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BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Media Psychology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1187798

Verbatim repetition and Click-Through Rates

Provisionally accepted
Florian K. Ermark Florian K. Ermark 1Florian Kutzner Florian Kutzner 2*Julian Fornoff Julian Fornoff 1Michaela Wänke Michaela Wänke 3
  • 1 Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
  • 2 Private University Seeburg, Seekirchen am Wallersee, Austria
  • 3 University of Mannheim, Mannheim, Baden-Württemberg, Germany

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    For online retailers, increasing click-through rates and reducing dropout are critical to success. In this study, we examine the effect of verbatim repetition of the website's headline message on the proceed button, based on research on processing fluency. We conducted a field study with 956 visitors to an online platform and found that verbatim repetitions of the header message on the proceed button resulted in a conversion rate increase of more than ten percentage points compared to gist repetitions and new messages. Our findings underscore the importance of simple verbatim features and demonstrate the successful application of processing fluency research to impact consumer behavior.

    Keywords: Click-through rate, online shopping, Processing fluency, Conceptual fluency, repetition, Field-experiment

    Received: 19 Apr 2023; Accepted: 13 May 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Ermark, Kutzner, Fornoff and Wänke. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Florian Kutzner, Private University Seeburg, Seekirchen am Wallersee, Austria

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.