Influence & Interactive Design — Review

Hello, Week 7! My notes from CXL Institute’s online courses are ready for your reading pleasures! As per usual, if you’ve missed any of my learnings about Conversion Rate Optimization in digital marketing, you can catch up here. Without further ado, let’s get to it!

If you’ve been in the digital marketing world for any amount of time at all, you will know the dreadful “2 second” term. You have 2 seconds to catch your user before their attention is up for grabs. This means we really have to buckle down on the Emotion Competitor Analysis to keep them hooked. I love the way the CXL instructor breaks this process down for us. Look at about 10 of your competitors so you can start analyzing them on a more thorough scale. Once you have them in mind or even pulled up on your screen to compare, let’s take a look…

1. Message: What is their main message? What is their strategy? What they’re saying on their landing page matters immensely.
2. Color: I’m sure you like colors just as much as I do. Colors have an emotional effect on us, speaking to us without words. Take a close look at the colors your successful competitors have chosen.
3. Images: What about images? One of the first things users see is your image. They’re going to see it and judge your website instantly based on the photo you select.
4. Emotional Triggers: Do these other 3 factors, as a whole, pull an emotional trigger to make them feel a certain thing?

Emotional SWOT is a totally new concept to me. It talks about ourselves and the industry, rather than analyzing the features and pricing of my competitors. You can get solid feedback via polls, surveys, and even customer reviews. This is not the time to shy away from your emotions, but in fact, all the more vital. You have to really tap into the emotional side of marketing in order to become the lead in your field.

Once you know your SWOT results, you need to begin thinking through an emotional content strategy. “It’s here to answer for the SWOT. We take the weaknesses, we take the threats, and we see what are the biggest issues that people have, and how we can address them within our emotional content.” — This was a great quote from the instructor. Since we know that our biggest struggles right off the bat are: we’re just like all the others around us, it’s too difficult to continue, it’s not worth it, and so on… we have to tackle this weakness within our emotional content. We need to use more than one emotional trigger on landing pages to get a desired outcome. We must ask the utmost important question of “how do we want our customers to feel?” You’re going to want them to know that you have a solution for them that is unique and easily achieved.

Once you know what your own emotional triggers are, and those of your consumers, you can move on to meaningful testing. Naturally, your competitors’ emotional triggers are the first to be tested. All of your competitors are likely to contain hope, trust, and simplicity. That should be a given, but how can you display these on your own landing page?

You can elaborate on your variety. You have options for different individuals. This can be displayed through social proof — using people to build that trust among new or uncertain visitors.

Visuals play a huge role here. What colors will evoke the right emotions? Similarly, emotional triggers with testimonials will draw out certain responses. You can use these methods as avenues to present your simple solutions for each scenario. Testing will be an ongoing process. You can determine something through one test, because there isn’t an exact science to what you want your customers to feel.

Remember these topics when you’re testing and analyzing:

• Emotions
• Elements
• Words
• Visuals
• Colors

Some other important tips:

• Direct Attention
• Educate your Customers
• Evoke Emotion
• Remove Friction in Decision Making
• Build Trust & Credibility

For the next part of this blog, we’ll look at a portion of scientific frameworks and create practical strategies to keep your customers continuously interested in your product or service.

Desired Outcomes are what will lead people to: repeat long term behavior and engage with our products online.

Design Elements asks us what we can do to ensure we see these desired outcomes?

The desired outcome that was just mentioned is most helpful when viewed as a model. The CXL instructor walked me through some of the non-negotiables, and I’m going to give you the lodown.

The first stage is a non-negotiable: getting people to concentrate on something, and become aware. This has to go first, but the other stages can happen in any order.

Concentration: Getting people to become aware. Getting into their heads, so they know about what it is we’re presenting.

Learning: What do we want them to be informed about? We want them to know exactly what we have to offer.

Motivation: This is the key factor that drives everything else. If someone is motivated, they’re going to want to learn more about your product or service. They will seek out the next step. They will interact. Trust is a huge motivating factor, because if they don’t have trust in what you’re selling, they simply won’t move forward.

Abandoning: At some point when people take action, they often stop. They abandon the cart, the page, your services all-together. We have to deal with this head-on, with no fear.

This is a model that really got me thinking… The stages that are involved with marketing are so deep and layered. You really can’t afford to miss any of it! Take a look at the CXL example below:

(Photo model credit: CXL Institute)

Let’s move our way down the instructor’s tips on following the model to direct attention.

For starters, we want to direct attention. We have to think about key info that should be in our consumers’ heads early on. Using design principles grabs attention. Display to viewers immediately that this is something they need. If you want to control where people look at your page, break up patterns so users know what to look at, and what they should be thinking about.

After that, we need to educate the target audience so that they pick up what we’re putting down. Time to show them where they can learn more, what kind of quality they will get, how they can test it out, if they can look inside, etc. They want to know if they’re going to get their money’s worth, and you must be able to validate those questions. “Features tell, but it’s the benefits that sell.” People want the facts. Give it to them!

Next, we will try our best to evoke the motivating emotions needed to create transactions. A great way to do this (according to the CXL instructor) is through a value proposition — a promise. This promise says that you’re going to get a certain something out of doing this certain thing. A big issue that many have, is what’s reality? Where is the truth? Without that truth, it’s easy to hesitate and hold onto doubt or fear.

Motivation can come through something called “loss aversion.”

Most of our motivation comes not from the idea of maintaining, but to avoid threats, to self-protect. I really like their example that it’s not the fear of being killed, but about feeling safe and not threatened.

Status is another motivator. Everyone is involved in social comparisons. It elevates mental health issues because it leaves people with less than others feeling inadequate or powerless. This marketing tactic can be played on, but often backfires if not done right.

Acquisition is a rather simple idea. It’s the motivation for sex, love, and parenting. Our innate “greedy genes,” as it was stated, is also a motivating element.

Then, support decision making. Do things that make it a smoother path, rather than allowing analysis paralysis to take place. Once someone understands what is that you’re doing, they’re going to care more. If they’re motivated, this helps lean toward making a decision in your favor. We want to be the ones to egg them along, make it easier to compare and fully know what to expect next. At all costs, we must avoid analysis paralysis, because if we give them too many options or not enough, they won’t have the desire or knowledge to move forward. Most individuals are going to decide on something rationally, so there really has to be factual information to aid them in making a deal.

TIP: Using the dollar amount of what they can save, along with the percentage, can boost decision making.

Finally, it’s time to assure them that they can achieve their own desired outcomes. The product/service is safe, helpful, the website is protected, etc. When it comes to our money, we can become very distrustful. Making a good first impression is going to get you farther than having to gain it back — and sometimes, you can’t ever gain back a person’s trust in this case.

For credibility, it’s important to focus on expertise. Show them you know what you’re talking about. Let your webpage show it, as well. Be honest. If you make a promise, do everything in your power to keep it. Show your customers that you are worthy of their trust.

Once we’ve got their trust, we can work on the motivational part of this process. The customers’ ability to act out their trust and faith and motivation in us is huge. We have to keep walking users down the path we put in front of them. You can have the best homepage, but if your checkout-ease-percentage is less than subpar, you best believe they are not going to keep going. Simple, simple, simple!

Part of improving CRO is knowing when to prompt your users to move forward. Sometimes they get to a point where they just don’t know when or how to take action. This is where we have to step in and support them. We’re going to do this in a nice, friendly, helpful way that draws them further along, not farther away.

We must always expect there to be some drop out. Even huge companies have issues determining why exactly they lose user interest. We should never be embarrassed at the reasons why we lose potential sales, but rather, look deeply into what could be causing the problems.

Re-engaging the ones we lose should forever be on the radar of marketors. Motivation: What were the original reasons they came to your page? This might help tie into sparking interest again.

Ability: Are they easily able to do what we’ve told them to do? Is there too much friction involved?

So while we chew on this outstanding source of information, I think we can let our brains rest here. I hope this has been another helpful marketing blog, because I certainly learned so much from these lessons. Stay tuned for next week!