Review of Digital Psychology & Persuasion Minidegree Program (Pt. 7)

If I were to give you $1,000 in exchange for $500, would you do it?

Well, if you just met me… chances are no.

However, if we were best friends since high school and know each other for over 7 years, after we traveled and shared a lot of experiences together, then the answer can change (unless I’d be someone who forgets to give you your money back, but no… that’s not the case).

My point? You simply would trust me a lot more in the second scenario rather than in the first one.

So if we do this in real life with friends, what’s the reason we are changing the approach online?

There shouldn’t be any difference in the way we do it. But common sense isn’t always common practice, so that’s why we have sites asking first time visitors to fill forms asking for personal information.

They could be using that extra real estate with more effective approaches.

So this week, as you can guess, I went deep into the course of Building Trust inside the minidegree program from CXL Institute.

But not only did I cover the course of Building trust, but I also went into other 3 courses that talked about Building Habits & Loyalty, Influence and Interactive Design, and Psychology & Neuroscience for CRO.

So yeah, I went kinda fast this last week in material, I know.

Let’s start with Building Trust.

So following the example I used at the beginning of this article, trusting someone would depend on many factors, being one how much you know that person.

But instead of asking for emails to people who just landed at your page, which can work in many many cases by all means, I mean, I’m a copywriter…

Simply match your ask to the trust level and don’t force a lot of trust at the beginning.

That’s why having things suc as guest checkouts in ecom pages can help a lot.

Now, BJ Fogg has identified 10 factors that increase credibility in websites:

1. Desing — make it appropriate
2. Easy verification — this could mean to link any extra sources you’re using
3. Show you are real — show you, your company and staff, your address…
4. Prove expertise — any credentials or things that show you’re an authority
5. Real Humans — share your personal background, not just your resume
6. Easy to contact — use multiple forms of contact
7. Easy to use — this relates more to cognitive load, so keep things simple
8. Update often — show you’re active and present
9. Limit ads in your website
10. Avoid ANY errors — you know what I’m talking about, those tech errors or when a link is broken.

But if we use other tools to increase trust, there are some simple ways to do so.

The most common ones are reviews. Since they are from a third party, people will rely more on them. And don’t share just 5-star reviews. People know (and seek) for negative reviews, so if you tell them first they’re going to trust you more.

Also, show photos/videos of people actually using your product or service. In that way, people can see what to expect and in action.

BTW, did you know that by saying “You can trust us to do the job for you” seems to increase price fairness, caring, quality and competency?… You now know.

But why not use some trust symbols, like trust seal… use symbols that are familiar and people can trust you more.

And last but not least, pay special attention to the checkout page. The sale is not made until they put their credit card, so use trust seals (and based on an experiment, PayPal seal seems to make people feel that you’re more trustworthy). Plus, using some testimonials could help you reduce the perceived risk your prospect could have.

So here it goes the opposite to the common saying in old school saying “Assume the sale.” In fact, reduce the risk so that they are more likely to pull the trigger.

Let’s move on to the next topic, which is Building Habits & Loyalty.

Interestingly enough, most businesses across industries focus on client acquisition than client retention. This means, customer loyalty is often overlooked, yet indispensable for the growth of your business.

So how to increase brand loyalty?

One way to do so is by using Goal gradient + Endowed progress effect. I’ll briefly tell you what each one means and how to use it.

So many businesses use rewards as a way to increase loyalty. But if you think that rewards help with loyalty, you’re going to want to think again.

Think of rewards as an incentive to stay, but then an outstanding customer experience is what will make them stay.

If you combine both, then you’re going to get Loyalty as the result.

So this is where Goal gradient and Endowed progress effect come into play. The first one means that the closer we are to a goal, the faster we run to get it. And the Endowed progress effect tells us that we need to basically pre-fill some spaces in the reward cards.

So let’s say that you give them a reward that says “By the 10th visit of washing your car, you’ll get the next one Free”… your customers are going to be more likely to complete it if you give them by haing 2 out of 10 already filled out.

This also reminds me that you should show progress visually to motivate people in reward programs.

Inside this course, I also learned about Building Habits, so there was no better one to explain about this that Nir Eyal and his Hooked model.

Simply put, the model has 4 parts: Trigger, Action, Reward, and Investment. Ideally, after someone goes through this process should load the next trigger (Instant messaging like WhatsApp is a great example of the model).

This comes to show that great built products can change behavior… ideally, for good.

The next course is Influence & Interactive design.

In here is where I learned about Dr. Brian Cugelman and how uses design to drive behavior. And in this model, as a great model about marketing should start, looks for the target audience and their desired outcomes.

The model should take decision science into account… and that’s what Dr. Brian Cugelman did. Because the first half of the framework he showed in this course was about the Audience, but the second half was about the Source Message.

Let’s talk about each Source Message section as they relate to the Audience for each stage.

A) Directing attention

Seems obvious, right? Well, the way Dr. Cugelman suggests it to do so is by using Pre-attentive Processing. These are subconscious accumulation of information from one’s environment. It’s used to control where users look on a page.

And if you’re wondering on how to do this, simply think of asymmetrical things. When things break pattern, they caught our attention.

B) Educating customers

So you got the attention of your lead, now you should stimulate the experience of the product as closely as possible for your target audience (see why research of your avatar is vital?).

A way to deal with this part is to present both features and benefits. Rememeber the old saying, “Features tell, Benefits sell”.

C) Evoking emotion

We know and have talked that emotions drive decision, regardless of what context we’re talking about. So in practice, this is where you’d first want to revisit and edit accordingly.

Now most businesses (should be all) have a Value Proposition, and here’s where you should make it have a big impact for your readers. Just keep in mind that motivation has different models, dividing them by either the fear of loss or the pleasure in gaining something. Adapt your message accordingly.

D) Decision making

The least thing you want to do is to engage with your reader and make them feel excited about what you have, but feel confused or stopped. So when giving choices to your customers, give them just enough so they don’t end up with analysis paralysis.

E) Trust & Credibility

Websites are judged in a fraction of a second, so using the Halo Effect can help with the perception of you, your company, brand, and ultimately being more likely to buy.

As mentioned before, don’t forget to show your expertise in your field, and always having good values and integrity in everything that you do (as it should).

F) Creating a path

This is the ability to make them buy, such as the checkout page. So provide a path of the process they have to go through. Also, reduce friction by things like laying out the steps they have to do, or what will happen next after they perform an action.

At this point, is not even much about marketing, it’s more about having simple buying mechanisms and excellent UX.

G) Re-engaging customers

So what happens when customers abandon in any part of the process we’ve talked about? Most companies struggle to hold on to their users… and you should expect that.

The main areas to look for re-engagement are motivation and ability. For instance, reminding someone why they engaged with you in the first place can reignite motivation.

So this shows that regarldless of at what stage someone could abandon you, the overall framework is desinged to help you increase sales.

Last, but definitely not least, is the course on Digital psychology & Behavioral design training.

In this course, taught by Dr. Cugelman as well, explained the essence of behavioral design, while developing a broad perspective on the psychology of online behavior.

And the first thing we covered was Psychology and media. And yes, behavior change technologies.

In here, there are 2 elements required for mediated influence: the techniques of influence and the media. The most important thing to understand here is that media is not the issue, but persuasion by media requires you to use any influence technique in any media.

So focus on human behavior rather than thinking that TikTok or email are 2 completely different worlds. If you understand this concept alone, you’ll become more successful.

After we understand that, we have to know about our audience. In here, we look for some type of behavioral change, and the starting point is… getting their attention.

It’s important to know that sometimes we can make people backfire when using their own motivation, depending on how you frame things sometimes.

So knowing that we are emotional creatures, it makes sense to make it the next step. And motivation is an emotion that facilitates action. In other words, we could say that emotion = motivation.

And we could divide this section in a quadrant, which Dr. Cugelman developed.

There are basically 4 different emotions you could press in your target audience: insecurity, security, pessimism, and optimistic.

Think about what your customer avatar wants/motivates them, depending on the customer journey and you should have a strong and powerful marketing strategy for all media.

Next, we have digital product places. Imagine digital products were places, so the product will be the building, the menu of your page the halls, and a particular page a room.

This means to basically think of a page like a room, where we put our components in there.

Moving on, there’s digital locators& facilitators. They help people complete tasks, like CTAs. CTAs form a behaviorism perspective, so the reward someone gets from clicking should be good to increase the chances of people buying. Using directional cues helps control attention, so use them strategically.

Lastly, let’s talk about Behavioral UI.

In here, we can divide it in many parts, but we need to look at the source of the message (so that’s you/your biz…). You should aim for a mediated relationships between a source and an audience. Here’s where brand personality can play a key role.

Then, we could talk about Description, which it helps understand what people are dealing with. We need to educate them in this stage, which is about shaping the mental model in the mind of our audience.

Followed, there is Motivation. As we already discussed in previous sections, we need to refer back to their motivation and decide to use it either as a loss aversion or incentive. However, you’re gonna want to focus on loss aversion as it has been showed to be 2x stronger than gains.

Next, is Social Influence. It could be a fancy way of saying that using social proof and all it’s different ways of using it, such as testimonials, reviews, endorsements, and so on.

Afterwards, it’s Deciding. this is where we help people make up their minds, whether that’s by using choice architecture or a decision support system. Bonus: I’m huge about using decoy pricing, and you’re going to want to test it.

But we need to have one of the core factors in the behavioral change, which is Trust. And the truth is, that your audience should trust you… the source. Now, keep in mind that if there is no risk, there is no need for trust (a good lead magnet will fall in this category). Your audience will trust you based on honesty and competence.

Use things like reassurance, risk reducers, and manage expectations. This will build and increase trust.

Lastly, there is Reinforcer. it’s anything that increases the odds that your audience will take action again. So simply rewarding people for taking an action by words and images is going to make them more likely to continue doing that action.

And in this point, there is also the Psychology inspired design, which could be divided in 3 steps: define your audience and outcomes, select psychological principles, and then design a theoretical wireframe to start putting all things together…

That wraps up this week’s courses, which involved a lot of things and concepts.

It was interesting to see how different frameworks were used and how many coincide in some concepts to get the same outcome.

Overall, these courses gave a clear idea on how to continue improving the customer journey and it’s experience with your business. It’s all about helping them, while also you growing with them.

Talk to you next week.

Hasta la otra semana.

Ivan