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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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Categories: Internet Marketing, Online Business, Social
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Online survey tool is not relevant to participation

9th February 2012 | Please add your comment

Online survey toolOnline surveys are all the rage these days. You are “polled” on many sites as you enter or leave them. You get emails asking you to give your opinions on various topics. And you can see the results of surveys in all sorts of blogs and online news sites. We are being surveyed more than ever before. But can we trust the results of those surveys? Do they tell you anything which can help your online business? Are the results biased in any way?

Social scientists know that in order for a survey to provide relevant and useful information the research has to be conducted carefully, the questionnaire has to be professionally structured and – crucially – you have to get the right participants. If you run an online business selling lawnmowers for instance, your survey on the best one to buy should really only involve people who have bought lawnmowers and who probably have experience of using several different ones. Otherwise your results could be nonsense if the data includes the opinion of people who have never bought a lawnmower. In surveys, participation from the right people is crucial.

New research has looked at this issue and discovered that the key to participation in online surveys is the reputation of the sponsoring company – not the kind of survey tool that is used. It seems that you can use any survey tool, as long as the reputation of the company asking the questions is high. In other words, if you want to get meaningful results from any online polling your company does you need to establish your reputation BEFORE you do your survey. Concentrate on branding, get people on social networks saying you are brilliant and then you will get effective participation in your surveys.

However, many companies appear to try looking for the best online survey tool first. They worry about whether one kind of software will produce better results than another. Indeed, many companies even go to the lengths of having survey tools produced specifically for them using bespoke programming. But it doesn’t matter; what matters first is the reputation of the company doing the survey.

The only time the survey tool matters is when the sponsoring company is not known. If no-one knows your business then the potential participants want to know ho reliable and trustworthy the survey software is. In other words, the reputation of the online survey tool only matters when your business is unknown.

If people already know about your business the only way you are going to get meaningful participation in your online surveys is to improve your reputation. It is yet more evidence that you should always concentrate on building your business reputation.

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How stupid can you be as a retailer?

8th February 2012 |

Smartphone in retail

Here’s a simple question for you. Imagine you have someone in front of you who is desperate to buy your product; would you do everything in your power to help them make that purchase? If you answered “yes” then get a gold star and go to the top of the class. But if you answered “no” then you must be a retailer. That’s because a recent study showed that is precisely what retailers are doing. They have people in their shops who want to buy something and yet the shop is going out of their way to hinder the purchase. Dumb or what?

It seems that eight out of every ten mobile phone users who go shopping in traditional bricks and mortar stores want to connect to Wi-Fi whilst inside the shop. But only 38% of shops offer such facilities. But the question is why do so many people want to connect to Wi-Fi whilst out shopping? The answer is they want to research the products they see in front of them. The shoppers want to go online to find out more about the items they are interested in buying. Yet, by failing to offer free Wi-Fi the shops are preventing their potential customers from finding our more about the items on sale.

So, what do the shoppers do? Well, they go home, find out about the item online and then buy from an online retailer which could well be in direct competition with the bricks and mortar store where the shopper saw the item for the first time. In other words, by not having Wi-Fi in the store the retailers are actually directing a sizeable proportion of their shoppers out of the front doors and into the welcoming arms of the online competition.

And how do we know that? Because the research also shows that if people can access in-store Wi-Fi they mostly buy from the store they are in, having researched the product online using their smartphones. In other words, having free in-store Wi-Fi significantly increases the chances that the shopper will buy from your shop, even if they research the item online and find it on sale elsewhere. Retailers need to realise that the convenience of having something now, rather than cheaper, later, is a psychological trump card. People prefer convenience to lower price.

Mobile in the Retail Store

View more presentations from On Device Research

The lack of in-store, free Wi-Fi in the majority of real world, bricks and mortar stores is an indication of how little those shops understand about consumer behaviour. In these tough economic times retailers are finding it hard to get the sales they need, yet a simple step of offering free Wi-Fi will increase their sales. Perhaps the store owners appear to be more concerned about the chances that people will research online and buy elsewhere. But that is exactly what is happening because people cannot get to the online information they want whilst in the shop.

Even if you run an exclusively online business, this research on traditional retail has an implication for you. The study demonstrates that the retailers do not know enough about their customers and the way they are behaving. So how much do you truly know about the behaviour of your customers?

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Stephen Hester cannot help it – you should blame his Mum and Dad

27th January 2012 |

Stephen Hester, the embattled boss of the Royal Bank of Scotland, cannot help being the current most-disliked man in Britain. It is not his fault that his employers decided to pay him £1.2m a year. Neither is he to blame that they decided to give him a bonus worth almost as much. But would he be as disliked as he is today if he had a different name? What if he were Tarquin Hester or Dave Hester or Jonathan Hester? The fact of the matter is, his name affects what we think of him.

Names affect usSo, if he is somewhat reviled today you can blame his Mum and Dad for choosing “Stephen” instead of a name that the rest of us might prefer – sorry if your name is Stephen…!

Your name has a significant impact upon what other people think about you. For example, it has been shown to have an effect on your academic performance because your teachers, presumably subconsciously, react better to some names than others. People with certain names do better at school than others. Choosing your child’s name can have a major effect on their life.

New research confirms the “name effect”. The study, conducted in Germany and the USA, found that the names of individuals affected, for instance, the extent of interest in them in online dating sites. The names of individuals were also related to measurements of self-esteem and smoking – people with negative names smoked more and also had lower levels of self-esteem. That’s probably linked to perceived lack of like-ability; because of their name some people get fewer social connections and feel less popular, which makes them think negatively about themselves.

So, if you lack followers on Twitter, or friends on Facebook it might be simply that your name is “wrong”. Human beings might like to profess we are not prejudiced against particular names, but this study – and others before it – show that we are biased against certain names and that we favour others. You might do better online if you use your nick-name, or your middle name.

Alternatively we could all call ourselves the most popular and most highly rate name found in this new research – Alexander. If we were talking about Alexander Hester today, the coverage would be a lot less negative. Still, at least his parents didn’t call him Kevin.  The research shows that is the most disliked name of all. Apologies to Kevins reading this…!

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Categories: Internet Psychology, Online Business, Social
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Is the social media world destroying our online business?

9th January 2012 |

Search is most used resource for local business onlineWherever you look online you are faced with icons to “Like” something on Facebook or to “Tweet” the page you are reading. In the printed media you cannot move for mentions of social media and advertising hoarding posters are full of Facebook logos and the ubiquitous “Find us on Facebook” tag line. It is almost as if the business world has forgotten that Google exists. We are swimming in an ocean of social media sharing and swapping. There are dozens of seminars telling us that “social is essential” to our business. And it is – after all, word of mouth is fundamental to every business – so social media cannot be ignored. But have we gone “overboard” with our wish to be social online?

Research suggests we might have done exactly that. In a recent study of where people get information about local businesses, the highly respected Pew Internet group found that social media was only responsible for a small proportion. In fact only 3% of people relied upon social media as a source of finding business information. The bulk of people who used the Internet to find local business information relied on – you guessed it – search engines. But even that was only 38% of people. The biggest proportion of people who wanted local business information – 49% – did NOT USE THE INTERNET AT ALL….!

In other words, this research shows us two things. Firstly, if you are trying to promote your business online, then search engines are almost ten times more important than social media. But, secondly, the single most important way of getting people to find out about your business is using OFFLINE promotional methods – particularly public relations because it creates word of mouth.

Many businesses seem to believe that the online world is the ONLY place to promote their business. True it is an important place, but you neglect the offline world at your peril. Equally, if you are using the Internet to promote your company, the current pressure to use social media should not be allowed to force you into doing less work with search engines.

What you need, of course, is an integrated marketing approach where your online and offline activities are interwoven. If someone sees your poster on a local advertising hoarding they should only need to type in the headline phrase they saw on the advert to find you as “number one” on Google for that.

The Pew Research was specifically about local businesses, so perhaps the results might have been different for international business. However, most business is local; even big brands need local customers. So even though the Internet may take on more importance for global brands than for smaller businesses, ultimately local marketing is essential to gain sales. And the research from Pew Internet suggests you should concentrate that in two areas – offline media and search engines. Social media is the least of your worries; if you concentrate most of your promotional efforts on social media you could be wasting your time, losing business as a result.

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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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