What can you give away? It could be a free account or an upgrade. Maybe a free report—or example, personal informatics are interesting. Perhaps a gift card. Make it something unexpected. And if other similar services are giving away the same thing, it’s not a gift—it’s expected.

Imagine a page on your site blurred just enough to be unreadable. What content areas are visually connected? Should they be? What items aren’t connected but should be? This is especially useful with form design, spreadsheets and other areas where you have many discrete pieces of information that may or may not relate to each other.

People are inclined to keep things as they are. We adopt what is recommended—simply stating the most popular options is often enough to influence a decision—and tend to stick with that choice. Have you thought through the default options in your app? If you’re asking people to switch systems, consider how you might represent sticking with the status quo as a loss (and pitch the new system as an “alternative” rather than a replacement).

How do you sequence list items? If recall of specific items is critical, list the most important items at the beginning and end of a list. This could be applied to a list of checkbox items, a list of product features, the company bios—any page with a long list of items.

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When—and what—can you hold back? Reveal just enough to arouse interest, then tease someone into taking the next step. You can also arouse interest by doing something unusual and unexpected—people will stick around long enough to determine what’s going on. Puzzles are similarly intriguing.

If introducing a radically new project, use characteristics of something already familiar to people. For example, use visual aspects similar to other popular services or the likeness of a familiar physical equivalent. You can also establish formal partnerships with already familiar brands to help make your new idea seem safer.