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Please sit back to read this! Distance affects your buying decisions

22nd February 2012 | Please add your comment

Closeness affects buying decisionsHow far are you sitting from the screen right now? Before you carry on reading, please take a moment to move slightly further away. There; that’s better already. Assuming your eyesight managed the shift backwards your brain has started to do different things. That’s because it appears we make decisions better when we increase the distance from the very thing we are thinking about. You may have read the headline and thought “should I carry on reading”. The fact that you sat back a bit increased your ability to make the right decision – by reading on…!

In a simple experiment looking at online purchasing one group of people were told to sit close to the screen and a second group were asked to sit further back. The group sitting closer found it more difficult to make a decision about buying. The detailed analysis of the research found that closeness increases anxiety – and anxiety inhibits decision making. The research confirms an earlier study which showed that the distance between you and your computer screen can affect your thinking abilities.

Psychological studies of people in real world, bricks and mortar stores have found that people often look at something on display and then move somewhere else in the shop before returning to the original item and then picking it up. What they are doing is removing themselves from the physical proximity of the product they are considering buying. They are then able to think more clearly about whether or not to buy because they are no longer close to the product. Distance appears to reduce the stress and anxiety associated with making the purchase, thereby increasing the buyer’s chance of making the right decision.

Shops sometimes use little “tricks” to increase the distance between shoppers and products making it difficult to touch things or pick them up – putting them in display cases, for instance, or behind some kind of barrier. Not only does this increase desirability because the item is “untouchable” but it also makes it easier for us to decide whether or not to buy, because the anxiety of purchasing is diminished by the distance.

Online, of course, it is difficult to create the distance people need to make purchasing decisions. But you can do things which help people feel they are stepping back and therefore more able to make a decision to buy. For example, product images can initially be set in context, rather than close-up. This makes people feel they are further away from the item on sale – only clicking to see the close-up images once they are in “buying mode”. Similarly, you can use wording to create distance such as “as you sit back and look at this offer today you will be astounded by it”. That simple phrase includes what is known as “an embedded command” – it will make many people physically move back from the screen slightly, thereby making it more likely they will be able to decide to buy.

What this really all means is that you need to pay attention to small details on your ecommerce website in order to make it easier for people to decide to buy. Any way in which you can create physical distance between the web page and the buyer is likely to help increase sales. Otherwise, people who might buy become too anxious and click away from your site without buying.

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How to beat Facebook

10th February 2012 | Please add your comment

Brain TestingFacebook engages its visitors; with almost 500m people visiting the site every single day it must be doing something right, after all. Not only that, but people stick around on Facebook, spending up to 20 minutes at a time on the site. Wouldn’t you just love millions of visitors who spend ages on your website? The fact of the matter is that few other websites get the depth and extent of engagement that Facebook achieves. So what is it doing right?

A new neuroscience study [PDF] reveals what is going on – and it is not as spectacular a finding as you might imagine. Indeed, the research shows a fairly basic fact which any website can use to its advantage. You can take Facebook on if you use the results carefully.

The research looked at four factors – attention, emotional engagement, memory retention and cognitive functioning. Those elements were studied for three “premium” websites – Facebook, Yahoo! and the New York Times. The findings were then compared with earlier research for a range of typical business websites, for which the researchers had gathered prior data.

Unsurprisingly, Facebook had the highest emotional engagement and the New York Times had the best memory retention. The study also looked at the impact of the sites on advertising. It found that adverts on Facebook had greater psychological impact than advertising on other websites or on TV. But, the study was financed by Facebook and was co-authored by them. Even so, the findings are statistically significant.

The research will doubtless be used to demonstrate that advertising on Facebook is better than running adverts elsewhere. But that’s not an issue you should concern yourself with. What is important for every website owner are two other findings in the study, which are not the “headline” results.

The first of these is the fact that the participants felt “more connected to” the sites they visited AFTER using Facebook. In other words if you direct people to Facebook FIRST and THEN to your website, they feel more emotionally engaged with your website as a result – precisely what you want to achieve.

The second somewhat hidden factor to emerge from this study was that the engagement with the websites being tested was largely down to the prior expectations of the participants in the study. In other words it is what people think about your website BEFORE they visit which impacts most on whether or not they stick around. That means the OFFLINE marketing of your site is fundamental in getting people to stay.

So your website can benefit from the findings in this study by doing two things. Firstly, line up the expectations people have for your website by using public relations and other promotional activities so your potential visitors know what to expect in advance. And then get them to visit your website by going to your Facebook page first. They will then feel more connected with you, they will engage more and stay on your site for longer.

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Your Internet Marketing Could Be Boosted With A Cardboard Box

26th January 2012 |

Think Outside the Box to boost internet marketingInternet marketers are nothing if not creative. There hardly seems to be a day that goes by without some new idea from an Internet Marketing brainbox. And each time you think there can’t be any new ideas to market your business online, along comes another creative thinker who has developed an amazing way to promote your products and services.

In business meetings you will often hear people say “we need to think outside the box on this one”. It is a shorthand way of suggesting that the people in the meeting need to be more creative and come up with new and seemingly whacky ideas. And you can bet that many traditionally-based marketing departments are amazed at how much “outside the box” thinking there is in the young upstarts of the Internet Marketing world.

Recently, however, psychologists were interested to find out if by actually being “outside a box” made people think more creatively. The researchers conducted a study which was purportedly looking at different working environments. Some people were sat in a large cardboard box, whereas others were “outside the box”…! The researchers were not actually looking at work productivity or the way people responded to different environments. Instead the psychologists wanted to find out if being in a box hampered creative thinking and if being outside the box actually helped. And amazingly it did…!

When people were inside the box, they were much less creative than when they were, literally, “outside the box”.

So, in order to boost your creative thinking for your internet marketing you could always buy yourself a big cardboard box, do your work in that for a while and then physically step “outside the box” to improve your creativity.

On the other hand, you might want to take a different path to success…! What the research really shows is that a change in environment boosts your creative thinking. So, if  you are struggling with coming up with new ideas for your website, or how to market your online products, you need to get away from your desk. Take a walk, go for a coffee, simply walk to someone else’s office for a chat – all of these are tactics which help improve creative thinking.

In essence, when you are in your office you are in your own little “box” environment – step outside of that box and your creative juices will start to flow again. It all goes to show that there is often some truth in the jargon-laden sayings we hear in the workplace..! Get out of your office for a while and your Internet Marketing will be improved because you will literally be thinking outside of your box.

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Vast amount of online data reduces marketing effectiveness

5th January 2012 |

Diane Abbott on Twitter

The British Member of Parliament, Diane Abbott, was in hot water for her comments on Twitter recently which many people deemed to be racist. After several hours of criticism against her, the offensive Tweet was removed and Ms Abbott made a public apology. It was yet another example of the so-called “power of social media”. Of course, it was more about the power of data. People make all kinds of comments in bars and at dinner parties, but they don’t have to retract what they say because any complaining about what they say is relatively small, from one or two friends. Online, people get to see the true extent of the feelings against their views. In a bar, a single person might actually be voicing the views of a majority; but the person who makes offensive remarks has no way of knowing that – they only see the one complaint against them. But when they say the same things online, they can see the endless array of Tweets against them. Online, the extent of opposition to anyone’s viewpoint is made obvious by the amount of the Tweets or Facebook comments. Indeed, people even set up Facebook pages or groups to complain and make their views known.

Anyone who does say something controversial can be in no doubt as to the extent of the opposition against them, thanks to the obvious data in the numbers of people Tweeting, or the extent of Facebook opposition. It is not social media that has caused people to retract their negative views, but the weight of numbers – the data.

This is just an example of data available to us which prior to the Internet we could not collect – or at least not easily. Prior to the Internet, people could express all sorts of viewpoints – now they can see how offensive they have been. The extent of the information which we can collect is now massive. So much so it has been given its own name – “Big Data“. You can get information about the precise activities of your customers, your targets and prospects as well as all sorts of data on your competitors which was previously hidden to you, prior to the web.

Only recently a friend of mine attended a seminar where one of the speakers was from Amazon whose presentation focused on the fact that successful Internet marketing requires attention to detail of the data. Firms like Amazon know what you searched for, the books you have bought, what your friends have bought, what other people are searching for and what the competition is up to. Using complex software they aggregate all of this information to make it much more likely that they can offer you just what you want, at the precise time you want it. Try doing that with a bricks and mortar bookstore.

For companies the size of Amazon, collecting and analyzing all this data is not too much of a problem. But for the average business it is tough. Do you pay for specialist software to do all the number crunching? Expensive. Do you employ teams of people to analyze the information? Time consuming. Or do you outsource the data mining to experts in each sector? Tough to manage.

There is, in fact, so much data available to you that you could almost spend all of your day analyzing it so that you get to the minutest detail and find precise ways of targeting what you want to sell. But just because data is available does not mean you have to collect it or analyze it. There is a tendency within Internet marketing to try to ever more narrowly target and understand specific customer behaviour. But what you need to ask yourself is whether or not such analysis has a return on investment. Much of the analysis of “Big Data” is often futile – you can spend a lot of time and money analyzing the data for comparatively little return.

The only data you really need to know inside out is exactly what your customers want from you. And often it is not data that can tell you that – it is simply asking them.

In much the same way, if you were  a British Member of Parliament it might be wise to ask people what they think of your viewpoint, before publicly declaring it on Twitter…!

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Online brands could actually be driving customers away

2nd December 2011 |

Marmite WebsiteBritish TV presenter, Jeremy Clarkson has hit the headlines with his poorly-judged comments about public sector workers. Union leaders demanded an apology – and got one. Now the BBC has received almost as many complaints about Clarkson as they did about Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand – both of whom were publicly ditched by the Corporation. However, if you look at many of the comments on the BBC website about the Clarkson incident you will notice that they are evenly divided: some people support what he said, whilst others feel he overstepped the mark.

Jeremy Clarkson has made a career out of being controversial. He entertains by appearing crass. It has served him well as a newspaper columnist and TV personality. His “brand” is either one you like, or dislike. He is the proverbial “Marmite character”. And that partly explains why some people support what he said and others want him to get the same treatment he suggested should be given to the strikers.

But what is interesting is why people should either rise to his defence or be even more critical of him than he himself was about the public sector workers. The answer is provided in new research due to be published in the Journal of Consumer Research. This showed that when people like a brand they behave in ways which confirm their affinity to that brand; and when people dislike a brand they start to do things which show even more how much they don’t approve of it.

So, in the Clarkson case, the people who like him and find him entertaining are those Tweeting in support – and perhaps saying similar things down the pub to their mates. The research suggests they will potentially exaggerate their comments to prove their fondness for him. Meanwhile, those who dislike him will be pouring out bile and vitriol against him, just to prove how much they detest him.

Research shows we do the same with non-human brands. So, for instance, people who love Apple tend to behave more creatively when asked about the brand – they start to take on some of the “personality” characteristics associated with Apple in a subconscious bid to prove their affinity to the company. What it suggests is that brands exert social influence – they make us behave in ways which demonstrate our love or hate for the brand.

However, this new study shows that our behaviour is not solely based on the brand itself – as much as brand owners would like to believe it is the case. Influential in our behaviour towards brands is our pre-existing liking or otherwise for that brand. If, for instance, people love Starbucks they will walk to the nearest store even if it is on the other side of town. But, if they really want a coffee and the cannot find any other coffee shop other than Starbucks, they’ll go out of their way to find a tea shop. Far from Starbucks being able to convince them to step inside using their warm and friendly brand personality, the people who dislike Starbucks will actually change their behaviour and walk away, this new research implies.

What does that mean for your online business? It suggests that spending all your time on creating your brand, ensuring it has some kind of personality and a certain type of appeal could be a waste of time. If people do not already like your brand characteristics you will actually push them away from you, now matter how hard you think your message will convince them to give you a go.

It is yet more evidence that knowing more about your customers and their likes and dislikes is much, much more important to your potential success than focusing on your branding. Indeed, this is perhaps another piece of research which suggests that much time spent on branding is wasted. Unless, of course, your name is Jeremy Clarkson and your personal brand has successfully placed you on the front page of every newspaper. To him, that could well be success.

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Some of the links on this page are Affiliate Links and lead to sites where I can earn commission income should you buy anything. Graham Jones is a participant in the Amazon EU Associates Programme, an affiliate advertising programme designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.co.uk

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