CXL Digital Persuasion and Psycology, Week 3
This week in CXL’s digitial persuasion and psycology minidegree , there was a lot of talk about A/B testing and showing the effectiveness of certain cues on conversions. If you decide to take this minidegree you’ll see a lot of that. Let’s talk about some of the lessons I took from these A/B tests, and see how I applied these lessons into my own e-commerce store.
Most websites have friction that doesn’t have to be there. Most websites we come across nowadays have the same kind of format, whether we’re talking about the “about us” page, or maybe the search page, etc. There’s a lot of the same content even in cases where said content isn’t serving any real purpose, or enhancing the user’s experience. CXL makes it very clear that these universal additions on websites are nothing but friction, things that keep the user from reaching your desired end (conversion). While we shouldn’t stray far from customer’s traditional idea of what blogs look like as opposed to e-commerce websites look like, CXL advises to remember the action you want someone to take, and consider that every element of your website should, in some way, influence your customer to take that action.
This is easier said than done though, really. Trying to apply conversion principles when you are not necessarily the only person designing can prove very difficult. I was impressed by the technique CXL shared to wireframe your web design before giving it to designers, so that they can have atleast a primitive understanding about why elements are where they are, and as a conversions optimizer you can worry about the principles within the layout without having to necessarily consider the design. Let me guess though, you probably work by yourself, designing, writing, yada yada. If that’s the case I’d like to personally welcome you to the club. Making these “wireframes” is still a very useful way to segment your ideas and has personally helped me to systemize the design process of my e-commerce stores and blogs. Instead of just messing around in Adobe XD until something looks pretty, I can design a functional model that applies all these conversion principles I’ve learned through CXL, and THEN go back to XD to make that ugly wireframe as pretty as possible.
I want to speak exclusively to the copywriter reading this who spends way too much of their time making that copy perfect. The fact of the matter is that more often than not, there’s much more important changes to be made in your site than the copy. CXL taught me that customers really don’t read a lot of copy. Very rarely do people actually every read past the first few (if any) chunks of texts on websites, and I’ve learned that spending my time optimizing something that won’t even be percieved by my customer is a grossely unproductive waste of time. Instead, those looking to optimize their websites should focus on 1. the colors they use, the form of their content, sizing, etc, 2. the organization of the information 3. the clarity of what you’re actually telling the customer, and 4. the big key visual. Let’s all collectively stop overcomplicating our writing, telling the customer exactly what they need to know (without the jargon no one cares about), and then getting on with the more important changes.
This is all to say that marketing is often overcomplicated. Why should it be anything more than understanding what your customer wants to see, and then feeding them that thing. If you know your product appeals to a certain subset of people, the first thing you should consider when trying to persuade this subset is the things they like and dislike. With that said, CXL points out that most businesses fail to do this crucial task because they literally have no idea who their customer is. They think they do, but in all actuality their customer persona is identified with weak and broad indicators like “fashionable” or “agreeable”, when these phrases and identifier actually reveal nothing about who the customer is. When you build and optimize websites on vague descriptions like these, you’re operating on false information, and most of your efforts will simply be shots in the dark. Let’s change these ridiculous vague personas into actual values. The customer prides themselves in their way of “going with the flow” being “laid back”, which may indicate that they prefer transparency, freedom, or what have you. The assumptions I’ve just made are obviously not very accurate, but the idea is that when building a customer persona you need to really flesh out what the preferences of your customer are and how that aligns with your brand. Once we have this, we might include some “free flowing” graphics on our website, because that's just the kind of thing our target customer wants to see.
In 50 milliseconds, that target customer I’m talking about already knows if they trust you or not. CXL features this cool thought experiment where they flash a couple of websites on your screen for just 50ms. You’d be blown away to try this experiment yourself and realize how much information your brain can actually process in that short period. Some sites came off to me as sketchy, untrustworthy; my mind associated those websites with crummy salespeople, people who don’t hold their word, etc. On the other hand, a modern looking site is flashed with a kind of Tesla feeling to it, very modern, not saying too much, with a professional logo and consistent color scheme; I start to think about Tesla, innovation, a forward-thinking saleswoman in a high end office. You get the picture. In just 50ms, you’ll form an eerily complex opinion about whatever site you’re looking at. So make your first impression good.
CXL’s Digital Psycology and Persuasion Minidegree can be found using the link below, I highly recommend applying for their scholarship program which I’ve been using to take this great Minidegree for free :): https://cxl.com/institute/certificate/cxl-psychology-persuasion/
