Digital psychology and persuasion in a nutshell
In this blog I will do my best to explain what I learned about Digital Psychology and Persuasion in a nutshell. I will try to explain proven psychological frameworks that helps you improve your website, understand how people behave so that you are able to influence their purchase pattern.
Psychology Foundations — Cialdini’s 7 Principles of Persuasion.
When people talk about persuasion, the first name that comes in to mind is Robert Cialdini seven principles of persuasion that are well known and widely used. These principals are, reciprocity, commitment/ consistency, social proof, authority, liking, scarcity and unity.
Cialdini’s first principal of persuasion states that humans are wired to basically want to return favors and payback our debts. In other words, reciprocating the treatment we get from other people.
The idea behind reciprocity says states that by nature people feel obliged to provide either discounts or concessions to others if they’ve received favors from others. Example is the South Beach Diet Website. They give you free diet profile, once you get value of this via free diet profile, chances are you are more likely to either buy or subscribe to their product.
The principal of commitment and consistency states that we as human beings we have a deep need to be seen as consistent. As such, once we have publicly committed to something or someone, then we are so much more likely to go through and deliver that commitment… hence consistency.
In the social proof principal, Cialdini described as people doing what they observe others doing. This is a principal that is based upon the idea of safety in numbers. The vast majority of people prefer to simply belong to a group rather than think independently.
It is the essential nature of human animal to obey authority. That is why you will see people have a tendency to obey authority figures, even if those Authority figures have questionable character and/ or ask others to commit questionable acts?
You can use prominent athletes if you want to sell fitness products. Use well-known doctors and medical researchers on health-related websites. Use famous chefs if you want to sell food. For those who don’t have that budget can use symbols of authority (e.g. any random doctor) find out who represents authority in your field and in what way your user will comply with their message.
According to Cialdini, liking someone increases chances of being influenced by that individual. Liking is based on sharing something similar with people you like, and it’s also based on something as superficial as how attractive a person looks! That is why most websites use images of beautiful people since they sell more.
About us page serves as an opportunity to tell potential site visitors all about the similarities between its people and site visitors. So, its worthy to invest on the About Us page.
Scarcity is described as the perception of products seeming to become more attractive when their perceived availability is rather limited. It is one of the Cialdini’s principles used by various companies over and over again to boost their conversion and earn more money from people. Avoid faking scarcity because your site visitors will see right through you.
The Unity principle is the shared identity that the influencer shares with the one being influenced. This principal is all about appealing to a “We”- a cohesive identity that is shared by a group.
Psychology Foundations — Fogg Behavior Model
If you know how to impact behavior, you can design for behavior. According to Dr. BJ Fogg’s Behavior Model, three elements must come together at the same time for a behavior to occur: motivation, ability and trigger.
If you get high motivation and low ability you experience frustration. If the motivation is low, but easy to do activity you get annoyance. The more motivated people are to do behavior, the more likely they will do it. Human get motivated by pleasure, hope or fear and social acceptance or rejection.
Ability is about whether the task at hand can be easily done. Ability is more important than motivation. If I am committed to eat healthy, obviously my motivation is super high, but there is no healthy food around when I am hungry, it is very difficult to take the desired action and I will probably just get anything unhealthy instead. So, motivation alone is not enough.
Without the appropriate trigger, behavior will not occur even if both the user’s motivation and ability are high. A trigger is what prompts you to take action. If you trigger people at the right time, they will thank you. If you trigger then when they lack the ability, you will frustrate them. If you trigger people when they don’t have motivation you will annoy them.
Use Fogg’s Behavior Model to decide how much information people need before asking them to take action. Asses the motivation that you have built with the copy that came before you asked them to buy/sign up/ click, and the is the button copy itself motivating or not?
With Ability: Is a form your use trying to fill out easy? Is it easy to buy from your site? How can you make it easier?
Trigger: is either your call to action or website which acts as triggers compelling, visible or high in the visual hierarchy?
Internal vs External Factors
Attention can be gained through two routes: external and internal factors.
External factors also classified as objective factors, are things like intensity which are things like loud sound, bright lights, intense odor and bright color. Change intensity/ Quality of a Stimulus e.g. sudden loud noise. Movement for example animated backgrounds, sliding banners. Size, for example small object against a large background. Contrast e.g. contrasting color combination. Repetition, example is repeated exposure to a brand name or logo. And lastly Novelty, something like unique equipment, design.
Internal factors are also classified as subjective factors are things like interests, Habits and attitude, motives and organic states, emotions and past experiences.
Personal taste, often changes with age or life stage. Do you have the same dream car now as you were when you were 13 years old? This is an example of interest. Physical/psychological state, a person who’s busy is unlikely to stop what they’re doing to consider your ad, this is a form of motives and organic states.
When a person sees your ad and fear they are missing out, is an example of emotions. Checking the return policy before making a purchase decision due to past issues with return policy is an example of past experiences.
External factors like highly contrasting colors are not more or less effective at grabbing attention, they remain at the same level of effectiveness. Internal factors like habits for example, are subject to change.
Cognitive Load
Cognitive load is the amount of mental energy that is required to process something like you website. When you want to maintain attention span of users, that allows the m to browse you site and hopefully conduct a transaction before getting overwhelmed and abandoning your sit, minimize the cognitive load. The three types of cognitive loads are intrinsic, Extraneous and Germane cognitive load.
Intrinsic cognitive load refers to the complexity of the information at hand. The load exteted on a learner depends on how complex the task being presented is, and a learner’s ability to understand the new information. Cognitive load can be reduced by breaking information down in to digestible chunks, or simple, simple clear steps. Instead of feeling overwhelmed by the seemingly impossible task at hand, the learner takes steps in a clear direction that leads them towards their end goal.
Extraneous cognitive load is produced by the demands imposed on learners by the teacher, or the instruction that they are asked to follow. This type of cognitive load is increased through the ineffective learning methods. Effective presentation methods reduce cognitive load, allowing the learner to stay focused on their mission.
Germane cognitive load is produced by the construction of schemas and is considered to be desirable, as it assists in learning new skills and other information. Schema is a developed framework of an idea or object that tell us what to expect when we come across it in future. Schemas allow us to identify and differentiate between objects in the real world.
Understanding online reading patterns
When users come to your site they most likely implement an F pattern when going through information. Likewise, attention is heavily weighted towards the left side of the screen in browsing and examining search results, something common in English speaking and reading countries.
A form of reading pattern, layer cake pattern where the user explores horizontal lines quickly to see if the section, they chose strikes their interest.
If the layer cake scan pattern shows that the user is still interested, he/she will proceed to a spotted pattern-looking for the main ideas.
