Persuasive Design
Is Something Wrong With Your Design?
I’m still settling in from my trip last week to the Internet Retailer Design conference. If you didn’t attend, you missed a great first-time show, so you’ll have to check it out next year.
Over 800 people showed up to hear the speakers and meet with consultants (like me) to evaluate their current websites — and some even discussed mock-ups and prototypes of new versions of their sites. My back-of-the-napkin calculation is that Internet Retailer gave away around $150,000 worth of consultations, but I’ll ask you the one common question I asked several of the companies I met with just for the price of spending a few minutes reading.
What makes you think the new design you’re working on is going to work any better than the one you have today?
I recall sitting with one of the most recognized brands on the Web and him pulling out his mock-ups. They felt that they had issues around how products were presented and how their navigation worked. They offered a complex menu with way too many options in their current navigation, and were hoping to improve it by using a top level menu with a javascript rollover.
“What research do you have that indicates that new navigation will work better than the current one?” I asked. He was honest and said, “None.”
So why don’t you test it?
Internet Retailer did a pre-conference survey and asked the top 500 retailers if they’re doing multivariate or A/B testing, and included the results in their Website Design & Usability Guide.
Amazingly, 76.7% of retailers surveyed don’t test!
Huh? Now that you can get A/B and Multivariate testing tools for free from Google, why aren’t you testing?
We’ve also found that it’s safer to roll out a redesign in stages, in order to avoid the initial drop in conversion that often results from a redesign. Why not roll this out as a series of tests?
If you need help, call us at 877-643-7244 (ext. 3316). We’d be happy to help you make more money before and after your redesign.
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Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
How Men and Women View Images Differently
Ever look at an ad and it just didn’t sit right with you? That happened to me recently when I was reading a post on Copyranter, critiquing a Hearts On Fire diamond ad that uses “monogamy” as a slogan.
Now, I’m all for monogamy. I think it’s a wonderful thing. And I am not a girl to turn down a diamond. It seems like the perfect message. So why was the image bothering me? Here’s what I came up with:
- The man is a non-entity. His face is in shadow and partially cropped off the page. The entire focus of the ad is the woman.
- The word “monogamy” is written across her chest. The word is visually attached only to her.
The message the ad appears to be sending is, “Guys, want to keep your woman monogamous? Give her a diamond!”
Now, I’m assuming this is an ad aimed at men, so I give it high marks. (I also don’t know the publications in which the ad appears.) But if “Hearts On Fire” wants to take this message to women, I have two suggestions:
- Make the ads focus on both the man and the woman, and let us see both of their faces and emotions.
- Make sure the word “monogamy” touches both people, like a thread holding the two of them together.
Pay very close attention to the images in ads and on your website. Men and women may not view them the same.
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Written by:Holly Buchanan
How A Pretty Face Can Push Visitors Away
It’s no surprise that marketers use faces to draw people into their websites. They know that, from birth, humans are naturally attracted to, and engaged by, faces. In fact, one of our studies showed that people perceived websites as more “professional” when they had images of people on the site.
Be careful! Simply picking a “pretty” picture isn’t enough. Too often marketers will take people pictures and show them to a focus group to see which ones they relate to best. As marketers, we worry about the gender, style and overall quality of the picture relating to our message. There’s another crucial factor for marketers to consider: The direction in which the model’s eyes are facing.
Generally, it’s best when the model faces the content you want visitors to engage with first.
Take a look at the landing page below (I’ve blurred the text to protect the guilty innocent):
What happens is that you are naturally drawn to the image of the attractive model and our eyes tend to meet. Since her eyes are focused back at you, they stop you in your tracks — and researchers can prove it by studying your eyetracking gaze.
Take a look at the following ads that our friends at Bunnyfoot analyzed in eyetracking studies:
Now take a look at the Heatmap of the ads:
Next time you choose a face to appear on the web or in an ad, consider where it draws the beholder’s eyes. Ask yourself whether the image draws attention away from your persuasive message.
P.S. This is for my friends who like to test everything. I have a couple of questions: When testing pictures, do you currently break down the variables in the image? If so, were you aware of using the directional focus of a model’s eyes as a variable?
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Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
Confessions of a Screenshot Addict
If you’ve ever seen any of my screencasts, or seen one of my presentation, you may have noticed I collect screenshots of just about anything I consider relevant.
Where does this obsession come from?
The other day, one of our newer staff members asked me why I’m such a screenshot addict. What’s the benefit to collecting all these images, many of which I may never use?
It was only when I opened my Yahoo! page yesterday that it hit me. The banner was right there, where it’s been for awhile. Even though I never clicked, there is a value in those impressions. What triggered my memory was that little stick drawing guy in the SnagIt banner.
I can remember, as early as 1996, taking screenshots for marketing purposes. Back then, I was working with a telecom company that was selling voice-over-Internet products, and I was helping to manage the banners we bought on Yahoo!, Excite, Altavista, landing pages, and so on. The top-performing banner — no matter what we offered or how creative we were — was this little stick figure smiley-face guy with a simple offer. (By the way, I’m still shocked today at how good this company was at measuring stuff back then. It probably helped fuel my passion for web analytics. I could tell you by the keyword on any of the engines, for any date range, for a particular version of a banner we ran, how many minutes people used our product to call Argentina.)
But I digress. What did I do with the screenshots?
I used to take screenshots of every page where I could find our banners. Then I would save them to compare with the following week’s/month’s metrics. I’d analyze them to see if any other elements on the page were enhancing or detracting from the ability of the banner to get the click-though. Sometimes it was a search result that influenced the conversion. I’ve been collecting screenshots ever since.
For as long as I can recall, I’ve been a fan of TechSmith’s SnagIt (and later, Camtasia for video) for Windows. Now that we’ve switched the company to Mac, we’re using SnapZ Pro X, as well as TechSmith’s newly released Jing Project. (Thanks, guys. Please keep those Mac products coming!)
What can you do with screenshots?
1. Chronicle all of your online advertising efforts and use the screenshots to analyze any interactions with your success metrics.
2. Keep a running history of changes to your content, or a competitor’s (i.e., see what changes/tests have been performed).
3. Use them in presentations when reporting on web analytics for a particular ad creative or page.
4. Use them to figure out what to test next in your landing page optimization efforts
5. Impress your friends with your collection that contains an original Amazon screenshot.
Are you a fellow screenshot addict? Want to be? If so, come join my FaceBook group.
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Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
Webinar: 5 Star Reviews: Optimizing Reviews to Maximize Conversion
In just 15 minutes, I’ll guide you through more than a dozen websites to show you the best ways to capitalize on featuring reviews on your website in order to maximize your conversion rate. Watch it now! (See the video player below to view.)
Featured sites include: Amazon, Best Buy, CircuitCity, Trip Advisor, eBags, Burpee, BackCountry, Dell, Wal-Mart, Petco, Radio Shack, SupermediaStore, emitations, GolfSmith, OverStock, and CoffeeForLess.
If you recently purchased something online, has a review influenced your purchase decision?
Reviews on e-commerce sites are becoming a critical feature over the past couple of years. Roy Williams wrote about why this word-of-mouth feature has become so influential (PDF) when it wasn’t as critical 3 or 4 years ago. New research further illustrates its value:
- 77% of online shoppers use reviews and ratings when purchasing (Jupiter Research, August 2006)
- Reviews drive 21% higher purchase satisfaction and 18% higher loyalty (Foresee Results Study, January 2007)
- In a study of 2,000 shoppers – 92% deemed customer reviews as “extremely” or “very” helpful. (eTailing Group)
- 59% of their users considered customer reviews to be more valuable than expert reviews. (Bizrate)
- 63% of consumers indicate they are more likely to purchase from a site if it has product ratings and reviews. (CompUSA & iPerceptions study)
- 86.9% of respondents said they would trust a friend’s recommendation over a review by a critic, while 83.8% said they would trust user reviews over a critic. (MarketSherpa)
- According to the survey, 92.5% of adults said they regularly or occasionally research products online before buying them in a store. (BIGresearch)
- 63% of all word of mouth is positive. Across all of Bazaarvoice clients, 80% of product ratings are 4 or 5 stars out of 5. (Keller Fay)
Whether you enable review functionality from your ecommerce platform, or from a 3rd party hosted solution like Power Reviews and Bazaarvoice, it’s important that you test and optimize for conversion and persuasion by focusing on the following areas:
- Placement for Visibility
- Above the fold
- Size
- Stars or other graphic
- Near point of attention or action
- Review Interaction
- Ease of reading
- Sorting
- Rating Distribution
- Use across the site
- Single Dimension versus Multi Dimension Reviews
- What are the key attributes across different categories
- Can review content influence purchase decision
- Credibility Factors
- Negative and Positive reviews
- Review Approval policy
- Reviewer Characteristics
- What does a review mean
- Number of Reviews
- What questions are you asking
- Qualitative versus quantitative
(If video doesn’t load, click here.)
P.S. Congratulations to Bazaarvoice on closing $8.8 Million in their Series B. Brett Hurt and his team continue to deliver wonderful results and service, and deserve the continued success. (Disclosure: I’m on Bazaarvoice’s advisory board.)
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Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
Van Gogh on Creating Magical Web Content
Vincent Van Gogh painted his ‘Starry Night’ in 1889 while in an Asylum at Saint-Remy.
Vince’s painting has affected millions. It’s one of the best known images in modern culture. It’s inspired songs such as Don McLean’s “Starry Starry Night” and is one of the most replicated prints. The painting has a magnetic appeal, engaging the reader by drawing them into its world.
I say “reader” rather than viewer because this image is a perfect example of how an image SPEAKS a thousand words in an instant, emotional impact.
In the past decade, the online marketing industry has been known to echo the phrase “Content is king”. Great content — and equally good layout — is key to helping your visitors successfully find what they’re looking for. The content that’s king to search engines is the copy on a website, but the content that’s king to visitors is a balanced mixture of copy and images.
The images on a site help to create a face for the organization. The emotional visitor is engaged by pictures of friendly employees and clients. Logical visitors, meanwhile, look for images of competent executives — sorry, but handshake clip art won’t do — as well as product images that clearly describe every feature, using different angles and environments.
As a professional model, I get to see how my image is used to promote and communicate their products. As an online conversion and persuasion analyst, I see how clients use words and images to communicate their products and services. Too often, clients are missing some of Van Gogh’s magic brew that could radically improve their conversion results.
As website visitors become more exposed and sophisticated, they become more demanding. This means you’d better have ALL your words and images working in sync to persuade your visitors that they are in the right place.
The images most websites feature aren’t magnetic and powerful; they don’t speak to the visitor. Ask yourself what your images are saying and if they’re saying the right things. Are you conveying the “feel” of your company and products so the visitor really knows what they’ll experience when they buy from you?
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Written by:Melissa Burdon
2 Ways to Get Started With Personas (Part 2)
Regular readers of GrokDotCom, or any of our best-selling books, heartily agree: people do things according to their own motivations. And in this unprecedented day of empowered consumers, “selling” to customers is 100% about facilitating their buying process. Any attempts to pitch (or push) products in ways that aren’t transparent, genuine, relevant or salient will be immediately blocked and discarded by our hyper-sensitive BS meters. Should you happen to try a high-pressure sales “trick” from yesteryear and succeed at fooling one of us, we’ll take our licks, then promptly tell ten friends, who’ll tell ten friends, who’ll tell ten other friends–all before lunch.
In Part 1 of this post, I alluded to a process to plan the customer experience around facilitating their buying process rather than your sales process. Those who’ve studied Jungian psychology or Myers-Briggs typology know how to model different decision making styles (or preferences) that make up individual buying processes. But the advent of advanced web analytics allows us to go a step further to prove these models as being more scientifically valid than ever.
Previously, I discussed the question many seem to ask once they embrace the concept of people operating according to their own motivations and preferences: “How do you research WHO makes up my audience, so you can then ASK them about their motivations?” I offered that the question was an understandable one to ask, but far from a productive use of the wise marketer’s time to go find an answer.
I was watching Morning Joe on MSNBC last week, and they illustrated my point wonderfully. Erin Burnett, a correspondent from CNBC, reporting from Wall St. (on, you guessed it, the iPhone) had an exchange with the host, former congressman Joe Scarborough. Joe was remarking at how he always looks at consumer confidence reports as an indicator of what trends are emerging, where gas prices will go, the real estate market, the economy in general, etc. Erin surprised Joe with her response, namely that history shows since the Great Depression–shortly after which consumer confidence began being scientifically measured–public opinion of what would be spent wasn’t exactly a consistent predictor what actually got spent as time went on. I’ll say it again, for the record, believe what they do, not what they say they do.
OK, ok, ok… I can see you nodding your heads in agreement. I can see you waving your hands, saying, “We agree knowing what type they ARE is not worth focusing on, but rather what type THEY WILL BE when they engage with us (and how to do we give them what they want) is where we spend our resources.” The question is, HOW do we get started?
2) Do some “work” yourself (and if need be hire a firm to come in and help wrap up)
Level of difficulty: medium (there’s a process that can be followed, you just need to allocate the resources: time or money)
Likelihood of success: great
Here’s the first exercise to kickoff your internal persona project:
- Assemble a small team (2 - 4 members) with diverse backgrounds. Make sure to include people who have close contact with end customers, and have a strong understanding of the value proposition (benefits) for the customers. Don’t worry about explicitly including experts in your business for now (if they’re there, great, but if not, the exercise will still work). Remember, the goal is to better understanding the buying process, not redoing the sales process.
- Give everyone on the team 15 minutes to brainstorm as many attributes as they can about the product, why someone would buy it, or what makes it unique. Collect these attributes, and combine them on a central whiteboard for all to see and discuss to ensure clarity.
- Next to each attribute, gain consensus on whether it’s more likely to be appealing to logic, or to emotion. Resist the urge to say “both” for each attribute, the exercise is designed to make sure you make some hard decisions. Re-sort the list into logical attributes on one sheet, and emotional on the other.
- Now repeat the process, this time gaining consensus on how hard it is to understand the attribute, and to which pace it’s likely to appeal. Is the attribute something concrete and crystal clear to anyone after 3 seconds of reading it? Rather, does it require a bit more education or a finer subtle experience level to reach it’s full value? Resort each list according to “faster” or “slower” pace.
- You know have 4 sorted lists into fast/logical, fast/emotional, slow/logical, and slow/emotional attributes. Here’s where the fun part comes in
These lists of attributes are probably too abstract for people to relate to, so make them more concrete. Use your demographic data (you know, the research you bought that didn’t answer the question of why people buy) and your market “segments” to layer a profile; a story which sets the context for the attributes on your lists to be appealing.
Did you just create fancy Personas you can put up on your walls? Are you now in line for that promotion? Sorry, probably not, but if you’re a shareholder, what you’ve done is likely far more valuable. You’ve taken the first step toward building a system to plan different experiences for different types of people, all easily executed on the same website, within the same copy, that provides feedback to prove or disprove the motivations and attributes you assumed. You’ve begun to answer question 1 of the 3 questions for designing persuasive systems.
Yes, learning to crawl can seem frustrating when all you want to do is walk. But remember, given the state of affairs online, our collective track record dictates we’re very good at persuading our visitors to take an action (97.5% of ‘em, anyway). Unfortunately, that action is pounding on the back button until they find someone who seems to understand them better! Set aside 60 minutes to go through the exercise above, and put it into place in whatever capacity you easily can.
I’d love to hear what happens from all who try, and I’ll gladly offer any advice or feedback if you just reach out and share. (If you’d prefer not to comment publicly, please do email me: howardk [at] futurenowinc [dot] com.)
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Written by:Howard Kaplan
Clothing Websites Designed for Women
I recently received an email from a reader who has a website that sells cool women’s clothing by indie designers callled Smashing Darling. She was asking about design (Web design, that is). I love the concept of the site, but–simply from a gut feeling–the site’s design didn’t appear professional to me. It didn’t inspire confidence in their credibility. It didn’t look like a woman’s clothing site.
This got me thinking; what does a women’s clothing site look like? Is there some sort of template I’ve come to expect? So, I pulled up a bunch of sites–yes, some are for women and men–and, to my surprise, there actually were a lot of similarities. Take a look.
The main thing thing that struck me was the use of white space. But there seem to be some other common themes (hint: navigation). What are the other similarities you can pick up? Or perhaps some interesting differences?
Do you agree Smashing Darling has a design that somehow lacks credibility? Maybe it’s just me, but I keep wanting to scroll up - it looks like the top is cut off for some reason. What do you think?
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Written by:Holly Buchanan
Images That Appeal to Women?
It all started when I was doing research on women and images. I read lots and lots of women’s magazines.
I lost my will to live.
Seriously, I just didn’t get it. The models looked bored at best, in pain at worst. Fashion ads were the biggest offenders. Fashion photographers call these women beautiful models. I call them raccoons with a heroin addiction.
But I persevered. I find the study fascinating. So I went to view the Clio awards in print to see what images targeted at women were winning awards.
I lost my will to live . . . again.
Take a look at this award winner:
My first reaction was, “There’s a headless woman with a steel rod though her body. YIKES!” My next reaction was, “So, men are human enough to at least have balloon heads, but women are objects that don’t even deserve balloons?” (Stay with me here. It sounds bizarre, but I’m just giving you first impressions.) But then I thought, “Well, it’s probably a men’s fashion ad, so it doesn’t really matter.”
Then I saw that it is an ad for “womenswear.” This was an ad targeting women? So, I looked closer and realized the woman didn’t have a steel rod jutting through her body, she had a pin coming out of her body. (You simply cannot make this stuff up)
OK - I’m dying to ask - what is the message of this ad? What is the ad saying to women?
“Wear our clothes and pop men’s heads like balloons” (Yeah, you’re right. Too literal.)
“Women who wear our clothes can control men”
“Get men’s attention”
“You’re in charge”
“Look sharp”
I honestly have no idea what message the ad is trying to convey? What do you think?
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Written by:Holly Buchanan
Fewer Female Web Designers: Problem or No Big Deal?
Does gender matter when it comes to web design? Does it matter whether a man or a woman designs your site? I am on the record as saying “hire the best web designer you can.” But if you are targeting women, I also strongly suggest you include women in the process.
Jeffrey Zeldman has a really interesting post on his blog called “Women in web design: just the stats” that talks about the under-representation of women in the IT field, with a focus on women in web design.
The post is great, but, as usual, the comments are crazy good. Here are just a few of them:
There’s another facet to this: I’m sure its not a coincidence that 90% of my clients are women. Perhaps taking women seriously as designers goes hand in hand with taking women seriously as web consumers. -Lisa
Bringing up the numbers like this kind of has the insinuation that it’s someone holding “them” down. Your post also said “Women who do participate in the field may not be promoted as often or as high as their male colleagues.” I once again get the feeling that the insinuation is because some is devaluing their work because of gender and I would disagree. If women were somehow so much cheaper to hire then wouldn’t the workforce represent that? Wouldn’t we see 80% women and 20% men? Or could maternity leave and other women semi-specific issues affect the value of employees also? -Nathan
I think the substantially higher *visibility* of men in these fields over women has much to do with the instinctive behaviors of the genders. Men are genetically programmed to beat their chests, sing their own praises, exaggerate their conquests. There are more men speaking at conferences because there are more men than women who want (or need) to talk about their work in public. Demonstrating prowess and gaining public acknowledgment of said prowess is a large part of the male ego.
I think what would go a long way toward even-ing out the numbers, at least at conferences, would be to cultivate women’s confidence and “bravado” about their work, and instill an attitude among working women that mirrors that of men, i.e., your work is amazing and the world needs to know about it; go forth and brag. Unfortunately, good work rarely speaks for itself. We need to coach women to promote themselves. -Brenda
Brenda, I agree. More men brag than women; it seems to be a culturally learned behavior. Several absolutely brilliant women I know cannot be persuaded to write or lecture or otherwise promote themselves. Anecdotally, among female and male colleagues, there’s a concensus that women, however smart and talented, are less likely than men to put themselves forward. We all miss out by not hearing their voices. -Jeffrey
Brenda, while I’m all for women being generally more assertive (isn’t this a generational thing? Few of my peers seem to have this issue: I am 31), I find your point about “instinctive behavior of the genders” as sexist and outdated as the idea that women shouldn’t be in tech in the first place. Going by your outline, I apparently am mentally more of a man. Sheesh. Leadership in itself is not a male or female quality (though certain styles of leadership certainly accommodate gender stereotypes). Neither is success. My point is that these statistical numbers are being driven by other forces (social, financial), not some gender-based instinct. -Kate
As a minority female, I’ve owned a successful web company for 7 years and have made a few observations:
- Most male clients do not take me seriously at first. I have to “prove” myself to them. They do not display this attitude with my male coworkers.
- Either a male client is “pleasantly surprised” by my abilities or they find them threatening. Both have their advantages and disadvantages.
- It’s easier for me to just assign a male coworker to work with a male client that displays these tendencies.
- I’ve spoken at conferences and noticed that men pay closer attention to other male speakers than women speakers. They also seem to challenge the women more on the topics. I really feel that many men are threatened by a woman knowing more than them on a topic in their field.
To be honest, I’ve actually left projects/jobs because of sexist attitudes and comments and I’ve known other women that have as well. I think many of us just get tired of having to prove ourselves. -Michelle
Maybe this is a stupid question, but… why does a designer gender matter so much? -TravisI just can’t take someone seriously who chooses to employ girly visual stereotypes (ex. pink, flowers) and/or pepper their otherwise valuable industry content with gushy bits about their kids that should be on personal sites instead. These sites make me embarrassed to be a woman in the field. I’m not saying that girliness is bad, and that there isn’t any place for pink (hey, pink abounds in the Web 2.0 palette), but when the person generating content goes out of their way to call attention to the fact that — even on a professional level — they are female first, web designer second, I get annoyed. Just as I do when men exhibit similar behaviors on the opposite extreme end of the spectrum of gender (perhaps there are just as many men putting gender first, but there are plenty who aren’t in a male-dominated field, so it’s not as noticeable). The reality is that within a competitive industry, you have to maintain some level of gender neutrality. On the frontend, you should be able to generate designs that appeal to a range of clients, male and female. On the backend, code doesn’t respond differently to a male or female mind. -Kate
Just as people from different cultural backgrounds have different perspectives and ideas because of that culture and their experiences, similarly in my experience I’ve observed that men and women bring different points of view to the table of design - and from that angle I think it would be beneficial to the industry to have better representation of women in the industry.
There are vast ranges of different in thinking in each gender so it’s not possible to divide down the middle, but certainly I have observed differences in the two streams of thought and the way problems are approached, ideas generated and worked through.
Just the same as we endorse User Centred design principles to prevent a single-sided approach to design, so we should endorse a good mix of women and men in the profession.
I don’t think this is the ONLY reason we should address this concern, but certainly this is one point that I want to contribute to the discussion.
BTW I am the only male in my web team. -Nathaniel
I just love this stuff! Eat up some more at Jeffrey Zeldman’s blog.
Also, for an interesting take on women in the search industry, check out Shari Thurow’s Click Z article.
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Written by:Holly Buchanan
