Internet Psychology from Graham Jones

Welcome to another weekly digest of material from my website grahamjones.co.uk. Enjoy.

Websites should appeal to individuals i.e YOU!

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/grahamjones/~3/C0O3v4F5MUM/ websites-should-appeal-to-individuals-i-e-you.html

Your brain is capable of processing a lot of information in that short amount of time. You can, for instance read the page headline and see if there are the keywords you were looking for. You can also detect whether or not the site is easy to navigate and you can check out the images to see if the site is your kind of thing. Plus you make a judgement as to whether or not the site is packed with distracting adverts, whether it is likely to be informative and whether or not it is well put together. All in the blink of an eye. What your website visitors want to know in that 0.2 seconds is the answer to this question: Is this web page for me? or Is this exactly what I am looking for?. Now, new research complicates the picture still further. Psychologists in Canada have demonstrated that in order for us to be persuaded by any information the content needs to match our personality type. So not only do your web pages need to show they are exactly what people are after, you also need to match the content to the personality types of the visitors you are targeting. In the past, before the Internet, this is what you actually did with all your content such as your company brochures. You spent time chatting to potential clients and then pointing them to the relevant page in the brochure. If you detected they were not the detail kind of personality, but more gut instinct, you might even say to them dont bother reading this brochure, Ill get one of our existing customers to give you a call and let you know what they think about us. In other words, in the olden days, sales people questioned their targets and prospects, interviewed them and generally worked out the best way to respond. They did not have a one size, fits all approach.

When you look at a web page you decide whether or not to stick around in the blink of an eye. Various research studies put the time taken for us to decide whether or not we like a web page as between 0.2 seconds and 0.56 seconds. That might seem all too rapid to make the decision, but youd be amazed at what you can achieve within 0.2 seconds. For instance, thats the difference between Usain Bolt and the runners who dont even get a medal, in spite of being amongst the fastest in the world. Time gaps of 0.2 seconds make the difference between winning or losing a Formula One race so reactions faster than that are needed by the drivers. And a gap of 0.2 seconds means the difference between crashing into another car on the motorway or escaping by 20 feet, if you are travelling at the speed limit. Quite a lot can happen in one fifth of a second. Indeed, you can even work out the emotional state of the people around you all within that blink of your eye.

But now, on the Internet, thats exactly what most businesses do, which is why it is not as successful as it might be. Sales messages are getting lost online because unlike the past, they are not tailored enough. This new research is a reminder that effective selling takes place when it matches the targets precise requirements and delivers it according to their personality. Online it is tough because unlike real world sales interviews you dont have 15 minutes, merely 0.2 seconds. And that means you simply must tailor your web pages to specific targets and match the personality types of these people. In other words, one size fits all web pages are relatively useless; web pages for each individual customer are the way to go, if we could only have an app that achieved that.
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You must laser (grahamjones.co.uk)

target

your

website

visitors

 How to Leverage Your Personality Type to Nail the Interview (mashable.com) 5 Best Practices for Website A/B Testing (hubspot.com)

healthier and that social people tend to be happier generally. Now this new research shows that social people also have better brains. This is not unexpected. Take an elderly person living alone and place them in a care home where they are largely forced into socialising. Guess what? Their aches and pains disappear, their general health improves and they often can remember things better. Families often report that when their loved ones get a place in a care home, they get much better generally. Why didnt they come here sooner? is often the cry from families. It all suggests that socialisation is fundamental to our health and well-being. Which is why Facebook is such a great thing for our health but only if you follow the implications of this recent research. Dont just socialise on Facebook, but be physically active too. Get out and about and meet your Facebook friends in the real world and you will have a much better memory as you get older as well as plenty of other health benefits.
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Improve your brain by meeting Facebook friends

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Key Secret to Successful Aging Is Engagement, Say Experts (socialpsychology.org) Age-Related Memory Loss More Common in Men (socialpsychology.org)

Hows your memory? Still as good as when you were younger? The chances are you reckon you are less capable at recalling things as you get older. Indeed, you often hear older people say its my age when they find it hard to remember something. Age-related memory loss appears to be a real factor of growing old. Except it isnt. People who have real memory issues, such as dementia conditions like Alzheimers, have physical problems with their brains. They lose significant numbers of brain cells and brain cell connections. But older people who have age-related memory loss without any evidence of brain damage are just seen as normal elderly. But it isnt normal. Two things happen. Firstly because we expect our brains to become less capable as we get older we give ourselves permission to forget things. It means we stop using all the strategies for remembering which we put into place in our younger years. Because we accept age related memory loss as a fact of life we stop making the effort to remember, which clearly does not help. But another issue happens as we get older we tend to be less social. We become more isolated and more self-centred. Partly thats because of physical infirmity making it difficult to get out and about, but again it is partly due to social construction. When we get into our later years we expect to slow down because of our age, so we do. Rather like our memory, we make less effort as we get older to get out and about because we accept the notion that getting old means being static. It is, like many other things we accept about life, largely inaccurate. Age-related memory loss happens because we let it happen. Unless you have a medical condition, there is no reason why your memory should be any worse when you are 80 than when it was when you were 18. As new research published this week shows, people who are active, who are social and who lead a full life have brains which actually look young when scanned. In other words, refusing to be old means your brain stays young and you do not have age related memory loss. However, crucial to the staying-young-brain, according to this study is an active social life. Many studies have shown that socialising reduces anxiety and stress, that social people tend to be

Focus mostly on the middle to sell more online

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Have you noticed that many membership sites offer three options, such as the Bronze, Silver and Gold, or the Essential, the Premium and the Platinum..? However they name them, the levels of membership sites tend to come in threes. Great orators also know that when they say things three times, audiences tend to latch on more strongly to what they say. And good writers often put things in threes as well to emphasise, to clarify and to convince. Whoops! Just did the three thing myself! Sales people also know the rule of threes they give people three options. Theres the really cheap version, the hugely expensive option and then the middle alternative. The idea is that people will buy the middle option because they think the cheap one is, well, cheap and they think the expensive item is, well, expensive. So by offering these two polar extremes it seems to force people to choose the middle option.

On membership sites, too, people tend to go for the middle option not the bronze or gold, but the silver option (or whatever the middle alternative is called). Now, new research confirms several earlier studies which demonstrate that we do indeed plump for the central choice. If you want to sell something online you can make people much more likely to buy if you offer it in three alternatives colours, flavours, shapes, whatever. But, this new research shows that people will be much more likely to select the middle choice if you list them horizontally OR vertically with the one you want people to buy being placed in the middle. So, that means any imagery you use in your e-commerce sites, or online catalogues should always have at least three options, with the one in the middle being the most profitable for you. The research suggests this is the one people would be most likely to buy.
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images and video was in its infancy. Yet in those four years it has become the number one way in which young people engage with events. So, the London Olympics could massively exploit that, it could actually create the most popular Olympic competition in history, with more engagement and more support than ever before. But what are the organisers doing? They are actively preventing the Olympics from being as successful as it might be. The world has changed dramatically in the last couple of years as far as how people engage with events. Recent studies show that almost half of people aged under the age of 25 (the age group the Olympics is meant to be inspiring) use Twitter or Facebook DURING an event to extend their engagement and participation. Banning such individuals from using the very system they love is like stopping their participation. The London Olympics may as well be held behind closed doors. Indeed, according to recent reports, the London Olympics has been trying to stop professional photographers from taking pictures of the venues. Under current laws the taking of pictures from a public place is perfectly legal and does not require prior permission, except in certain circumstances such as if the property you wish to photograph is owned by the Ministry of Defence. So why do the London Olympics organisers want to stop people taking pictures of the venues? It all smacks of people living in the past. Why, for instance, are Google or Facebook so successful? Because WE do their publicity for them free of any charges. Whoops, there I go, Ive given them publicity again! Some of the most successful organisations on the web, like Amazon, work because most of their content and publicity is user generated. The social media world is awash with book recommendations, sharing of book images and so on. Technically, of course, those book cover images belong to the publishers. Technically, of course, the links and items shared belong to Amazon. Technically, of course, they benefit from the law being bent. Yet, the London Olympics organisers want to live in the past where they are in complete control, where they own the rights and where no-one else can do anything unless given prior permission. The result is actually going to be a mass of negativity on social media about the London Olympics, rather than a swathe of fantastic, inspiring content. It is a lesson which many businesses need to learn. In the modern, social media driven world, the more you try to control what other people do, the less your business succeeds. Businesses who understand that giving control to their users is actually beneficial are the ones that are succeeding online. Centralised, authoritarian, controlling companies are things of the past. And it seems that the London Olympics organisers are also dinosaurs who, like so many other business leaders, completely fail to understand the online world. Heres a clue from the London 2012 website: To ensure we maintain both the emotional and commercial value of the brand, we need to carefully control its use and prevent its unauthorised exploitation. Note the word control. And note that I have broken the rules by including the link above. The legal information on the London 2012 website explains that if you want to even include a link to their website you need to fill a form in and get permission which might not be granted! Even control-obsessed governments arent that bad! The London 2012 Olympics may want to inspire people, but they will fail in this desire unless they do a complete u-turn on their
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Pricing Multiple Editions SurveyGizmo Takes a New Approach (iterativepath.wordpress.com) The Power of Three (customerthink.com)

London Olympics will be Internet flop

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The London Olympics is going to be invisible. The worlds greatest games, designed to inspire millions of young people will not reach them. Why? Because virtually ANY form of sharing the games online is completely BANNED! Yes, thats right, if you have tickets to London 2012 there is a condition to which you have contracted which bans you from sharing almost any aspect of the games online. Images, video and sound recordings of the Games taken by a Ticket Holder cannot be used for any purpose other than for private and domestic purposes and a Ticket Holder may not license, broadcast or publish video and/or sound recordings, including on social networking websites and the internet more generally, and may not exploit images, video and/or sound recordings for commercial purposes under any circumstances, whether on the internet or otherwise, or make them available to third parties for commercial purposes. Here we are, with the Olympic Games taking place under web conditions which no other event of its size or nature has ever witnessed. At the last Olympics four years ago, social sharing of

Internet policies. They have totally failed to understand the way people now wish to engage and participate in events. They are going to face mass negativity online precisely what they are trying to avoid.
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Online advertising is best if it is local not global (grahamjones.co.uk) Is Traditional Advertising Dead? (phillthedill.com)

Why you cant post London Olympics photos, videos online (zdnet.com) How Social Media Is Changing [INFOGRAPHIC] (mashable.com) the Olympics

Olympics army: 765 BBC staff to cover the London Games (mirror.co.uk)

People do not like adverts

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If your business uses online or digital advertising of any kind, you may need to re-think your strategy. Recent research shows once again that people simply do not like adverts. Indeed, one in five people subjected to advertising they do not want will go out of their way NOT to buy things from the advertiser and 11% of individuals would even write negative Tweets about the company. Advertising can be beneficial for business, but it is also a significant risk, it seems. The study shows that excessive digital advertising is simply irritating to people. The reason is almost certainly down to the fact that online advertising is more intrusive than other forms of adverts. Printed advertising in newspapers, for instance, you can ignore. On TV these days, adverts can be skipped using SkyPlus or TIVO. But online the adverts are in your face much more. And with pop-ups, or in text hover-style ads, they just interrupt you too much at times. Advertisers, it seems, have yet to learn that digital advertising cannot be approached in the same way as offline adverts. They need to be more subtle, less intrusive and interrupt less. Otherwise, they will work against your company. The research already shows that two-thirds of people say there is too much digital advertising and the problem is worse on mobile devices where adverts are even more obvious. Yesterday I was at the Internet World exhibition in Londons Earls Court where I noticed several firms offering digital advertising solutions, in particular mobile ones. Yet, the research shows that mobile adverts are the least liked by people. In fact, they would rather not have them at all. So, once again, the advertising industry appears to fail to understand advertising a familiar story. However, there were some companies at the exhibition who clearly do understand digital marketing because the research shows that the MOST FAVOURED way to receive digital marketing messages is via email. Those exhibitors offering email marketing did not have many people visiting their stands when I was at the exhibition, which is a shame because it seems they are most in-tune with what companies need to do online. Once again, this research confirms that email marketing is the MOST EFFECTIVE solution for advertising. Why might that be? Because it puts control back in the hands of the recipients. Do that with your advertising and you will succeed.