Adelphi Digital's Executive Creative Director, Kris Croucher presented at one of Adelphi Digital's Thought Leadership events on Digital Disruption Trends held at the British Embassy Bangkok, 1st September 2016.
3. 3
Change in user behaviour – dominant platforms are changing, from browser and brands own apps to a mix led by messaging apps,
many of which are part of social platforms
12. 12
• If you are like most people, you would want 12 options, not 4. I would want 12 options
rather than 4 to choose from.
• And I don’t really have to tell you why you want 12 options. But I can tell you why that’s
actually worse for you.
• Hick’s law tells us the more choices you have, the longer it will take to make make a
decision. Other studies tell us that the more choices you have, the less likely you are to
be satisfied with your choice in the end
12
15. 15
Too many decisions
Decision are mentally tiring
People want to make the right
decision
The harder the decision, the
more frustrating the experience
Leads to bad choices or no
choice
17. 17
• In another study of either 6 or 24 jam choices, researchers found that when choosing jam out of 24
jams, more people reported experiencing regret over their choice.
• Other studies have shown that when fear of regret is too high, people won’t make a choice at all.
• Indeed, in the 6 choice condition, 48% purchased jams in the end, versus in the 24 jam condition, only
12% did.
18. 18
Simplifying decisions
Sara Lee reduced its
number of products by
more than half and
achieved a reduction of
inventory of almost 40
percent while improving
on-time deliveries
Procter & Gamble
reduced Head and
Shoulder shampoos
from 26 to 15 and saw
an increase in sales by
10%
Amazon chooses for
you things that they
think you will like
19. 19
Give them an easy comparison
Economist
increased their
$125
subscriptions by
52% by providing
a third choice.
68%
32%
16%
0%
84%
BEFORE AFTER
Studies have looked at introducing a third choice that is similar but just different enough to make the other option look awesome.
The Economist financial magazine cleverly increased sales of its most expensive option by 52% by introducing a bad option, but this bad
option provided an apples to apples comparison to help make a decision in favor of the more expensive option.
20. 20
Make them feel confident about their choice
People are often driven by anticipating regret when they make decisions. Fear of regret.
Helping them feel that they are making a good decision and then supporting them when they’ve made the decision will help reduce regret by
providing expert recommendations for them and providing social proof through reviews to make users feel they’ve made an informed choice.
25. 25
Start with easy choices first.
Last but not least, If they have to make a lot of choices, start them off with simple, reduced choices and build up to the bigger ones, you don’t
want to tire them early on because that will make them frustrated more quickly.
Even though booking systems are very complex, Virgin America revamped their booking system, providing people with simple choices at the
beginning to make the process less painful.
27. 27
Five quick takeaways:
1. Limit choices
2. Give them comparisons (3 works well)
3. Use reviews to provide confidence
4. Group choices in categories
5. Start with easy choices first
30. 30
Bot what?
Bots
Standalone conversational agents
Pushing boarding passes
Status updates
Searching for stuff
Other automated tasks
No humans involved.
Artificial intelligence
Beyond bots
Smart data and learning technology
Support agents with suggested answers
Use data collected on customer interactions
to improve
Personalised, fast and correct
31. 31
3 interesting stats
65% of users download no new apps
3 billion people are on the top 4 largest social networks
4.1 billion are on the top 4 largest social messaging apps!
39. 39
Five quick takeaways:
1. They are conversational agents
2. They generate meaningful data
3. They can be self learning
4. Use them with care and always beta test
5. Human empathy and authenticity cannot be replaced
2 things to talk about today
Employing psychology in the art of digital persuasion
The fundamental shift in digital channel engagement, how bots are arriving in the scene and what that might mean
I am not a psychologist but we do employ them.
Change in user behavior – dominant platforms are changing, from browser and brands own apps to a mix led by messaging apps, many of which are part of social platforms
So what is digital psychology? The application of traditional psychological concepts to explain and predict individual attitudes and behaviour as it relates to digital technologies.
It is about –
Attitudes
Emotions
Motivations
Values
Psychology has many applications, these are obviously not specific to digital, but how they are addressed through digital can be unique.
There’s four applications of psychology to digital
Changing behaviour through campaigns and digital transformation
Improving relationships through product and service design
Improving design through optimising user experience
Influencing decisions through persuasive design: by looking at how to deliver choices, and how we deliver messages.
Since we have 10 minutes, I’ll focus on the last application – influencing decisions.
So how does psychology make businesses smarter about how to give people choice.
So let’s start with an experiment.
If you reach under your chair you will find an envelope with $5000 in it
Oh – my mistake – that was the last conference/webinar! . Let’s just imagine I gave you two thousand dollars for a holiday – where would you go.
You have to choose one place to go, would you like it from this selection?
What about this selection of 12 destinations.
If you are like most people, you would want 12 options, not 4. I would want 12 options rather than 4 to choose from.
And I don’t really have to tell you why you want 12 options. But I can tell you why that’s actually worse for you.
Hick’s law tells us the more choices you have, the longer it will take to make make a decision. Other studies tell us that the more choices you have, the less likely you are to be satisfied with your choice in the end. More on that, later.
So before I tell you why more choices are worse, I’m not saying choice is not important.
So why is it bad to have too many choices?
The decision making process is cognitively challenging because people have to evaluate and compare
Our attention span and memory doesn’t allow for us to do that – the human memory can only hold about 7 items
Leads to confused user, unsatisfied with the process, who don’t know what to choose.
They want to make the right decision, pick the one that meets their needs best.
2 studies from Stanford University showed that the higher number of funds in a retirement plan, the less likely people would participate in their retirement fund.
They also found that people make worse investment decisions the more options there were in the investment plans.
In another study of either 6 or 24 jam choices, researchers found that when choosing jam out of 24 jams, more people reported experiencing regret over their choice.
Other studies have shown that when fear of regret is too high, people won’t make a choice at all.
Indeed, in the 6 choice condition, 48% purchased jams in the end, versus in the 24 jam condition, only 12% did.
These are just some examples of companies that limited consumer choice for the better.
Amazon is a good example- they have many products, but how do they use their digital platforms to help reduce choice?
With so many choices, what they do is become excellent curators. They give you recommendations and create easier categories to reduce the pain of choosing.
So how can we use this knowledge?
--------------------------------------
Statistics from http://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2011/07/13/sustainability-lessons-jam-less-choice-greener-choice
http://www.strategy-business.com/article/00046?pg=all
Give them an easy comparison.
Studies have looked at introducing a third choice that is similar but just different enough to make the other option look awesome.
The Economist financial magazine cleverly increased sales of its most expensive option by 52% by introducing a bad option, but this bad option provided an apples to apples comparison to help make a decision in favor of the more expensive option.
Secondly, make them feel confident in choosing.
People are often driven by anticipating regret when they make decisions. Fear of regret.
Helping them feel that they are making a good decision and then supporting them when they’ve made the decision will help reduce regret by providing expert recommendations for them and providing social proof through reviews to make users feel they’ve made an informed choice.
Amazon are famous for their customer reviews.
Even the reviews are reviewed – with the most helpful reviews highlighted.
And to show they are not bias – Amazon highlight the most critical reviews, so you can weigh up positive and negative reviews.
Third, Reign in numbers by putting them in meaningful categories.
A study conducted at Columbia University showed that it didn’t matter if a store sold 331 or 664 magazines, what mattered to buyer satisfaction was the number of categories it had. Many subheadings felt like there were lots of choices but within those categories there were few magazines to choose from.
A simple example is one of our projects for Visit England which addressed what most tourists are faced with – too many choices on places to go. By creating a smaller number of categories and reducing the amount of choices of the categories one can choose, people have a useful reduced list of interesting places they can consider.
Last but not least, If they have to make a lot of choices, start them off with simple, reduced choices and build up to the bigger ones, you don’t want to tire them early on because that will make them frustrated more quickly.
Even though booking systems are very complex, Virgin America revamped their booking system, providing people with simple choices at the beginning to make the process less painful.
So – that is a quick dive into just one of the many ways Psychology can impact behaviour on your website.
So the next time you think about choice – be smart about the choices you give people, and help them make their choices, they’ll be grateful for it and so will your bottom line.
Anyone using bots in anyway yet?
To finish we’re just going to highlight a few interesting thoughts on bots and their impact, perhaps we can continue the conversation over some networking and drinks shortly
We are rapidly shifting into an environment where the interface to your products and services might not be your website
In markets all over the world and in particular in markets like South East Asia where mobile internet marked the arrival of the internet for most consumers for the first time,
The most time dominant platform of choice for engagement are social messaging platforms
And so we are seeing the rise of bots or smart “conversational agents”
enabled sometimes by artificial intelligence, or just some smart logic behind the scenes, aimed at providing the IMMEDIACY and support a user needs to make a decision, such as a purchase or other engagement
There’s literally thousands of channels, but a few that dominate
Most of these channels are places that you deploy your “Bot” to
There are some obvious first movers testing their bots in the marketplace
Skyscanner are one of the myriad of aggregators, price comparison tools in the travel space
They also have the same service available on Facebook Messenger
Another example this time disrupting the property market
In government around the world we’re also seeing tremendous interest in conversational agents as a way of delivering services to citizens, applying for driving licenses, passports, visas and so on
Interestingly this isn’t just about the consumer or the citizen either
In Sydney we’re working with Australian government to support their digital innovation agenda,
At the heart of which is to connect the ideas of entrepreneurs and technologists with the right people in government to drive digital transformation
The most major obstacle is to overcome this long held perception
So we’ve conceived the idea of a “digital concierge” that will guide startup to top global technology executives, answer questions, sign post and connect users to the right people and the right information IMMEDIATELY
and available to “have a conversation with” via Facebook Messenger, Skype and Group Me