Home Archives for Blog Internet Psychology

How to improve your online business – listen

7th July 2008

Bold researchers speaking at the University of East Anglia today have revealed that Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (a popular psychological treatment technique) may not be all it’s cracked up to be. Indeed, some studies suggest that CBT is just as useful as other, less popular therapies, like “psychodynamics”.

It all reminds me of a study on eradicating the fear of public speaking. Nervous speakers were allocated to three groups. One group received CBT, one group received Neuro Linguistic Programming training and a third group had no help at all. The results showed that the reduction in nervousness and a boost in confidence was equal across all three groups. In other words, CBT and NLP had the same impact as doing nothing. Sometimes, things get a fancy name and we suddenly believe they are wonderful, only to find we were merely impressed by the acronym. SEO…? I digress…!

CBT is one of the “talking” therapies. Psychologists or therapists guide clients and help them “deal with their issues” by talking about them. A recent post-9/11 study actually suggested NOT talking about things is better for you. Indeed, there is growing evidence that it’s not “talking” that makes you better when you have a psychological problem – but “listening” instead. The stiff upper lip might be a good idea after all.

All of these recent raft of studies goes to emphasise the importance of listening. There’s the old cliché that we have two ears and only one mouth, so we should spend twice as much effort on listening as we do on talking. But listening is important.

Take the case of Dell, for instance. They set up a “listening” web site called Ideastorm. Here, Dell customers could discuss ideas for improving products or for new products. They can vote on the ideas and comment on them. The result has been the incorporation of over 50 ideas from customers to Dell products and services. The Google Blogger, Matt Cutts, also recently emphasised the value of listening.

Most online businesses appear to think that the web is one-way; they forget that customers want to engage – they want to be listened to. So how much does your web site listen? What opportunities do your customers and potential customers have to be listened to on your web site? It might not be therapy, but if you demonstrate you are truly listening to them, it will certainly make your customers feel a whole lot better.

Listening to your online customers is much more important than any three letter acronym – including SEO.

Comments: Please add your comment
Categories: Internet Psychology Tags:

Technology isn’t as clever as we like to think

26th June 2008

The more that neuroscientists learn about the brain, the less they know. Hardly a day goes by without some piece of research leading us to question how our brain works, just when we thought we were coming to an answer.

For several years now, psychologists have remained somewhat dumbfounded by the phenomenon of the split brain. This is the situation that occurs in some people who have epilepsy and who are treated by a highly controversial piece of brain surgery. The neurosurgeon literally divides their brain in half.

Your brain is made up of two halves which are connected; they are wired up with all sorts of complicated circuitry so you can see, hear, talk and think. So you would think that if a person’s brain is divided into two, those essential connections would disappear. Well, you would be wrong.

Someone with a divided brain does not become two individuals in one; they don’t suffer from a split personality or have two senses of consciousness. Apart from some minor impacts on vision and perception, the divided brain carries on functioning perfectly normally with no real impact on the individual. This suggests that a connection remains between the two halves of the brain, in spite of the surgeon’s scalpel.

Clearly, the human body is much more complex than we think; it can cope with dramatic changes to our brain. For instance, if a stroke victim has damage to their speech centres in the brain, they can learn to speak again, by transferring speech to another part of the brain.

We might like to think that computers and modern technology are clever, but they are pretty dumb in comparison. Divide your contact database, for instance, into two separate halves without a connection between them. Would it work? Not a chance. Or take Google’s famed algorithm for search, slice it in two and see what results you will get. Some hope.

So why do we put our trust so much in technology when it is clearly rather stupid in comparison with the human brain? This is the sort of question that might get debated by the Society for Philosophy and Psychology whose annual meeting is currently taking place in the USA. But it does raise an important issue for Internet business owners.

Many people use separate databases for their newsletter mailing list, their customers and their contacts list. The distribution of data in this way is a supposed safety net – if one database dies, at least you have the others. If, however, you only had one database with everything in it – and that died? You’d be stuffed, the theory goes.

But these divided databases are unlike a divided brain. The separate databases don’t have any connections and so you can’t easily and quickly gain any benefits. The power of the human brain resides in its connectivity which is retained even after surgery. Your business data needs connecting if it is to also provide your organisation with marketing and sales power. And that means having one database, because computers are too dumb to be able to work with disconnected sets of data. In the online world I only know of one database that is able to do everything you need for an Internet business – 1ShoppingCart.

Comments: Please add your comment
Categories: Internet Psychology Tags: , , ,

Internet marketing can be swayed by pseudo-science

25th June 2008

Go to any business meeting these days and you are sure to find at least one of the speakers suggesting some kind of psychological backing for their claims. For instance, you may often hear that 55% of our communication is “body language”; it’s an oft-repeated claim in business circles. The problem is, there is no evidence for this – and what “evidence” is provided we know was actually made up. Yet the claim is still widely circulated.

Then you may hear that if you “mirror” the behaviour of the people you are speaking with they will like you and trust you more. That’s advice often given to sales staff, suggesting that if you adopt the same posture as your prospect, they’ll like you more and will therefore buy from you. Sounds nice in theory, but again, there is no scientific evidence to support the claim.

Several scientific-sounding claims are also made in the world of personal development. For instance, there are “gurus” who suggest that online “brain training” programmes can help your memory at work, or make you a better thinker. There are nutritional advisers who will tell you that certain vitamins will boost your brain power in the office. And there are self-styled experts who claim that daily meditation will make you calmer and boost your career as a result. All very interesting, but these claims have no real scientific backing.

We get sucked in to what appears like common sense; we like to think there is a magic “cure” to help us think better or behave in more appropriate ways to achieve success in sales for instance. However, the scientific evidence often shows that there is little backing for many of the claims made.

A famous one, for instance, is the “walking over hot coals” scenario. Here you get “whooped up” into a frenzy of excitement on some personal development day. You are then invited outside where a line of red-hot coal embers lay in the ground. Then you are supposed to use the “mind techniques” provided in the day to show to yourself that you can achieve whatever you want to – including walking on hot coals. Whoopee! What these gurus fail to tell you is that the thickness of your hard skin on the soles of your feet, combined with a paucity of pain-sensor nerve endings in that region of your body means anyone can walk over hot coals. They just make you think it’s difficult and then when you can do it they use that as “proof” that their mind techniques work. Tosh.

So what has all this got to do with Internet marketing? Well, similar pseudo-science abounds. There are all sorts of gurus telling you that this technique works, or that they have “evidence” that another method is superior. Don’t believe them; much of the SEO information you read is pure nonsense. Vast amounts of so-called backing for particular Internet marketing methods is actually made up. There is little evidence for many of the claims made about Internet marketing.

In the same way that many personal development gurus “back up” their suggestions with what sounds like science – yet isn’t – many Internet marketing experts use similar techniques. They make it all sound real, good and convincing. But you owe it to yourself to ask whether the claims really are true.

Take everything you read about Internet marketing with a huge pinch of salt. And if you want evidence – test things yourself. Too few companies online have a “testing” culture. Instead they appear to accept the advice from some guru or another and wonder why they fail to achieve.

Comments: Please add your comment
Categories: Internet Psychology Tags: , ,

Impatience rules the day online

26th May 2008

Web users are becoming increasingly impatient, according to the web usability expert Jakob Nielsen. Apparently, we spend much less time waiting for pages to load and to find out what they are about. If it’s not an “instant” message, we move on.

Well, apart from the fact that Jakob Nielsen’s own web site is, how do I put this politely, unusable and completely non “instant” in terms of what it is about, he does have a point. More than ever before, people want to know “what is this web page about?”. They need to see that in a fraction of a second. You don’t see that with Nielsen’s own site, for instance, in spite of his research which shows that users expect instant gratification.

Few business web sites achieve this. They often provide a general summary and navigation which is difficult to penetrate. There is often some kind of company history on the front page and few obvious ways in which the visitor’s issue is solved.

Nowadays, people are looking for instant solutions to specific problems. That means, for instance, that you can no longer have a web site that covers your topic of, say, marketing. Instead, you are going to need specific pages or sites that cover things like, “how to get more interest in postcard marketing in London”. In other words, your web site offerings are going to have to be very, very specific.

Gone are the days of looking for millions of visitors to your web site. You now have to think of having millions of pages that target individual users. It is a complete reverse of where most businesses currently sit in terms of thinking. Most business web sites are being put together with the principles learned on the web in the late 1990s and the early years of this Century. Web users, though, have moved on. It’s time for businesses to catch up.

Comments: Please add your comment
Categories: Internet Psychology Tags: ,

Build online trust by appealing to your readers’ hormones

22nd May 2008

Neurologists have published new research which shows that we trust people when our levels of oxytocin are high. Oxytocin is a hormone that for years was thought mostly to be involved only in childbirth since one of its principal functions is to open up the birth canal. However, more recently several studies have shown that oxytocin is involved in a large variety of functions – including sexual arousal.

A few years ago a study published in Nature also suggested that we tend to trust other people when our own oxytocin levels are raised. This new research confirms that finding. When people have increased blood levels of oxytocin they behave in ways which suggest they trust the people around them much more.

Advertisers may have inadvertently artificially raising our oxytocin levels when selling us things. It seems our oxytocin is raised when we feel relaxed, calm and good about ourselves. This leads to stimulation of the part of our brain which then helps release oxytocin. Also, the amount of light and certain smells can help release this hormone. So adverts that stimulate a good feeling, that show us bright things and which help us recall positive smells can possibly lead to increases in oxytocin making us trust the advertiser even more.

So, how can you take advantage of all this online? Well, as ever, focus your web site on your readers and make them feel good about themselves. Indeed, this is what newspapers have done for years. Different newspapers confirm the prejudices of their readership, thus making the readers feel positive and therefore helping build trust. For example, the Daily Mail in the UK is well known for it’s position on the current state of society (we’re all doomed it seems…!). However, this is the view of much of the readership, so the stories merely confirm what the readers already believe, making them feel good.

Your web site can do the same only if it focuses on your readers. If your web site helps your readers feel good about themselves you could be raising their oxytocin levels, making it much more likely they trust you. Once again, this is further evidence that the best web sites which we trust the most are those which are embedded in the world of the reader, rather than the company whose website it is. Not only are reader-focused web sites more appealing – they could be having a biological/psychological impact thanks to changing the levels of hormones in your readers.

Comments: Please add your comment
Categories: Internet Psychology Tags: ,