat key messages and display your best products at the bottom of the page.

A strong ending takes advantage of the recency effect.

Test your order and layout with user surveys.

  • Mitigate the serial position effect by changing the questions and order for respondents.
  • Keep the survey short, and ask the most important questions at the beginning and the end.

Last edited by @hesh_fekry 2023-11-14T12:05:42Z