Digital Business Psychologist
Blog posts and articles about the digital business and its impact on psychology and human behaviour
Psychologists at Kansas State University have shown that if you look to the longer term future you tend to make more positive decisions. They looked at the example of healthcare decision-making and demonstrated that if people were able to look at a large, long-term reward, rather than short-term gain, they …
Ask someone who runs a website what they need to get to the top of the search engines. Or chat to a web designer and try to wheedle out of them the best way to design a web page. In both these situations, the chances are you will get advice …
How much are your customers willing to pay for what you sell? Getting the price right is notoriously difficult – especially online thanks to a plethora of price comparison sites. However, new research from Korea (where Internet usage is amongst the highest in the world) suggests that companies should not …
Simon Cowell is, of course, the real winner of The X Factor in spite of the deserved win last night of 18-year-old Joe McElderry. Even though Joe has been awarded a £1m prize contract, Simon Cowell’s company, Syco, is likely to make much, much more. Whatever you might think about Mr …
Tiger Woods has a clear reputation problem at the moment – which will no doubt compound his personal, family issues. At the moment the world is full of rumour, allegation and speculation; none of it is known fact, largely because Tiger Woods appears poorly advised on what to do. He …
Online retailers are failing to focus on two key issues which are persistent barriers to Internet shoppers. A new study of online buyers has found that taken together these two issues are stopping more than half the people who use the Internet from buying anything online. We may well have …
As you sit at your computer reading this, tens of thousands of people are shopping online. Indeed, today it is expected that at its peak online shopping will reach a whopping £4,000 per second. Shoppers are likely to be parting with an amazing £350m online today. But why? Why are …
So, Borders has gone into administration in the UK after a dreadful trading period. Apparently they have “cash flow” problems meaning they are potentially unable to meet their financial demands. According to several reports, it’s the Internet’s fault. But this simply is not true. Nine out of ten books bought …
News is, well, new. It’s stuff that’s either an update on information we already know, or it is brand, spanking new. Newspapers are not called “oldspapers” after all…what they give us is (relatively) new material. Online, of course, “new” means “within the last few seconds”; the race to be the …
Do you want to sell more from your website? OK, silly question, I know. But one of the difficulties anyone selling stuff online has is that they cannot really control the sales environment. People tend to buy more when they are comfortable. But your sales environment might be someone’s office, …
Fed up with the ever growing range of technologies and websites your business needs to know about? Is that information overload getting you down? Or what about the need to get training and development for all manner of new devices and online systems, such as Twitter or Google Wave? The …
Who advises you about SEO or Pay Per Click? Do they ever say that things are tough? Perhaps. Who helps you with your business planning? Does he or she ever tell you about difficulties? If you answer “yes” to questions like this, you need to change your advisers – fast. …
Mentor was such a wise and trusted ancient Greek, that Odysseus put him in charge of his son when he had to go off to the Trojan War. It is from that – via a book written in 1699 – that we now end up with the process of “mentoring” …
Your local postie is dong you a favour if you are in online retail. Every day their cheery face brightens your morning as you open the door to be handed your letters and parcels. They have been an essential part of the UK community for over a century. Yet their …
The current wave of email scams using Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo! mail are down to two simple psychological factors. And one of these is so common, you are bound to “suffer” from it as well. And thanks to that, many people are innocently helping the scammers do their worst. Cybercriminals …