The list of human cognitive biases is long. From the
availability heuristic to the Zeigarnik effect, reading about them all is
enough to make you despair that we'll ever be able to make logical decisions or
plan rationally.
But here's the good news. Our brains might be strange
machines but, if we're aware of our quirks, our many biases can be manipulated
for good as well as ill. You may have read some of the more famous examples of
this from the realm of public policy, such as making organ donation opt-out
rather than opt-in, but there are also ways to turn our biases into action in
the commercial realm as well.
Some of the best known of these are around pricing but our
biases come into play when we a
re designing apps and websites too. Susan
Weinschenk, author of 100 MORE Things Every Designer Needs to Know About
People, has made her name cataloging them. If you're interested in a deep dive
into the subject, her blog is a must-read. A strange but fascinating recent
post offers a good example of why.
More nouns = more
clicks
If you want more people to click on a sign-up or subscribe
button, Weinschenk suggests in the post, try simply changing the wording from a
verb phrase (E.g. 'Vote now!') to a noun ('Be a voter!'). Any elementary school
kid could tell you these two things mean exactly the same thing, so why would
the second wording result in way more clicks?
The suggestion is based on work by Stanford psychologists
Gregory Walton. "In a series of experiments, he tested how different
labels affect behavior. We tend to think that preferences and attitudes are
stable. People like opera or they don't. People like to go dancing or they
don't. Walton thought these attitudes and preferences might not be so stable
after all," she explains. Could different labels affect the strength of
our preferences, Walton wanted to know.
His studies revealed that when people were told, for
example, 'Beth is a baseball fan,' they judged Beth to like baseball a whole
lot more than if they were told 'Beth watches a lot of baseball.' In a
follow-up experiment, Walton and his colleagues even proved that this
difference in perception can affect real-life behavior. When people were asked
'How important is it to you to be a voter?' they were much more likely to
register to vote than if they were asked 'How important is it to you to vote?'
What on earth is going on here? Weinschenk explains:
"everyone has a need to belong. Using a noun invokes group identity.
You're a voter, or you're a member, or you're a donor. When you ask people to
do something and phrase it as a noun rather than a verb, you're invoking that
sense of belonging to a group and people are much more likely to comply with
your request."
Putting this insight
to use
So what's the takeaway here for business owners? Besides
reminding us that people are endlessly complex, Weinschenk insists this insight
is useful for anyone who has to decide what text to put on a button or link.
Her first suggestion: "When naming a button on a form
or landing page, consider using a noun, not a verb: 'Be a member' or 'Be a
donor' instead of 'Donate now.'" Similarly, she suggests that when
describing your products, nouns beat verbs. That means you should opt for,
'When you're ready to be an expert, check out our training courses,' rather
than just 'Check out our training courses.'
Is might sound odd, but hey, if it might get you more
clicks, it's at least worth an A/B test, right?
Credit: inc.com
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