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Copy that Converts is About More Than Just writing

January 23rd, 2012 1 comment

By Brian Massey

Conversion Scientist, Conversion Sciences, LLC

 

Whether you design mobile apps, make chimichangas or provide investment advisory services, your copy writing always has to start with the same two questions:

  1. Why is my reader here? Why did he or she click on this website, open this email, download this white paper?
  2. Now that my reader is here, how can I make the experience of being here so delightful that the reader will consider his quest fulfilled and seek no further (i.e. on someone else’s website)?

You start with those two questions in your mind and you hold them there the whole time you’re creating copy.  You start every paragraph and edit every version with those two questions floating in the front of your brain.

That seems pretty simple, right? It’s a little more complicated than that—which explains why really great content stands out in all the millions of bytes of content out there.

Sometimes you’re in a situation where instead of one inspired, customer focused copy writer, you have a committee. In the worst scenario, you have a committee in a culture where kissing up is expected and the top level kissers have to kiss up to really old institutional practices. These august bodies do not write quick, responsive copy. They write heavy copy full of venerated jargon. The last time they read anything about writing for the web, they learned about Search Engine Optimization and their content is so full of keywords it looks like it was assaulted by an automatic weapon that shoots the same five words, over and over.

It is very difficult to get this kind of group to pay any attention to the two questions that must be asked repeatedly of every piece of copy.  But you must try.

Show them evidence by experts like Joe Pulizzi of the Content Marketing Institute or Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg, authors of Call to Action about the scientific work supporting the power of conversion writing. Focus on the benefits to the company. This is your only hope.

First you must convince them to answer the first question: “Why is my reader here?” and then you must make an even more difficult case. You must get them to answer the question “How can I make my reader’s experience delightful?”

The tricky part about this is that the only way to make your content experience a delightful conversion experience is to write in Human. To write the way people think. Those heavy, jargony, SEO-laden sentences are not how people think or speak. Words like “leverage your capabilities” and “utilize your CMS to maximize benefits” or “experience of a lifetime.” These are not things normal people say. These are words used almost exclusively in content that’s trying to make you do something you may not want to do. As such, your brain rejects these words. These words are like oil to water. They slide over the brain and out the ears with no impact.

A delightful experience connects with people on an emotional level. Not sappy, but human.

So here’s the thing. Next time you’re creating a piece of copy for your business, pretend you’re telling some people about in conversation and that you’re doing it on one of those days you have a lot of passion about what you do.

Write what you’d say. Nuke any unnecessary jargon, any overused ad words or anything that would make you shut down if it was in someone else’s copy.

What you’ll wind up with is a piece of copy much more likely to hook people who click on your content and turn readers into buyers.

 

About the Author

brian masseyBrian Massey is the Conversion Scientist at Conversion Sciences and he has the lab coat to prove it. His rare combination of interests, experience and neuroses was developed over almost 20 years as a computer programmer, entrepreneur, corporate marketer, national speaker and writer. Conversion Sciences was founded to fill the Web with helpful, engaging and entertaining online Web sites that convert visitors into leads and sales. The company has helped dozens of businesses transform their sites through a steady diet of visitor profiling, purposeful content, analytics and testing. “There are places on the Web that make you feel like they were built just for you,” he says. “Is yours one of these? It could be.

See Brian Live!

Brian will be talking more about copy and its role in persuasion and conversion at the Conversion Conference 2012 on March 5th and 6th in San Francisco, California. Join him in his session on “Creating Killer Conversion Copy: Emails, Landing Pages, PPC Ads and More.” See the full agenda and read more about this session.

Want to save on your Conversion Conference Registration? Follow Brian on Twitter to say hello and request for a discount code!

 

The Human Side of Conversion

September 22nd, 2011 No comments

By Phillip Klien
Owner & Chief Innovation Officer, BTBuckets

As analysts we tend to use our systematic left side of the brain for optimization strategies. We apply multivariate testing and the Taguchi Method, breathe the confidence interval, and digest the funnel reports in our analytics platforms. Sometimes we are so focused on conversion metrics that we forget that we the people visiting our sites are human beings and not just integers in our reports.

A right-sided brain approach

There are different ways to optimize based on human behavior. One of my favorite experts on this subject is Dr. Robert Cialdini, author of “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” – which sold over 2 million copies and has been listed on Fortune Magazine’s “75 Smartest Business Books.” Dr. Cialdini is recognized as one of the world’s leading experts on social influence. and actually spent years going “undercover” applying for jobs and training at used car dealerships, fund-raising organizations, telemarketing firms to observe real-life situations of persuasion.

Dr. Cialdini’s principles are based on fixed action patterns (instinctive behavioral responses) that are triggered by specific stimuli. All animals have these – a mother tiger will go crazy when she hears her cub crying. An yes, we humans are also born with some instinctive triggers that is so hard-wired we will be influenced by them.

The six magic triggers

Dr. Cialdini identified six “weapons of influence” and how to leverage these to persuade people. These triggers are:

1) Scarcity – When we think an item is scarce, we will want it more.

2) Social proof – We determine what is correct by finding out what other people think is correct.

3) Authority – We tend to obey authority figures – even if the acts are objectionable.

4) Reciprocity – We should try to repay in kind what another person has provided us.

5) Commitment (consistency) – Once we make a choice or take a stand, we will encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to behave consistently with that commitment.

6) Liking – We most prefer to say yes to the requests of people we know and like.

On the web

When you optimize your headlines, images or call-to-actions – do you consider persuasive messaging? I have seen different sites using different triggers. Here are some good examples of ”
scarcity:”

So, how are you using persuasive marketing to increase conversion rates based on these “weapons of influence”?

About the Author

Phillip Klien Owner & Chief Innovation Officer, BTBucketsPhillip has an active role with web analytics and adserving in Latin America. He is also co-founder of Predicta, an adserving and web analytics software/service provider in Brazil that placed 1st in the 2009 WAA Waalter awards and 2nd in the first WAA Championship. Phillip is also a tutor for the award-winning UBC Award of Achievement in Web Analytics and helped develop measurement guidelines for the IAB. He is the founder of BTBuckets – a free on-site behavioral segmentation and targeting platform and SiteApps – app store for websites..

See Phillip Live!

Phillip will be speaking with Carloyn Nye, from USAData, in a session titled, “Triggers & Targeting: How Getting Personal Increases Conversions” at Conversion Conference East 2011 in New York City. See the full agenda and read more about this session.

Want to save on your Conversion Conference Registration? Follow Phillip on Twitter and contact him to request a discount code!

Categories: Content, Engagement, Persuasion Tags:

2 Powerful Tactics to Increase Conversion and Drive Online Results

September 19th, 2011 No comments

By Joe Rawlinson
Senior e-Commerce Product Manager & Strategist, National Instruments

How to Use Defaults to Drive Results

We take recommendations all the time in our daily lives. You take the concierge’s recommendation when you go to the restaurant he mentions. You take your server’s recommendation at the restaurant when you order her suggested meal.

Likewise we take a website’s recommendation when we accept the default choice that has been presented to us.

A great example of this comes from Kiva.org. Kiva is a non-profit where you can provide a micro-loan to the working poor around the world. For example, you can loan money to Blanca in El Salvador so she can buy goods for her corner store. She sells those goods, repays the loan, and then you can loan the money to another entrepreneur.

Kiva really wants you to complete the loan to Blanca and other entrepreneurs like her. They don’t want distractions or roadblocks to get in the way of you completing that loan.

To help get you to complete the task at hand, Kiva uses the power of defaults.

Once you’ve decided to whom you will loan your money, Kiva shows you a defaulted amount that you can loan. In this case, it is $25.

screenshot of defaulting

This immediately answers the question: “how much should I loan to Blanca?”

The default sounds good so you move on to the next step.

Kiva also wants you to donate to their non-profit so they default an amount for that purpose as well.

All of these defaults are in place to propel you to finish and fund the loan.

By using defaults, the site eliminates the micro-decisions that you would otherwise have to think about.

Defaults not only push customers to complete a task, they can influence the direction you want them to take.

Caution: defaults are extremely powerful. People will take the default.

Carefully consider what you default when you present choices to customers. Are there any downstream consequences? Will you need to make more of the widget you default for purchase? Will there be more customer support issues for that particular product?

Map out the downstream consequences so that you can give customers a default that is good for both the company and the customer.

Try some defaults on your website, you’ll be amazed at the results.
Unfortunately, your defaults won’t work if your prospective customers never see them in the first place. To that end, you need to remove roadblocks on their way to conversion.

Remove Distractions to Increase Conversion

Removing distractions from your customer’s path is key to closing the sale.

Let’s look at an example from Dell.com. They segment their customers into several types. As the visitor to the website navigates down one of those paths, the website organizes the products and eliminates irrelevant options.

For example, the home customer isn’t distracted by the latest rack-mounted servers and the enterprise customer isn’t distracted by the home entertainment system.

To effectively get your customers to the point of sale, you need to clear the road of any obstacles.

These obstacles are choices and items that are distractions to the customer.

If your customer has made selections based on their navigation through your site, you should not show them products that no longer match those needs.

As you eliminate options which are not relevant to the customer, they can more quickly find what they are looking for and proceed to the point of sale.

Too often we try and show the customer all of our products and services all the time. We hope that will keep them around because every possibility is readily at hand.

However, this is not the case. Too many choices will confuse customers.

As we start to learn what the customer is looking for, help them laser focus down to the right product match for their needs.

Think about how you can organize your product offering and eliminate distractions based on what you know about your customer. This knowledge can come from past purchase history or even the last click they made on your website.

About the Author

Joe Rawlinson, Senior e-Commerce Product Manager & Strategist, National InstrumentsJoe Rawlinson is a Senior e-Commerce Product Manager and Strategist at National Instruments, a technology company that equips engineers and scientists with tools that accelerate productivity, innovation and discovery. He defines the strategy of several key e-commerce applications critical to both company and customer success and specializes in improving online sales, leads, and efficiency through the e-commerce channel.

See Joe Live!

Joe will be leading a session titled, “B2B Success: How to Generate More Leads & Close Sales Directly on Your Site” at Conversion Conference East 2011 in New York City. See the full agenda and read more about this session.

Want to save on your Conversion Conference Registration? Follow Joe at his blog ReturnCustomer.com and on Twitter and contact him to request a discount code!

Convincing your boss with ROI

September 2nd, 2011 No comments

If you have to first convince your boss it’s worth your time and the company’s money to go, you’re not alone.

There are plenty of Other Conversion Conference attendees that were and still are in your shoes. That is why we wanted to make it as easy as possible for you to convince your boss that it would be ludicrous to not send you to Conversion Conference.

We have put together this page with facts about the conference, feedback from Conversion Conference San Francisco attendees, and a justification letter that you can download and customize as you see fit, adding immediate problems you’ll be able to solve and long-term initiatives you’ll be able to implement.

What are you waiting for? Early Bird Registration ends TODAY!

Download the letter now

Categories: Conference News, Persuasion Tags:

Narcissism: Personalization’s Flip Side?

August 15th, 2011 2 comments

By Kate O’Neill
CEO & Founding Partner, [meta]marketer
(Originally published 6/8/11 at CMO.com)

A video from the TED Talks series has been spreading through my digital marketing circles like a summer cold: Eli Pariser: Beware online “filter bubbles.” The video is often shared with a comment to the effect of, “You must watch this!” And, yes, it’s quite good.The upshot? That personalization algorithms for online content are shaping what we consume (and, to some extent, what we are able to consume) so that we are less and less exposed to divergent ideas.

Pariser’s talk goes beyond esoterica, though, and cites how Netflix, among other commerce examples, applies personalization. That’s what got me thinking about how this algorithmic content evolution relates to online marketing, e-commerce, and our ethical responsibilities as marketers. Oddly, even though many of my friends who shared this video are themselves thinkers about digital marketing and online social sharing, there seems to be very little introspection about what the “filter bubble” effect means in terms of online marketing and ethics. So if you’ll pardon the navel-gazing, I’d like to examine this a bit and would encourage you to do the same; let me know your thoughts in response.

Certainly at [meta]marketer, we encourage our e-commerce clients to test behavioral targeting. There’s typically a great deal of convenience that this kind of targeting affords the customer. For example, Amazon knows that I tend to buy raw vegan cookbooks, and so it tends to show me the latest and best-rated related books in my browse path. I welcome this because I get exposed to books I somehow might have missed but will almost certainly like. On Netflix, too, there’s a good chance that showing me personalized suggestions will save me time and delight me, even as it reinforces my longevity with the site and ensures my subscription payments for months to come.

This selfish/selfless balance is the new normal in marketing optimization. It’s what I personally am passionate about: using data to create better customer experiences and, simultaneously, generate incremental profits. It’s what we do with our clients, and their KPIs speak for themselves.

But are we contributing to this insular and narcissistic phenomenon where the more time individuals spend online, the more they start to have mirrors set up around them so that they can no longer see diverse behavior, but rather increasingly similar likenesses of themselves? Perhaps. After all, one of the keys to the work we do is an emphasis on relevance. As I think of it, relevance is a form of respect. It shows customers that we respect their time and effort enough not to make them scour the site for what they’re after.

Chris Brogan and other digital thought leaders have spoken about social news as a serendipity engine. (Serendipity, incidentally, has long been my favorite word and a beloved concept.) In earlier iterations of social news, you got what you got. So, too, in early e-commerce. As the availability of information has accelerated, though, and personalization algorithms have evolved, some of that serendipity has been traded for distillation and, yes, relevance. So, sure, from an editorial perspective, in the video Pariser is justified in saying that Mark Zuckerburg’s example of “a squirrel dying in front of your house” is not as important as “people dying in Africa.” But in commerce, the dilemma of moral or ethical priority is not nearly so clear-cut. Perhaps the personalization of search and social news makes it less likely that you’ll happen upon something random and wonderful, but the continued explosion of long-tail content and commerce means there’s randomness even within niches. While the “filter bubbles” Pariser describes might obscure your view of the randomness and chaos of the Web, in general, personalization does help uncover hidden gems within customers’ interests.

Because the other side of all this tailoring and customization is that the long tail is getting longer in every area, and the realization that we’re not going to be able to see most of what’s out there is starting to sink in. So personalized content and merchandising is as much a response to information overload as it is to data availability. Going back to my earlier example, if I landed on Amazon’s home page and it made no effort to customize the content for me, it’s likely I’d have little idea of the breadth and depth of its catalog as it related to the semi-obscure offerings that appeal to me. Would I think to search for chia seeds, one of my recent purchases at the site, if it wasn’t made clear to me that Amazon carried food stuff as well as books (and tools and shoes and sporting equipment. . . and, and, and)?

After all, relevance and targeting are not new phenomena in marketing. We study demographic and psychographic information to understand customer profiles so that we can tailor our advertising placements, our message, and our follow-through for optimal results. What’s newer is the ability to adjust whole experiences on the fly based on behavioral performance. Imagine if you walked into a store–let’s use Nordstrom as an example, since it’s famous for its quality concierge service. As you looked around and your attention landed on an object, the other objects around you shifted. Would you feel more catered to or more pandered to? Or perhaps both? In the context of Nordstrom, where it has been established that it’s trying to improve your shopping experience, perhaps it would seem just another level of superior customer service. If you had the same experience in, say, Wal-Mart, chances are a savvy shopper might feel manipulated.

As a marketer, I see my job as creating meaningful connections between company and customer. (Note that I don’t say that my job is to convert customers: Read my previous CMO.com article on empathy-oriented optimization for why conversion as a single KPI is short-sighted.) As a data-driven, technology-savvy marketer, I know that behavioral similarities among visitors and, ultimately, customers often lead to clues, validated through analysis and testing, that can improve the customer experience overall–and, in turn, increases profit. That this also occasionally means limiting a customer’s view of the site and creating an insulated experience is not only an acceptable side effect, it’s intentional. Because that’s what customer behavior dictates. Customers become overwhelmed when presented with too much choice, and since niche options abound online, that means that if I’m HomeDepot.com and a customer comes in from a search for power tools, I’d best show top-selling power tools and not home appliances or ladders or whatever else.

But perhaps a lesson to take away from this is that there might be opportunity in exposing the customer experience to a little randomness where it doesn’t interfere with the customers’ intentions. A little unexpected cross-sell of something charming, a quirky-but-fun site feature, something surprising and fresh–these types of experiments with commercial randomness might be worth trying in your environment and seeing how customers respond. Because with all of the filtering we’re presented with, the savvy shoppers out there might be picking up on the sometimes heavy-handed crafting of custom-tailored experiences. And maybe, just maybe, we’re all overdue for a little serendipity anyway.

About the Author

Kate O'Neill, [meta]marketerKate O’Neill, CEO & Founding Partner of [meta]marketer, developed her passion for data-driven business while managing content at Netflix. Several successive leadership roles within both startups and large companies (such as HCA) refined Kate’s crisp views on the interplay of content, experience, strategy, and profit. While leading customer experience and product development for Magazines.com, she also developed industry-leading expertise in conversion optimization, behavioral targeting, and strategic analytics. Kate has twice served on the Customer Advisory Board for the Omniture Test&Target marketing optimization product, and has also spoken about analytics and optimization at numerous national conferences.

See Kate Live!

Kate will be presenting a session on “The Human Connection: Persuading Through Caring,Empathy and Emotion” at Conversion Conference East 2011 in New York City. See the full agenda and read more about this session.

Want to save $700 on Conversion Conference? Contact Kate to request a discount code!

Categories: Content, Persuasion Tags:

Beyond the Click: Online Experience Streams

March 10th, 2011 No comments

by Patrick Bultema, CodeBaby

Much of the focus on optimizing website results has been around “clicks.” For instance, we’ve focused on how to make a landing page more effective at getting a visitor to click on the desired button, to get that crucial first click. Similarly, we’ve focused on how to make an eCommerce page more effective at getting a customer to click the Add-to-Cart button. Now let me say, this focus on these key points, these key clicks is appropriate. After all, if a person doesn’t make that first click, you don’t have any chance of getting to the desired outcome with a site visitor. But this focus on clicks is only part of the story.

The broader, more complete picture is that one click leads to another. In fact, rarely is a desired outcome achieved with one click, with one action on the part of a customer. Instead, these crucial first-clicks typically lead to a whole series of clicks that result in a desired customer outcome, or conversion. That’s why more and more attention is getting paid to not simply tracking clicks at key points, but identifying, analyzing, and optimizing these click streams. And there are an emerging range to new products and capabilities that help you identify and analyze these click streams.

But there is something more fundamental about all of these than even thinking about click streams. In reality, what stands behind these clicks is a human experience. It’s this bundle of experience that grabs attention, engages, and motivates a real human to take action and follow a particular behavioral path. So it’s more than just a click stream, it’s an experience stream. It’s less about clicks and navigation of technology, and more about what motivates a real human, in the context of personal experience, individual motivation and human dynamics to take a series of human actions … that just happen to be clicks.

The real opportunity to to focus on this larger, more holistic experience streams. And in fact, that is the core innovation behind the approach of micro-sites for instance. Here, the organizing principle of each of the  individual micro-sites is a focus on human experience streams. To start, you identify the personas, the characteristics of a particular group of people you know are coming to a site, interested in a particular product or service you have to offer. Next, you identify the specific and distinct interests and motivations of a particular persona group. Then, you map your particular offer and desired outcomes to that persona. Finally, you create an optimized experience stream that best matches your interests as a company and those of the persona group. The entire micro-site, then, is built around these optimized experience streams with a limited number of branching options based on individual interests and behavior. In short, a micro-site is build around a complete customer experience plan. Of course, all this means you need to create tens if not hundreds of separate micro-sites.

Regardless of whether you’re inclined to move to this micro-site approach, I think the principles are generally applicable.

  1. Identify specific and distinct Personas
  2. Map human interests and motivations to your offer
  3. Design optimal and distinct customer experience streams
  4. Implement web processes and technologies that bring these experience streams to life

So the key question is: What are the desired experience streams you need to enable and optimize on your site? In many cases, there may be tens if not hundreds of potential experience streams on a website, but only a  handful of experience streams account for most of the interest on the part of the company and it’s customers. Is your site optimized for these key experience streams? At the very least, you need to be asking this key question. And better, what can you do to optimize and bring to life these key experience streams? For therein lies the bigger picture and path to success beyond just focusing on the click.

About the Author

Patrick Bultema is CEO of CodeBaby, a new media, internet software company providing innovations for online customer experience and conversion metrics. Throughout his career, Patrick Bultema has been recognized as an industry and company maker. He has served as an executive, venture investor, board member, and advisor to tens of venture-financed startups. He was most recently a Venture Partner with vSpring Capital. He was CEO of XAware, and CEO of FrontRange Solutions, a global CRM software company. He was a founder and Executive Chairman of Knowlix, and was Chairman and General Manager of the Help Desk Institute, then a Ziff-Davis company.

A noted author and speaker, Patrick is recognized as one of leading experts in the customer industry … throughout his career bringing together technology and customer experience. He was founding Executive Editor of Customer Support Management Magazine, and has been a thought leader in the CRM space. Patrick holds a Bachelor’s degree from California State University and a Master’s from Princeton. He will be presenting on the value of rich media engagement at Conversion Conference West 2011.

Categories: Engagement, Persuasion Tags:

Delivering Effective Personalization Through Automated Targeting

March 9th, 2011 No comments

By Pete Olson, Amadesa

Targeting customer segmentsCompanies have long embraced A/B and multivariate testing for website optimization and the creation of “personalized” customer experiences. These tools often perform well, improving conversion rates anywhere from 5 to 50 percent. Even with this success, it’s clear that there are far more possible customer segments and related options than just “A” or “B.” Customers may have common general attributes, but their specific traits can be used to deliver the single best offer, image or text tailoredto each individual. While a rules-based approach gets companies part of the way toward true personalization, automated content selection needs to be a part of a continuum of targeting options businesses employ to effectively personalize websites.

High-performance targeting offers numerous benefits beyond those provided by traditional, manual rules-based testing. These advantages include:

  • The ability to match the right message to the right individual
  • Automatic, hourly adjustments to changes in site traffic
  • Reduced daily maintenance and freedom from running tests and building manual rules
  • Insights and data regarding how content is performing, how traffic is allocated, and what is most beneficial to the customer

Onsite automated targeting is a powerful way to increase the ROI of existing website efforts, but companies shouldn’t jump into it without some pre-planning. Before running targeting on a site, time should be spent designing the approach and clarifying goals and objectives. These can include conversion rates, reduced marketing spend, loyalty and engagement increases.

Manual A/B and multivariate testing tools remain valuable; companies should use them as a starting point from which to design relevant website experiences for customers. As their strategies improve and mature, however, businesses should move toward more customer-specific personalization capabilities. Rules-based targeting solutions provide a greater level of control but require constant management to maintain. More preferable are automated targeting solutions that help businesses deliver truly personalized customer experiences and the kind of relevance, continuity and loyalty that results in increased conversions and sales.

About the Author

Pete OlsonPete is vice president of enterprise solutions at Amadesa. In this role, Pete is responsible for providing the strategic direction for the company’s technology platform, listening to the needs of customers, and offering a unique value proposition to the markets served by the company. He is also responsible for building relationships with key technology partners.

Prior to joining Amadesa, Pete was Senior Director of Product Management for Digital River, Inc (NASDAQ: DRIV), a leading provider of global e-commerce solutions for software and consumer technology. At Digital River, Pete was responsible for driving key decisions for the platform technology and internal integration strategies and he also assisted in M&A activity. Prior to Digital River, Pete was a member of the corporate marketing team at 3M. Pete has a BS degree in Marketing and Agriculture Business from Iowa State University.

Categories: Content, Persuasion Tags:

Social Validation: How Web Visitors are Influenced by Others

March 8th, 2011 2 comments

by Susan Weinshenk, PhD

You are browsing a website to decide what to boots to buy. You see a pair that looks good and then you scroll down to see the ratings. Several people say the boots are cheaply made and uncomfortable. What will you do? Will you buy the boots or not? If you are unsure, then chances are you will listen to the reviews and not buy the boots, even though the people writing the reviews are total strangers.

Uncertainty tips the scale

Uncertainty tips the scalesIn my book, Neuro Web Design: What makes them click? I write about the tendency to look to others to decide what to do. It’s called social validation.

Is the smoke dangerous? — Latane and Darley conducted research – they set up ambiguous situations to see if people were affected by what others around them were or were not doing. Participants in the research would go into a room, supposedly to fill out a survey on creativity. In the room would be one or more other people, pretending they were also participants, but who were really part of the experiment. Sometimes there would be one other person in the room, sometimes two others or more. While everyone is filling out their creativity survey, smoke starts coming into the room from an air vent. Would the participant leave the room? Go tell someone about the smoke? Just ignore it?

Only if others think take action — What action, if any, the participant took depended on the behavior of the other people in the room, as well as how many other people there were. The more people, and the more the others ignored the smoke, the more the participant was likely to do nothing. If the participant was alone, they would leave the room and notify someone. But if there were others in the room not reacting, then the participant would do nothing.

Testimonials and ratings are powerful — Online, social validation is most in evidence with ratings and reviews. When we are unsure about what to do or buy, we look to testimonials, ratings, and reviews to tell us how to behave. The most powerful ratings and reviews:

  • Include information about the person writing the review – a mini “persona”. This is effective because the person reading the review will give more credence to a review written by someone who is like them.
  • Tell a story about the product or service. Because stories “talk” to our mid, or emotional brain, they are very powerful.
  • Ratings from other readers you think are like you are more powerful in influencing behavior than ratings from experts or from the website itself.

Although people don’t like to admit that they are easily influenced by others, the truth is that they are.

About the Author

Susan Weinschenk, PhDSusan Weinschenk has a Ph.D. in Psychology from Penn State, and over 30 years of experience consulting in usability, user experience, and interaction design for Fortune 1000 companies, non-profits, and educational institutions. Susan has written 4 books on user experience. Her recent books are: Neuro Web Design: What makes them click?, (New Riders, 2009) — applies the latest research on neuroscience to the design of web sites, and 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People (New Riders, April, 2011). Susan is a highly rated speaker and workshop leader. She is Chief of User Experience Strategy, Americas, at Human Factors International and writes a popular blog: whatmakesthemclick.net

Join Susan and Conversion Conference for a session on “Mind Games: Brain Science & Conversion” March 14th, and a special 1/2 day workshop on Neuro Web Design March 16th. Save $100 on the workshop with Promo Code WEINSF11

Categories: Persuasion Tags:
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