Home Graham Jones Internet Psychologist

Little words matter a lot online

21st May 2012

No doubt you want to get close to your customers. Everything you have ever been taught about sales and marketing has told you that creating a relationship is really important. Indeed, you may even have “Customer Relationship Management” systems in place to help you ensure you maintain good relations. But the conundrum facing many website owners is just how do you create a relationship between your website and your visitors, when you have no idea who those visitors are?

WE plus YOU

Advice on doing this is available by the bucket-load of course. You can find a seemingly endless amount of advice on how to create online relationships with people you don’t know and will never meet again. Some kind of relationship that is…!

One common factor appears to be the use of the word “we”. Apparently it gives brands a bit of personality, so say the experts. It is also apparently warm and friendly and much more inviting than simply stating the company name, say the experts. But new research suggests these experts might not be as expert as they seem…!

The research from the University of Chicago suggests that brand who use the word “we” actually push themselves away from many customers and potential customers.

The issue is this – the word “we” implies that you and I are involved together in some way, when “we” are not.  If a website suggests that then visitors rebel – unless they are already customers and involved with your business in some way.

What the study shows – once again – is that the word “you” is incredibly powerful.  Using the word “you” instead of “we” increases the likelihood of the very relationship you may be looking for between your brand and your customers.

So check your website. How many times does the word “we” appear compared with the word “you”? If the word “we” is frequent, the chances are you are turning off your website visitors.

You can check whether your website is too “we-focused” by using the “we-we monitor“.

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Make things up to truly engage your online visitors

10th May 2012

Once upon a time there was a website visitor who started reading a blog post about making things up. The reader sat in his office surround by books and files gripped by the words scrolling past his eyes. Surely, it could not be true, he thought. The blog post was telling him not to tell the truth on his own website. The website visitor sat their stunned, staring at the screen with his mouth wide open in amazement. How on earth could it be worthwhile making things up instead of telling people the truth, he thought.

Reading engages people

You might be thinking the same as our blog reader – surely I can’t be advising you to make things up on your website. But I am. Honest…!

New research shows that when people read fiction they become much more emotionally engaged with the subject. The researchers used fictional accounts of voters and gave them to people who were due to vote in elections. The people who read stories where the main character was very similar to them actually voted in higher numbers than people who read stories where the characters were remote. In other words, when people read fiction with which they identified it changed their behaviour.

Story telling is an essential component in all communication. Indeed, news media call everything they do “stories” and when you watch TV shows like X-Factor you get the story behind each contestant, which often looks at their triumph over adversity. And what do the judges do? Well they ensure there is conflict – an essential component of a good story. The show may parade itself as a talent contest, but in reality it is a series of stories – and that’s central to its success.

This new research adds to the massive amount of material available which shows how fundamental the concept of story is to communication. It suggests now that by using stories you can change behaviour. If you want your website visitors to do certain things, then telling them fictional stories about what other people have done could help. Of course your stories must be realistic and you need to identify the fact that they are made up (otherwise you’ll generate mistrust once you are found to be lying). But if you use stories then you can increase engagement and produce behavioural changes in your website visitors.

So, for example, imagine you are a business consultant offering management advice. A set of fictional tales about managers in certain situations could well help engage people. Similarly, what if you are an SEO company? You could produce a set of short stories about people desperately trying to get better placings on search engines. Think of them as case histories you make up. Just as long as you make it clear that these are fiction, you can engage your readers and make it likely that they change their behaviour – such as taking that trial of your SEO software or booking an appointment with your management consultancy.

Stories are important, whether fiction or fact, but too few websites use the concept of story telling – much to their detriment.

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Social businesses make more money

9th May 2012

Forgive me, but every time I see a blog post like this one saying that social media helps your business I let out a very loud “OMG”. Almost everywhere you look online these days there is some debate about whether or not social media can actually help your business. Each week there are new tools to help you measure the return on investment of being social. And there are all sorts of experts helping you understand how being social can boost your sales.

The reason for my amazement is that this all appears to be a surprise to people. It’s as though there has been some kind of revolutionary awakening with business leaders going “Goodness me, being social and actually talking to our customers helps? We must try some of that.” Let’s get the facts straight: business has ALWAYS been social. It has always been about PEOPLE connecting with other people. Period. That’s business. Social media is NOT NEW. Indeed, those of us old enough to recall the late-1970s mainframe driven technology revolution will remember “bulletin boards” where business people used to chat online with their suppliers and customers. That was social media – 35 years ago…!

Business is social

And when the Encyclopedia Britannica relied on door-to-door sales staff who would come knocking on your door of an evening and get your Dad to buy a set of books and a lovely shelf to put them on, guess what – that salesman was being social. Gosh, your Dad even invited him in and gave him a cup of tea. And every Friday after school I used to rush home because that’s when the United Friendly Insurance Man came to call and he always had a tube of Fruitgums for me. He was social.

Every business activity is social. Every business activity involves people talking with other people. Shop keepers talk to their customers, suppliers make friends with their customers and people who buy things go back to certain places because the “people there are friendly”. Social activity is what makes business survive. So why are so many business owners surprised that online social tools can help their business?

Indeed, there is reticence amongst many business leaders to engage in online social activity. They want “proof” it works, it seems – which kind of suggests they haven’t yet “got” that their business IS social. Business leaders also are frightened that being social online will expose them to all sorts of mayhem and problems.

However, new research confirms – yet again – that the fears are ungrounded and the successes are there for the taking.

According to a study from Pulse Point Group, businesses that are socially engaged are earning up to 7% more than similar businesses which avoid online social technologies. This merely adds to previous studies which show that the companies which do the most social media have increased their profits and also have raised their share prices. In other words being social – whether that’s online or offline – increases your bottom line and raises the value of your business.

The United Friendly insurance man who came to my house every Friday afternoon realised that. It seems he was way ahead of many of today’s business leaders who are still searching for “evidence” that being social is going to help their business. OMG.

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Switch off email for a happier life

8th May 2012

Bing-bong – here comes another email. Most people have constant reminders that email has arrived. Whether it is the familiar bing-bing sound, the little pop-up alerts at the bottom of your computer screen, or buzzes on your smartphone, email is omnipresent. Most people it seems also keep their email window open all day, whether in a separate application or a tab in their browser if they use webmail services like Gmail. But new research confirms earlier studies which suggest this could be harmful to your health.

You have new mail

Being constantly interrupted by email is stressful because you feel a lack of control. Being unable to control our own life is a significant trigger for stress. And when you are stressed you produce hormones which long-term have a negative impact on your body, ultimately causing organ damage if they are present in excess for any length of time.

New research now adds to this knowledge by showing that when you have email “always on” you tend to multi-task much more, with people switching activities from work to email around 37 times an hour if they have an email window constantly open. Such people are in a state of “high alert” as a result and these new findings show that their heart rates are constantly higher too. Constant, fast heart rates are not good for you – they are linked to heart damage.

Furthermore, the constant switching between windows is actually less productive. Your brain cannot accommodate the constant change in focus as easily as we might think. As a result, we have to keep going back to emails to do things again – doubling up on work and ultimately taking longer to do things. Keeping an email window constantly open actually reduces productivity.

The new research also undertook an interesting piece of analysis. The researchers gave people an “email holiday” where they did not look at emails for five days. These individuals had heart rates which were returned to normal and reported that they were much happier. Their stress levels were much lower.

Not only that, but when people were given an email holiday they became MORE productive being able to focus more on their real work.

Having “always on” email is an illusion. You think you are more productive, when in fact you are less efficient and effective. Not only that, you are more stressed and doing your body harm.

Here’s what to do to INCREASE productivity and REDUCE STRESS:

  1. Only open your email program when YOU want to send or answer emails
  2. Switch off all alerts to new incoming emails
  3. Set aside times of the day when you will deal with emails – a couple of times a day is enough
  4. Ensure you have an email processing system in place. Emails will fall into one of three categories: for deletion, for immediate answering, for answering later.
  5. Have an email filing system- your inbox should ALWAYS BE EMPTY once you have completed your email activities

Ultimately your aim should be for you to control email, not the other way around. Your health depends on that.

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Point people to the right place on your web page

7th May 2012

Looking down

Newspaper and magazine designers have known about this “trick” for years, yet websites often do not use it. The “trick” is to force your readers to certain parts of a page by using directional movement in pictures. So, when you look at the front page of a newspaper there will often be implied movement in the picture – the eyes of the person pictured looking towards the main headline, making you read it. Then there may be another image which effectively points towards the bottom right corner of the page, helping you want to turn the page. Most of the time, magazine and newspaper designers will choose images and place them on the page to help direct you to read certain things.

Online, however, many web pages have images which – for instance – “look out” to the side, making readers much less interested in what’s on offer. Those designers who have realised you can make people visit certain parts of the page appear to have chosen the use of arrows to do the job. Indeed, you can buy all sorts of “internet marketing graphics” in order help you have the correct website “furniture”. These include arrows pointing to the “buy now” button and boxes with pointed sides leading your readers in a certain direction.

But new research shows that these are much less useful than we might think. Researchers compared the use of arrows with pointed fingers and eyes looking in a certain direction. And, you guessed it, the arrows were much less powerful in forcing people to go in a particular direction than a pointed finger or eyes looking in a particular way.

This suggests that if your website uses arrows to signal where the “buy now” button is, or that your boxes have directional signs in them, you’re getting less success than if you use fingers and eyes.

It is a further signal to website owners that the more you “humanise” your website, the more engagement you get. Pictures of people are always more interesting to your visitors than pictures of things.

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