People are emotional beings and we tend to make decisions (either good ones or bad ones) when we are emotional. If a customer becomes upset over a service issue, they could become angry over time if the issue is not resolved. If they become upset enough, they may just make a decision to discontinue the service entirely and find a new service. Alternately, if a customer is pleased or even happy with a service, they will do ongoing business or even refer the service to some of their friends.

Consider what the traditional media has known about for years. If you are able to put a creative spin on a product or service to make it either fun or represent it as something that is "cute," it can influence peoples' buying decisions tremendously. The emotional element is used to add life and appeal to nearly every type of product or service from print to radio and of course TV. From singing hamburgers and fries on TV to using subtle but cute hopping frogs or waddling penguins that promote cellular phone sales, it seems that everyone targets the emotions.

Toy marketers have known for years that the focus in a toy commercial is not so much on their new product, as much as it is on the facial expressions of the child. They're showing the absolute joy and delight of the child while they're playing with that toy. Often images in the mind of the child who is viewing the commercial might evoke a sense of wonder, adventure and excitement. Sometimes, a toy marketer may aim much deeper psychologically by showing the child, enjoying their new toy with either Mom or Dad sitting on the floor playing with him or her. The youngster viewing the program may even desire that toy much more, simply because they think that "if they only had this toy," their Mom or Dad might take more time to sit down and play with them too!

In the example above, a TV commercial does not focus on the parent...they are really selling to the child. However, selling a toy on the Web, in an online toy store, can be different in the sense that you are actually selling to the parent (a child does not have a Visa card to place an order). The benefits of a toy that appeals to the parent will involve things like, its safety features, the fact that it's "educational," or perhaps it solves a problem or teaches the child a lesson.

Actually, with the Web being a multimedia experience, we have lots of opportunity to work with emotional content. After all, your visitors are still human. We are really not much different online than offline. We still have a very important emotional side of us at work all of the time.

Here are a ten things you can do to increase visitor response at your web site:

1. If you are trying to sell a baby crib and although you have already built up your targeted traffic, but nobody is buying it,...put a cute little baby in the crib and PEOPLE WILL WANT BUY IT!

Example: If you're selling a piece of furniture for the living room....display a picture of the furniture being used in a living room environment. The visitor may think to themselves...."look at this comfy looking couch." "This guy looks like he is really enjoying himself." (The image might be of a person sitting comfortably on the couch, in their living room....feet up and arms relaxed as they read the paper and in the background is a cozy fireplace with the family pet curled up by their feet).

TIP: Lifestyle photos like this are much more influencing that just a product displayed in a showroom.

I challenge you to put on your thinking cap.

As you introduce elements that utilize things like "humor" or other emotional content, you will also truly widen your scope of promotion as well as the response rate from your visitors. Always remember the powerful impact that emotional content can deliver when utilized on the Web.