The Persuasion Slide

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by Roger Dooley


  One approach to reciprocity that few sites implement is to give the visitor something of explicit value, like an ebook download first, and only then ask for their contact information.

  According to Cialdini’s research, this should actually work better than the much more common approach of getting first, then giving.

  Commitment/Consistency. People unconsciously want to behave in a manner that is consistent with past behavior. Experiments have shown that if a person performs even a trivial favor for someone, she is far more likely to perform a bigger one later. In online terms, this trivial favor could be a Facebook “like” or completing a one-question survey.

  Sites that use multi-page forms exploit this principle. If a visitor clicks once, then completes a few fields, and clicks again, continuing to fill in data would be consistent with the actions they just took.

  Social Proof. People pay attention to what other people are doing, both consciously and unconsciously. They will choose the crowded restaurant over the nearly empty one, even though they’ll be served more slowly. That’s why bloggers trumpet their popularity when they ask you to subscribe. It’s not to feed their ego (at least not entirely), it’s to provide social proof that they are delivering information of great value.

  Figure 18 - Social Proof at SocialMediaExaminer.com

  Similarly, companies talk about how many millions of their products have been sold, or how many customers they serve, and so on – it’s all about social proof.

  Authority. People defer to those in authority – officials, professors, doctors, and experts in a field. Consciously, they may follow the direction of an authority figure. At a non-conscious level, they will tend to weight the opinion of an authority more highly than that of others.

  Authority seems a bit like social proof, but it’s based not on numbers but on perceived expertise, status, or power.

  The classic series of experiments by psychologist Stanley Milgram showed that subjects were so deferential to an experimenter wearing a lab coat (an authority symbol) that they tortured an unseen individual with electric shocks. (The screams were simulated, and in reality nobody was actually harmed in the experiment.)

  Nike pays athletes to endorse its products because they have credibility in the field of athletic performance.

  Authors solicit endorsements of their books by other experts in their field. It’s rare to find a newly-published book that doesn’t prominently feature “blurbs” from authors, reviewers, and other experts.

  Liking. People we like more easily persuade us. While some liking feelings are conscious, as with a friend, often they are so subtle we aren’t aware of them.

  According to Cialdini, a key element of liking is having things in common with each other.

  Hence, smart salespeople work to establish common ground with their prospects. They determine if the customer is a golfer, a football fan, a graduate of the same university, etc. to try and build liking.

  Establishing likability online isn’t quite so easy, but it doesn’t hurt to try. In the ChrisBrogan.com example shown earlier, we see a smiling Chris saying, “Join me every week for some magic. I promise this is the best of what I do.” Not quite the same as chatting over beers, but it begins to show that Chris is a real person.

  A great way to establish liking in a business context is to point out what you have in common with most of your customers. If the business sells fishing gear, a photo of the company founder wading in a stream or reeling in a fish will build liking.

  While you may have limited space on a landing page or popup form to establish liking, the “About Us” page is a good place to not just establish your expertise but to show you are human, too. Photos with pets, other people, hobby gear, etc. contribute to a more human profile.

  Scarcity. The fewer there are of something, the more people like and want them. Usually, they are quite unaware of their preference for scarcity.

  Phrases like, “Only 5 left!” or “Offer expires at midnight!” are powerful motivators. This particular technique isn’t often used in conjunction with blog subscriptions, but is highly successful in product and other promotions.

  Travel sites have become some of the most skilled users of scarcity – they often display warnings like, “Only 2 seats left at this price!” or “Only 1 room left!”

  More Non-Conscious Motivation: Evolutionary Psychology

  We’ve heard for decades that “sex sells,” and it often does give conversions a lift. Evolutionary psychologists have an explanation for this. This discipline holds that our modern behavior is governed by our prehistoric brains, which have remained essentially unchanged for 50,000 years.

  So, when we interact on Facebook, shop at Amazon, and plan our careers, we are following patterns established in our hunter-gatherer days.

  Indeed, they argue, the deepest urge driving human behavior is to pass on one’s DNA. This may have evolved over millions of years, and the process of evolution rewards those who are successful in that process.

  In his book The Mating Mind, Geoffrey Miller makes the case for modern behavior being driven by non-conscious “mating” behaviors and preferences. These have changed greatly as society has evolved, but our behavior is still affected.

  One of my favorite studies was a direct marketing test by a South African bank. They mailed tens of thousands of loan offers to potential customers, varying the interest rate and including different photo content – an attractive male or female, or no photo at all. Lower loan interest rates caused a higher response, as one might expect. The real surprise was how male recipients responded to offers that included a picture of an attractive woman as part of the mailing. The increase in response rate was equivalent to the lift from dropping the interest rate by four percentage points!4

  If your target audience is primarily male, it’s possible that female imagery will be motivating. As with other variables, it’s essential to test different approaches instead of assuming that any particular strategy will work in your situation.

  Non-Conscious Motivator Example: FREE!

  Not all non-conscious motivators fit neatly into a major theoretical framework. Many are discovered by experiments by behavior researchers and, sometimes, marketing optimizers. These insights can be just as useful and actionable as major principles, like social proof.

  One such finding relates to the word “FREE!”

  For decades, advertisers have been creating lists of power words – words and phrases that motivate customer action. Word like “New!” and “Guaranteed,” for example, instantly communicate that an offer is worth examining. One word that makes just about every one of those lists is “FREE!”

  While it’s natural that people like free things, research by Dan Ariely shows that “free” is far more powerful than one would expect from purely rational analysis. In one fascinating experiment, he showed that people would pay 15 cents for a desirable chocolate truffle vs. a penny for an ordinary chocolate kiss. But, when the kiss was offered for free vs. 14 cents for the truffle – exactly the same price differential – the kiss became the most popular choice.5

  Figure 19 - NeuroscienceMarketing.com/blog/ - “FREE” in headline and CTA button

  The potency of “FREE!” is why so many offers include it. Lead generation sites often offer a free download to increase the number of signups. Merchandise sites offer free shipping, or “buy one, get one free” offers.

  In our blog subscription example, most offers use the word “free” to reassure visitors there’s no cost when they enter their information. Beyond that conscious reassurance, though, a prominent “free” is also a powerful non-conscious motivator that will move them down the slide. And including that word costs nothing… it’s free!

  Many More Non-Conscious Motivators

  The motivators described above are applicable in a broad range of persuasion tasks. There are countless more, however, that may apply in specific situations.

  In a bookstore environment, for example, researchers fou
nd that adding a whiff of chocolate scent to the air kept people shopping longer and increased sales. The imagery that accompanies a print or web ad can have a big effect on conversion.

  Just a few of the non-conscious motivators worth examining include,

  • Sensory marketing.

  • Use of stories.

  • Pricing psychology.

  • Anchoring and framing.

  • Dozens of other cognitive biases.

  Getting into these and many other non-conscious influences is beyond the scope of this book. To discover more non-conscious motivators that will work in your particular situation, read books like Unconscious Branding by Douglas Van Praet6, my own Brainfluence, or any of the fine works from Robert Cialdini or Dan Ariely. Even if you don’t find an exact prescription for your needs, you will discover many possible starting points for testing.

  [For notes, updates, contact info, and a free Persuasion Slide workbook visit persuasionslide.com]

  Chapter 7: Fighting Friction

  You’ve probably seen a slide that looked fine from a distance – great construction, a slope that was more than adequate – but on which kids got stuck before they reached the bottom. The culprit, of course, was friction. The slide surface might have been rusty or pitted. Perhaps there was something sticky or gritty on it. Whatever the reason, despite a good initial push and adequate slope, kids got to the bottom only with assistance or by pushing themselves with their arms.

  Figure 20 - Friction is the enemy on any slide.

  Friction is a very real concern for marketers, too. We see visitors or customers who have arrived at the site (or retail store, dealership, etc.) and are motivated to act… but don’t.

  Just as there are two kinds of motivators, there are two kinds of friction: real (conscious) and perceived (non-conscious).

  Types of Real Friction

  Friction in a conversion process can take many forms. All are bad, but some are worse than others.

  Blockers

  At McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, there is a wide, smooth stainless steel surface that runs between a set of very long escalators. This long run of shiny metal would make a superb slide!

  Figure 21 - “Slide blockers” at McCarran International Airport (photo credit Joe Wolf, Flickr.com)

  Escalator designers and airport operators see the slide potential, too, but don’t view it as a positive. Lacking any sense of fun, they see the smooth, shiny surface as a dangerous liability.

  In this particular installation, they placed sturdy metal airplanes at regular intervals on the “slide” – these are true blockers! Anyone foolish enough to start sliding down would face a painful encounter with the pointed nose of a miniature jet.

  The most extreme form of friction is like those model airplanes – it doesn’t merely slow the customer down, it causes a hard and abrupt stop.

  To be persuaded, one has to have the ability to act.

  If I see an ad for a Lamborghini Aventador and visit a dealer, I might be highly motivated to buy one. But, if I’m unable to afford the $500,000 price tag, I can’t progress past the mere admiration phase.

  If a website is selling something, customers have to have the ability to pay. This means they can afford the product and have the form of payment demanded by the website. They may have to meet geographic criteria, too. E-commerce websites often restrict orders to specific countries, for example.

  Car dealers have an expensive product, and they know that many potential customers might be subject to blockers that prevent them from making a purchase. The biggest blocker is that few potential customers have the cash to buy a car outright.

  So, to eliminate these blockers, the dealerships offer a variety of loans, leases, and other financing options. Many even have arrangements in place to offer financing to individuals with credit problems or who can’t make any down payment. By aggressively anticipating potential blockers and dealing with them, car dealers increase their customer pool and convert more visitors into buyers.

  In our blog subscription example, there should be no blockers – every potential subscriber has an email address, the only requirement for most subscriptions. In other types of conversion process, though, it’s important to look for unexpected blockers.

  Difficulty and Effort Increase Friction

  Fortunately, most persuasion tasks don’t have true blockers. Instead, they often suffer from too much difficulty and required effort. Every aspect of the conversion process that requires the customer to do something reduces the probability that she will complete the process.

  Form Friction

  Most online persuasion tasks (and many in-person ones) require filling out a form of some kind. Want to place an order? You’ll have to supply your payment information, your billing address, your shipping address, phone and email info, and likely a few other pieces of data.

  Even subscribing to a newsletter requires at least one item, the email address. Frequently, one or two name fields are added, and some blogs may ask for more information.

  Conversion experts agree that in most cases, every form field you add will reduce the conversion rate. (There are exceptions, of course, to this and most other rules.) Nevertheless, one sees forms with many more fields than are necessary – job title, fax number, zip code, etc. This is needless friction in almost every case.

  Confusion and Uncertainty

  Many online processes are subject to confusion. When placing an order, for example, will shipping charges apply? What are they? Where in the ordering process will I see them? If I clicked on a “20% Discount” link in an email, did it register properly? Will I be charged full price, and later have to argue with customer service to get the promised discount?

  Many e-commerce sites include reassuring language next to their checkout “continue” buttons to reduce the probability that customers will stop because of uncertainty. For example, a message might read, “You will be able to review your order on the next page before finalizing it.” This takes the risk out of clicking to continue.

  Sites that lack such reassuring language add confusion-based friction. Many customers will click through to the next step, but some may hesitate and not keep moving through the process.

  Even a poorly labeled form box can stall a customer. And every time a customer stops to figure out what they are supposed to do, the chances increase that they will give up.

  It can be hard to identify areas of potential confusion if you are familiar with the process. You can glance at the page and understand what’s going on. You know the order process, so you know on the final screen the shipping charges will be displayed. That someone else might stall there may not occur to you or other testers equally familiar with the process.

  This is an area where some simple usability testing will help. Observing first-time users try to place an order will disclose confusing elements that you would have never spotted yourself.

  Other Kinds of Real Friction

  Friction comes in all shapes and sizes. If a transaction must be conducted in person, the location or hours of operation may be inconvenient.

  Rules, procedures, fees, and many other factors can become friction in a persuasion process if they confuse or annoy the customer or otherwise slow down the customer’s rapid motion toward completion.

  Perceived Friction: “Imaginary” Difficulty

  Marketers are getting better at removing needless friction. They understand that things like awkward user experience and intimidating forms will hurt conversion.

  But, it’s not just the real difficulty or effort that you need to worry about. Customers can see more difficulty where none exists.

  A classic experiment showed that a slightly harder to read type font caused people to estimate a greater level of difficulty for the exact same task.

  Subjects were asked to read two lines of exercise instructions, with one group seeing the instructions in Arial (a simple, sans serif font) and the other in Brushy (a bolder font that looks a b
it like brushstrokes). Even though the text was identical, the subjects who read the Brushy instructions guessed the exercises would take twice as long as the first group did.7

  The concept those researchers were testing is called “cognitive fluency” – in essence, how hard our brains have to work to understand something.

  Dark backgrounds, hard to pronounce names, and a variety of other seemingly innocuous factors affect fluency. The danger from including disfluent elements often isn’t obvious. But, what seems to me a simple design preference can unconsciously make taking an action seem either more difficult or even more risky.

  Your customers will be consciously unaware of these friction-increasing fluency factors, and won’t be able to report them if you ask.

  The only way to eliminate these “imaginary” friction elements is to start with the basic knowledge that all of your content should be as easy to read and process as possible – simple fonts, high contrast backgrounds, easy names, short words, and so on.

  From that point, if the medium allows it, use A/B testing to refine your design and content.

  Choice Friction

  While we think of choice as a good thing for customers, more choices don’t always lead to more sales. Offering customers more choices and options can actually impede the decision-making process and reduce sales.

 

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