One of the clever tricks web designers can use to make a subtle, psychological connection with viewers is a form of “hypnotic” marketing: customizing the text or images of a webpage to correspond with the time of day.

To illustrate, we have a client who is selling an e-Book. He wanted to adjust some of the key phrases in his sales letter landing page so that readers felt as though the message was directed uniquely at them, no matter what time of day they might be viewing.

As an example, he wanted to change the line, “If you purchase right now,” to a more timely message. Now, in the morning, his webpage displays the line, “If you purchase this morning.” During the day, his message displays as, “If you purchase today.” At night, it shows, “If you purchase tonight.”

He reports that this subtle change, used strategically throughout his sales copy, has increased his conversions.

We did this with a simple PHP script, added to the functions file of his WordPress theme.

<?php
function timeofday($morning, $day, $night) {
$hour = date('G');
if (($hour > 0) && ($hour < 10)) { echo $morning; }
elseif (($hour > 9) && ($hour < 17)) { echo $day; }
else echo $night;
}
?>

This simple and elegant script checks to see what hour of the day it is. If the hour is between 1am and 10am, the morning message is displayed. If the hour is between 10am and 5pm, the daytime message is displayed. Otherwise, the nighttime message.

The usage is just as simple. Wherever he wants to customize the text in his sales letter, he just adds this function anywhere in his source file, with the appropriate text as the options:

<?php timeofday('morning text here', 'daytime text here', 'night text here'); ?>

Voila! Hypnotic marketing, with a simple PHP script.