During the afternoon I answered a few questions that may rise when discussing this topic.

• Are we being influenced?
• How do we decide?
• What are Persuasion Tactics?
• How can we as designers make use of this?
• How far can we go?

Are we being influenced?

Smells like clean spirit

In their study on ‘The Nonconscious Effects of Scent on Cognition and Behavior’, Rob Holland, Merel Hendriks and Henk Aarts at Radboud University and Utrecht University discovered we can indeed be influenced.

They discovered that the mere exposure to the scent of all-purpose cleaner can cause people to keep their direct environment more clean than they would when they hadn’t smelled the citrus odor. When people were asked afterwards why they kept their environment that clean, no one had a clue why they did.

Fast food logos unconsciously trigger fast behaviour

Chen-Bo Zhong and Sanford DeVoe proved it. Subliminal exposure to fast food logos stimulate haste and impatience, even when there is nu actual food around. Zhong and DeVoe did an experiment with 57 students who were asked to stare at the center of a computer sceen.

There would appear a stream of flashing objects At the corner of the screen. Students were asked to ignore these flashing symbols (only shown 12 milliseconds per object). Some of the students were shown logos of McDonald’s, KFC, Subway, Burger King and other fast food companies as part of the stream of symbols. Afterwards none of the students could tell what kind of symbols had appeared.

Then all participants were asked to read out a 320-word text about Toronto. Those who had fast food logos appear in the corner of their screens read the text in only 70 seconds while it took the others 84 seconds.

How do we decide?

In order to be able to influence people’s decision making process we should first know how people decide. How does one decide to take a persuasive message for granted or when does one reject a persuasive message.

Elaboration Likelihood Model

This model by Petty and Cacioppo (1979) distinguishes two possible routes to persuasion. The central route is used when someone considers a message logically. The peripheral route when someone considers a message by using preexisting ideas and superficial qualities. Which route is used depends on both motivation as ability for someone to process the persuasive message.

Persuasive messages that go through the central route require a great deal of thought and consciousness, and therefore are likely to predominate under conditions that promote high elaboration. Someone has to be really motivated to process the message on its logical grounds through this route. Someone has to be able to process the message on these logical grounds (needs a certain educational level or knowledge of the specific topic).

Messages may be accepted through the peripheral route when someone isn’t motivated or able to process the message on logical grounds. Therefore the message needs to contain a peripheral cue. This peripheral cue needs to be accepted (motivation) and come through (ability) as well. An example of a peripheral cue could be the perceived credibility or the attractivenes of the source.

Persuasive messages which are processed through the peripheral route are not likely to change attitudes or habits. They only cause short-term behaviour changes. Most of the tactics I spoke about are peripheral cues.

What are Persuasion Tactics?

At Concept7 we developed a model that decribes how we see the web. The whole thing started because technology was ready for it, but these days it is more and more designed to meet human needs.

Persuasion tactics are meant to encourage certain behaviour (often by taking away barriers). These tactics alone can change a specific behaviour. But to change an attitude or habit you would need a (persuasion) strategy.

‘Persuasion is an attempt to change attitudes or behaviors or both (without using coercion or deception).’
B.J. Fogg, Stanford University

Behavior model

In order to give more insight into how certain behaviours occur, I explained B.J. Fogg’s Behavior Model. The model describes three required elements for behaviour to take place: Motivation, Ability (Simplicity) and a Trigger.

B.J. Fogg about Simplicity Factors

How can we as designers for the web make use of Persuasion Tactics?

There’s lots of resources on the internet about utilizing Persuasion Tactics on websites. Below you’ll find some examples, lots more in the slides at the bottom of this presentation.

Credeble takes away barrier of time

Let’s imagine you’re motivated to make use of Credeble’s online service. The only problem is, you’re fed up with endless regsitration processes. By emphasizing the factor of time right below the call-to-action you may be triggered to register after all. ‘It’s free and only takes 20 seconds’ would influence your decision-making process.

Dropfabriek reframes stock context

Dropfabriek (liquorice factory) uses the principle of framing to influence people’s behaviour on their website. By controlling the context they influence the meaning of the message. By placing a sold-out product in their line of products they suggest the products on their website are highly demanded. By showing the stock status of the other products, people are more likely to buy similar products. Professor Paul Messinger did a study on the influence of sold-out products on consumer choice.

Check the slides at the bottom of this post for loads of other examples.

How far can we go?

Coercion and deception

There’s quite some discussions going on about ethical neutrality of persuasion tactics. I very much like Joshua Porter’s response on Twitter:’UCD is ethically neutral, while persuasion design is not? Not so. Ethics rests with the designer, not the method.’. Another great one by Arjan Haring:’The first rule of Persuasion Design is that every design is persuasive in some ways. There is no neutral way of designing something.’.

My colleague Stefan Wobben spotted some great examples of deception some months ago. Het wrote a post called Persuasion or Deception. Whether or not these examples were designed on purpose or not, they influence people’s behaviour in a way that can be argued…

You know very well when you use coercion or deception when utilizing persuasion tactics. In the end you’ll lose.

Persuasion Tactics 101 slides

Sources

The Nonconscious Effects of Scent on Cognition and Behavior – Rob Holland
Fast food logos trigger fast behaviour – Chen-Bo Zhong and Sanford DeVoe
Wikipedia on Elaboration Likelihood Model
Sold-out Products Influence Consumer Choice – Prof. P. Messinger
Persuasion or deception – Stefan Wobben
Main photo is a picture I took of last month’s Scientific American Mind

Yes! 50 scientifically proven ways to be persuasive

When you’re looking for a book that’s comprehensive on why some things are more persuasive than others and takes you to the core of that theory, this may not be your book.

But when you’re looking for a book which is easy to understand, is full of great real-life stories and inspires you to come up with ideas to improve your product or service, this may be the right choice.

Weapons of influence

You’ll finish this book in no-time. Because of the easy-to-read short 3-4 page stories it’s easy to recall the stories and tell others about them. Most of these stories are based on Cialdini’s six weapons of influence.

Reciprocity

The book describes the story of Bobby Fischer (former world chess champion). In 2005 he was a US-fugitive because he played a $5 million chess game in the former Yugoslavia. Iceland granted him citizenship and risked their relationship with the United States.

Many people wondered why Iceland accepted him in their country. The reason was simple, they had to return him a favor. The book explains what Bobby had done for Iceland 30 years before, but the main point is that people tend to return a favor for something they got from someone else.

Reciprocity example

I think one of my former clients succesfully benefits from this principle without knowing it. It’s an online upholstery store. You can order three free samples before buying something for real. I believe that by doing this favor, people are more likely to buy the product in the end.

Commitment and consistency

When people commit to something, they tend to honour that agreement even when the rules and conditions have changed in the meanwhile. Car sellers sometimes raise the price when someone returns after a while to buy a car after-all. Since the customer has decided to buy the car he’s more likely to do concessions on the terms and conditions.

Cialdini tells a story about the difference between people were willing to volunteer in a project. There was a huge difference between people who actively volunteered (filled the fields in a paper form) and people who passively volunteered (had to leave the fields blank). There was no difference between the groups at first, but the groups that acually turned up differed a lot!

Commitment and consistency example

At the moment we’re performing a test on one of our websites. We want to raise the number of comments that are submitted at an online magazine. We believe that adding a rating functionality which is followed up by a comment form will result in a higher number of comments compared to the current version which only has a comment form. We’ll keep you posted on this one.

The people at The Black Snapper claim to have increased the feedback on their website in a sort-a-like way.

Authority

People rely on those with superior knowledge. People seek for guidance on how to respond in certain (often unfamiliar) situations.

Authority example

At McKinsey Quarterly they have a ‘voices’ section in which they invite thought leaders outside of McKinsey to contribute to their knowledge base. As a website user you have the opportunity to have a conversation with these thought leaders.

The ‘Editor’s choice’ section at CNet shows products which are supported by CNet’s experts. They are open about the way they rate these products and explain clearly who these experts are.

Social proof

People tend to do things that they see other people do. This effect is bigger when the people who show a certain behavious are similar to you. The book contains great story about a hotel-chain which wants its hotel guests to reuse their towels and persuades them by claiming other hotel guests reused their towel as well.

Social proof example

I noticed Buzzillions is using this principle as well, their slogan states ‘Product reviews from people like you’. They can’t be too specific since they have a really broad audience, but their smart tagline helps people imagine someone writing the review.

Liking

People are more easily persuaded by people they like. Cialdini states that the more we like someone, the more we are likely to say ‘Yes’ to them.

Liking example

Dutch supermarket chain Albert Heijn has used a simple supermarket owner in their commercials and on their website for a few years now. By choosing this funny, cute and normal (he could very well be your neighbour or dad) guy in their commercials and on their website they made really successful use of the persuasive principle of liking. It’s really hard not to like this guy (and therefore the Albert Heijn brand).

Scarcity

Perceived scarcity generates demand. Some e-commerce shops display stock information, by showing how many products are left in stock they can benefit from the scarcity principle. Another way of doing this is setting a time limit on a discount for a certain product.

Scarcity example

A while back I noticed my colleagues at a Dutch online liquorice store make really smart use of this principle by showing the exact amount of liquorice they still have in stock. In many occasions users will feel urged to order now instead of later because of the scarcity of the product.

Sources

Wikipedia about Cialdini
Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive – Noah J. Goldstein, Steve J. Martin and Robert B. Cialdini

FutureNow persona breakdown

The terms Competitive, Spontaneous, Methodical and Humanistic were first coined by the Eisenberg brothers in their great book Waiting for your cat to bark?.

In a previous post I talked about how an MBTI based framework can be helpful to generate ideas for website concepts. This week I came across this video which explains the same method by describing the Mint homepage as an example.

The designers of the Mint website either consciously or unconsciously designed the website for all four buying modalities. The video below was created by James Archer of Forty, an American marketing agency.

Four decision modes

How people decide on websites

When a designer fails organizing the information on a certain web page, the message can be misunderstood or not understood at all. ‘Communication involves much more than knowing what to say; it also involves knowing how to say it.’ says Stephen Few in his book Show me the Numbers.

Gestalt principles to group information

Once you’ve decided which information belongs together, you need to decide which visual instrument you want to use to communicate a certain chunk of information as a group. During my presentation at a Fronteers meeting last year I talked about the gestalt laws of perception. I explained how they can help you make design more measurable.

Not many designers understand how powerful these gestalt tools are when used properly. Choosing the right approach is crucial when communicating information. Some tools are more effective than others, but sometimes the more effective approaches are more cluttering and distracting as well. In my opinion the proximity and continuity approaches are much underestimated.

Proximity law of gestalt as the most simple approach

The law of proximity says items placed near one another are distinguished as a group. This means we don’t need any other visual cues than the information itself to communicate it is a group. This simple approach allows its spectator to focus on the data without being distracted by anything else.

In his book Webform design: Filling in the blanks, Luke Wroblewski describes how minimalistic design simplifies web forms. Simply grouping labels and input fields by placing them near one another have more effective webforms as a result.

• Grouped submenu items
• Grouped main menu items
• Grouped content

Continuity approach to strengthen perception of grouped items

The law of continuity says items placed in a certain row or direction are seen as a group. In the examples above you see the vertical main menu items and horizontal submenu items are placed near one another but are placed in a row as well. The perception of grouped items is strengthened by the law of continuity.

Continuity law to create hierarchy

Law of continuity used as a design tool for a submenu

In the example below I show how the continuity approach also helps placing hierarchy in the submenu which I’ve sketched in my brand new Archie Grand notebook. Simply be jumping the subsubmenu items a few pixels to the right and placing them a little closer to one another we distinguish them as a subgroup.

Keep it simple

Once you’ve finished experimenting with the proximity and continuity tools you should evaluate whether the information you show (in my case a submenu, but this goes for tables, whole page layouts and web forms as well) can be easilty percieved and understood. Try not to use too many different design instruments at the same time as this will distract the user from the real information. Only add extra visual cues when necessary.