How to Improve Your Website with Behavioural Design

welcome to the ecommerce podcast with matt edmondson a show that brings you regular
interviews tips and tools for building your business online
[Music] well hello good evening and welcome to
the ecommerce podcast with me your host matt edmondson it's great you could join us and uh
wherever you are around the world listening to the show uh i hope you're you're safe and i hope
you're having a good day it's been an interesting day here in liverpool but it's not going to be as
exciting as this evening now at the time of recording it is evening and we are recording
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join us in the facebook live it's great to see you great that you're here um this show for those of you who don't
know is designed for folks who run e-commerce businesses or who are thinking of setting up an
e-commerce business you know or or have been like me around ecommerce quite a while
uh i'm i'm i'm pretty old in the tooth when it comes to e-commerce was when i started
uh which in dog years is a very long time so that's what this show is all about helping you thrive online that's what we
do and every week we have some special guests come and join us and we're going to have some great discussions
around different topics to do with e-commerce and tonight is no exception i am super excited about
tonight's guest porygosh now in the prequel with pory we had a great time just really
connected so i know it's going to be a good show with him tonight we are talking about behavioral
psychology and the impact that this has on e-commerce oh my goodness you are going
to want to pay attention and get ready for this because let me tell you i i learned a lot just in the prequel so goodness
knows what's going to happen tonight no pressure pouring by the way but you know we've got it going on
now before we get into the interview it is of course uh without uh well of course i say it's
with course we have show sponsors who make this shows possible and
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to those and then we will be back with our very special guest
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are a regular listener to a show you will know that one of our favorite guests of all time is chloe
chloe thomas who has her own podcast now chloe
has started a brand new podcast and so she sent me this little video uh
about the podcast which i'm gonna play for you now uh if you're listening in the car by the way don't worry because you you're
going to get the audio that's fine you don't need to see it but let me bring in chloe who is just going to tell you about her new podcast
hi i'm chloe thomas host of the brand new keep optimizing marketing podcast three reasons to tune in and
have a listen number one each month we focus on a different marketing method a whole month one marketing method two each wednesday
we put live a new audio episode with an expert on that marketing method
number three at the end of each month we get all our experts together to do a live webinar where you can ask them your
questions okay so that's chloe talking about a new
podcast make sure you check it out i am slightly biased because i am one of the guests on the show that's why i know
it's going to be good okay little ego boost uh
out of the way now as i said at the start we have a great guest on tonight's show and i
want to jump straight into this the title of tonight's show is how to improve your e-commerce website with behavioral design
and my notes here so when it comes to e-commerce behavioral psychology is more relevant than ever oh yes
from power words to colorful calls to action to genuine interest in our customers uh
paul rig welsh joins us to help get our heads our heads i don't know what a hag is or heads
around the role of consumer psychology and e-commerce and how to improve our online presence
with behavioral design i'm looking forward to this so without further ado let me press this button here
and bring paul rigg onto the screen here he is pory great to see you thanks
for joining us great to see you too matt um i'm calling all the way from
sunny ishta leary in county dublin in ireland yes is it sunny over there it has been great
all week has been great and i have been working until eight o'clock every evening so i haven't seen much of it but it's
it's great the one good week we get in dublin and i'm
getting crazy hours now why are you working crazy hours so my job is a behavioral psychologist
matt and i have always been intrigued about human behavior to think about how seductive it can be
to think about why we do things and to study that to think that there is a science to this
that you can learn about and use to help people uh is just so good to me so so i work
across so many lots of different settings i work in educational settings in healthcare settings in industry i work in uh
e-commerce by by having online courses and i do a lot of lecturing in third
level institutions as well and on top of that for my sins i also do some podcasts
uh as well so yeah it's it's very diverse it's very busy it's very very enjoyable so i
really enjoy it so thanks a million for having me on today no it's great i appreciate you being on here now in
our sort of what our our listeners won't know is we get on the phone
like minutes before we go live so all of that intro with the sponsors and all that sort of stuff me enjoying the show you actually sit
and watch that and you sit nice and quietly and all that sort of stuff and it's great but in our sort of pre-live call um you were
telling me about this podcast that you've got called the behavioral vaccine is that right yeah the
behavioral vaccine i do it with a colleague of mine kate feeny who works in organizational psychology
and we decided so kate and i actually like i was telling you we're swimming buddies so we swim and don't leary
she's a neighbor she's a drinking buddy but she's also a colleague as well we've done uh improv comedy
together so about i'd say eight months ago kate approached me and said you know the way we we like psychology and we like mick
acton and and doing improv let's do a stand-up show together based upon
some of the crazy human behavior that we see in our everyday lives and and look at that and i said yeah
kate but you got to be funny to do standards i'm not so sure about that yeah rule
number one to stand up be funny yeah yeah yeah i don't like having that
as the advertisement for your show so i said what about a podcast that's nice and easy we can take our work
kate is so knowledgeable about organizational psychology and i just love behavioral psychology i love
sharing that information and making it digestible and understandable and relevant for people so when we came
together we said let's do this instead so we've been doing a podcast called the behavior of vaccine
the reason we call that was because at the time we it was around the start of the the
covert pandemic yeah and we didn't we don't have a message it's quite a new podcast
it's quite a new podcast yeah yeah see it's it's just kind of my avoiding going up on stage doing any
stand-up podcast have you actually done stand-up we do
improv comedy so kate and i would have performed at the edinburgh fringe and around the dublin improv
yeah yeah oh wow okay so we we've we've done that uh we just did a show actually on
tuesday night so there's a a show in dublin called bright club it's in dublin and in galway if anyone knows
ireland galbi's on the other side and it's sponsored by science foundation ireland uh and it's called bright club so it's
like a combination of ted talks and comedians so we have comedians doing their set
combined and mixed in it's like almost duping people into learning something you know you put on a comedian and then you put
on somebody who's really talented and then you put some jerk like me in to talk about behavioral science in between
there so that was what we were doing on tuesday night but again it feeds into this idea that we can make behavioral science
relevant for people and make it digestible and accessible so that people can take that information and use it
and at the time i suppose the behavioral vaccine name or title came up because we didn't
have a medical vaccine but we know that a knowledge of behavioral science can be so good for our own health for our own
well and there was no no more greater example of that than the biggest behavioral intervention in the world
which was around the pandemic where we had to go down changing fundamental individual habits
like shaking hands staying two meters apart wearing masks but also group behavior was really
interesting and still is really interesting to see how group behavior is influenced by
messaging from on from from people in charge how we look to
others to get clues about what the expectations are do i keep my distance if i see other
people doing it despite the guidance being one thing am i more influenced by my peers and by others around me
so behavioral vaccine looks at that and it looks at how these things now become more salient
because of this i suppose pandemic but this is always
we're always behaving humans are always behaving in fact in behavior analysis there's a term called the dead man's test
and if a democrats test the dead man's test if if a dead man can't if a dead man
can't do it it's not behavior is that right that if if everything else we do when we're living is it can be classified as behavior
okay so let's see if it can't be done then they're dead basically thank you that was exactly
what i was trying to say the dead man said i remember that the dead man's test now you know what porig
i am super tempted just to go off on one around the whole covid pandemic thing because i'm just
fascinated by it but i this is an e-commerce podcast i have to rain myself in a little bit um but what
maybe if we have time we'll get into that but fundamentally right what has behavioral psychology got to do
then with e-commerce i understand what it's got to do with covid like as you talk about in group settings and
individual settings and you know not shaking hands and all that sort of stuff how does it work fundamentally online
why should an e-commerce business owner be concerned well we're looking at online behavior it's essentially the
same principles that are used for consumer behavior behavioral science is interested in why we make
particular decisions over others when any human behavior that occurs is motivated by its consequences
it's influenced by our prior experiences and the environment that we find
ourselves in now if you walk into a shop shops are set up in a particular way informed by behavioral science
to lead you towards particular either habitual behaviors or specific buying behaviors and it's
the exact same on an e-commerce website an e-commerce website is taking that physical shop and it's putting it online so this has
to be informed by what what prompts are you giving people to influence their behavior are you
understanding what a person wants how are you actually engaging with an individual
to understand their motivations because all of our behavior is driven so much by our motivations and how do we
understand those on an e-commerce website what does the construction of that site look like how does it make people feel what does
the wording tell us and there's loads that we'll get into as we talk but there's a lot of details we're going to get into tonight
so i'm very excited to get there but i'm curious you mentioned about how um shops are designed there's a sort of
behavioral psychology in stores in actual retail stores designed to get us to buy
what are some of the more um interesting ways they do that that maybe we're not
aware of well okay so so let's let's think about our our own brains first and how they
influence our behavior so there are so let's think about the very basic reptilian brain that's
we call it system one it's our unconscious brain these are the things that drive our behavior we can also call it our
emotional brain okay so this mode this drives so much of our behavior um without us
even knowing we have automatic habits that are driven by this unconscious brain but we love to think ourselves as
rational people and i ain't going to be fooled by anything that happens so we all
have this conscious brain which we call our system two brain it's our higher functioning brain it's
contained in our frontal lobe what makes us human animals are driven by this unconscious
uh brain this emotive brain i told you we just got a puppy and she is driven by food she is driven
by those very she we i tried to take her out for a walk and she was afraid of the buses
so all so much of her behavior is driven by those primal instincts okay now those make us feel a particular
way when we go into a shop we feel like we are going to be influenced so much by our conscious decisions
that we are going to go in and make conscious decisions but we know that by shops having particular goods
you try and go in and buy a a pint of milk i don't know if it's the same in the uk i assume that it is for my time
there and you go into little and you'll see where is the milk is it there in a place that i can easily access and move away
from no it's right at the back of the store where i have to walk past all of these fantastic diy tools these
frozen goods all of these things that i need to to do to purchase you will also see products sellers
wanting to get their product in the most um salient viewpoint
in that point where we are most likely to see it and this feeds into what we would call
our availability bias we are more likely to choose things that we are familiar with
you take during the the the pandemic for instance and we started to we all went
into lockdown and then we started to see other people out and about it they were more available we could see
people out more and more often and we start to think well everybody's out everybody is out products are placed at
a particular level so that we see them more and more advertisers pay huge amounts for this
shops are set up in a way that we have to bypass those goods that are paying a premium to be
seen and this feeds into our unconscious brain that we become more familiar with these
products they start to feed into uh lots and lots of different
i suppose primal uh instincts that we would have and it's designed to try and influence
our rational brain okay so um so the
going back to your little example where you have a little swig of water if we go back to that example of the
milk the milk is at the back intentionally somebody somewhere when
let's test this this is a good idea to put it back here now we as a consumer might go gosh
really annoying it's all the way at the back yeah but it's it's not an accident they're not trying to wind you up there
are definite reasons why it is there no as humans we will
meander towards the path of least resistance so we will try and get the maximum reward
for as little effort as possible and if we are we have a choice of going towards the
back of little to pick up the the milk we'll often be influenced by other things
along the way how they are presented the lighting that is put on those to make them
stand out more in in order for anything to will be nudged essentially and behavioral science is
really based around that nudge theory that the way an environment is set up is going to influence our behavior more
than we are consciously aware of that nudge theory is going to set up an environment
to lead us towards a particular uh product item or purchase having it at
that level having it highlighted interestingly enough in behavioral science we look a lot at
what drives people's choices and people's habits because that's at our own conscious
brain we make these shortcuts we have what's if we were to think about every single decision that we made in
our lives we would become completely overwhelmed if you were to think about everything
that you do how you drive a car like to take driving a car as a classic example
at the very very start when you're driving a car you did you get taught by a family member i
did yeah yeah yeah i won't bore you with the story
so i was taught to drive a car by my dad in fields in rural ireland okay okay you
were taught how to drive a car but at that stage your conscious brain is being completely
overwhelmed with so many different options so many different things that you need to
remember you're putting your gear stick in you're trying to get the clutch at the right level and press the accelerator at the
correct time don't even talk to me about indicators wipers you're just trying to get the bloody
thing okay that's your conscious brain working on overload and if you're anything like
i would say of people you will end up becoming overwhelmed giving out to your
your family member besides you and effingham blinding because we can't compute all of this
because i remember it well yeah so our conscious brain becomes overwhelmed as time goes by
we build in habits we build in habits to make this driving easier so now i get
into my car i could be miles down the road before i realize what i have done you could ask me what
did i do why did i do it i do not know because i have built this in as a habit my
unconscious brain has taken over so now i can i can have phone calls in the car i can listen to radio podcasts
i can do so many different things while i'm doing it because my brain is looking for these mental shortcuts called heuristics to
help me make decisions right so now what's happening sorry you're going to say something
the heuristics thing the the thing you that sprung to my mind when you talked about the path of least resistance
um we have our cycling with my daughter right the this morning to school and so she's
years old and she's wanting to learn to cycle to school right so in the morning it's not the best
time so like dad's with her for a few days just to see how she does and we cycle down this road that's got
this beautiful sort of um path that has been designed by a
landscape designer and this path kind of meanders along the side of the road
and the designer on his piece of paper drew it with some lovely squares and rectangles
and it looked beautiful on the piece of paper and so the path kind of goes up then is it a right angle and then is it another
right angle but you see the grass in the middle right it's you're talking two feet people can't
walk two feet to the left than two feet north they're to water to walk at a right angle and so the grass was worn through
at degrees you know what i mean right these sort of paths this is what you're talking about the path of least resistance it's like
this is going to save me like a millisecond of time because the straightest line between two
points is do i mean it's straight or the smallest distance between two points is a straight line so let's go that way and you and is that
what you're talking about exactly and this is where ecommerce becomes informed because now take that example that
you've just talked about we want in behavioral science we look at why we look at choice theory in this and we
look at how many choices how many steps you need to make to in order to get to your goal
yeah and that's a really good example that you described there people in even though it's only two feet people
are taking that shortcut in order to get there and there's a reason why you can
now buy things on amazon by clicking two buttons that is really really important
and amazon obviously is is a very very refined model and a refined example of that where the steps
required for you to purchase are so so few now the little example is a
little bit different because what little they're doing is saying hey i don't just want you buying milk i want you buying a drill i want you
buying a bottle of wine you buy a steak so these are two separate things that we're talking about here the little
example is hoping that you will revert back to your unconscious brain taking over
that you will be susceptible to some of the prompts and nudges that they put into their store that i'm not just talking about
literally i'm talking about every single shop worth it sold in fact little's probably a bad example because they don't have the music they don't
have the the good customer service agent coming up to you asking you questions they don't have the nice lighting
you go into some of these stores and you will be nudged towards particular consumer
behaviors now if we go back to heuristics and we go back to the driving example where
i have now engaged my automatic brain to drive a car this is a habit i'm not
thinking about that anymore habit is a really really interesting phenomenon in behavioral science
habit is saying i'm not going to think about this i'm just going to do i'm removing a step from this i'm
just going to see something and i'm going to act on it that little gap in between called thinking
reasoning choice making has kind of been removed from that there was a really interesting study
carried out looking at popcorn eating okay okay okay we ship our products in
popcorn it's a packaging material so any any popcorn stores i'm intrigued oh you're gonna you're gonna love this okay
so we were looking at the power of habit and we were looking at how habit can influence a person's
consumption of popcorn really simple really simple nice experiment and looked at how people
whether they went to the cinema regularly or they didn't go to the cinema at all okay so it categorized people into
that and they gave them a a bowl or a you know pot of popcorn as they went into
the into the cinema okay and even those people who
regularly went to the cinema and weren't rating themselves as that hungry ate
more than those people who didn't go to the cinema at all now why did that happen okay i'm intrigued yeah tell me so
people who regularly went to the cinema and consumed popcorn weren't even that hungry so that this
rational brain to say i am hungry therefore i'm going to eat wasn't in operation at that point in
time their system one their unconscious brain was the one that was taking over it had
hijacked just like when i'm driving my car it is the one that's saying you just do this when you are here when you're in
the car this is what you do for for about i'd say eight months i developed a really nice habit of smoking when i was in the
car nowhere else just in the car i would smoke because i paired those things up and i'm
a behavioral psychologist you know is this why is this why um
when i if i crack open a packet of chocolate biscuits i am just literally gonna eat half the
packet without even thinking about it completely so this and it's probably when you're sitting down relaxing while
you're watching tv so you've paired those two things up you're relaxing you actually said i'm relaxing on front of tv
and i'm chilling out and that environment that environment of being on your couch watching tv is the
environmental cue to say you don't need to think rationally about this the biscuits are there
and you're nudging your own behavior towards eating more biscuits so that's the the person who was eating more
popcorn wasn't even thinking about it but they had built up this habit just like when you have practice driving
practice driving your rational brain isn't taking over your automatic brain is now when i go so if i
bring this back to e-commerce um one of the things that uh i see it
occasionally you know people come to and they say listen can you review this website so we look at their website
and one of the things that is quite common is you have what i call the standard amazon
ecommerce design it's the one that we have all become super familiar with like
over the last years or however long i mean we've we we know that that's where the image
is we know that's where the add to cart button is we we this is just something that we've
done a thousand times yeah and so somebody comes along and says well actually i'm gonna put the image there in the add to cart button on
the other side of the page and it just feels wrong yeah
sure i mean but they're like oh we just want to cut it up and be different but is is that helping them or is that
hindering them there's a really good reason why so many websites have now taken to put in
stories at the top of their website you'll see more and more websites now have taken
that instagram model of a story followed by a story followed by a story or you see so many video websites almost
taking the template of youtube and transposing it on it's a mind map for
us and it takes those habits that we have developed on one platform and trying to model that
environment into another if i would take you onto my couch and you were to sit down and watch tv
and how to put a packet of biscuits in front of you it's very likely that those habits would kick in after
two or three episodes of the line of duty you know you would still be halfway through your
jacob's digestives so it is it is our environment influences our behavior so much and that
applies to the online environment as well and there's a really good reason why people map successful websites onto their own
because we don't want to have to think about this matt when i go onto a website and i'm motivated to purchase something
i don't want to be floating around looking for the picture or trying to mop to to meander or navigate
through a new system i want to take the path of least resistance i don't want to have to think about this
i want to just get to my goal as quickly as possible so when you're modeling that on an existing website where somebody
has built up the habit of using a platform like amazon you're already starting to feed into
their system one unconscious easier for people to buy and less difficult
and that is a good thing it's not a bad thing it's it's it's because you know there's the
argument should i stand out from the crowd should i be different and the answer on this occasion is just
do what people are expecting when they come onto your ecommerce website
unless it's really behaviorally informed if you've come across a little nugget that you have found you know
i have this typical environment but i have this slight modification or nudge that actually
works better that's behaviorally informed that that makes things easier for
somebody and that makes things more salient that nudges them towards a particular uh
call to action and but i i would be advising that actually where
you have a familiar environment there's a reason why all mcdonald's tend to look the same there's a reason
why all boots and tesco's look the same because they're feeding into that system
one habit-based um focus for people and
when i walk into a tesco in our in dublin or in liverpool or in london or in
galway i know where to get the shower gel i know that it's going to be in a particular spot
and that helps me because i'm not going to be overwhelmed am i going to go to a local shop where i'm not sure where things are and
i have to ask somebody and they're talking to somebody else and i'm waiting for them no i'm going to go to to the towards the
path of least resistance that's really interesting so what are
from your because you you have an online site right you have your own website in fact last time we talked you
were just about to redo it or in the process of redoing it we're still in the process of redoing it [Laughter]
so what a well it's always the last one to get done i i'm very aware of that um what are some of
the things then that you would pay attention to when designing a website based on um
behavioral psychology so so what you want to do is make sure that people understand what your website is about
very very quickly um and that they know that they're primed so priming is a
really interesting concept priming priming will influence our behavior
and it will prime so i'm trying to think of a good example uh priming
priming is just a reminder before you go into a particular setting that will influence your behavior
and priming on a website will tell you straight away what you're about okay and i wouldn't have that too wordy
and the reason i wouldn't have it too wordy and i'm i've been guilty of this i've made this mistake many of the time
as a as a psychologist we tend to be very very wordy people right but when you're designing a website that
user experience should not be overwhelming it should not engage your your conscious brain and
have you cognitively overloaded you shouldn't have to think you shouldn't be that person who's learning to drive and getting overwhelmed by
how much information are you giving me here i've just got into the car i've just got on to your website give
you the best websites are those with lots of white space there are ones with lots of visuals and
there are those that have i suppose icons and bite-sized chunks of information that help you
decide where it is that you want to go so one of the things that we're doing on our website is funneling people it is saying what
exactly are you interested in what is it that you're asking quite early on on the website
absolutely think about go back to my initial point about motivation our behavior is influenced by what what
motivates us our behavior is influenced by consequences if i don't understand at the very very start when somebody comes
onto my website what do you want what is it that is motivating you to be here
and if i haven't got a call to action so i haven't given got you to click on it to actively
engage with the website very very quickly it's not likely that the person is going to build up momentum
to to engage with the website so good websites ask questions at the start okay and that
helps starts to build this uh momentum by asking those questions so now i'm engaged with the website
because you're understanding that's the thing that's my pressure point that's my pain point you have now engaged me
in a conversation and you're looking to help me rather than saying here are all the things that we do here's all the
stuff that here's information about our site and about our products it's saying no i'm not interested in telling you all
about me i want to know more about you and it's asking you a question and it's doing that very very simply
from the very very start as you start to say like think about it like a date matt right
if you're ever on a date and continuously trial but okay me too me too but let's try and go back
a few years maybe joy division we're playing maybe going on you know everyone under the age
of have gone who yeah yeah but think about it think about
it like a date if you're on a date and you're you're sitting across from somebody who's only talking about themselves and how great they are
you're not going to be really interested in a second date okay so your website needs to ask the person
tell us a little bit about yourself and immediate once they say i am interested in
x the next okay that i or here's some information
sorry you just broke up uh a second though yeah yeah we're back now uh we we're just talking like everybody
we just had you doing this it's like every bad date i've been on matt you know it's that freeze at the
wrong moment and i have my hands up like this it's it's like it couldn't have been more
perfectly timed if we tried but what i was saying is if you're on a
date and somebody is only talking about themselves talking about how great they are trying to really sell themselves and not
asking you about yourself not trying to listen to to understand you more it's very unlikely that there's going to
be a second date yeah so the website needs to engage you and ask questions to understand your
motivations but also to get you active on the site to say well actually here is some
here's some ways that we can solve your problem but not straight away learn and ask questions about the person
first and that can be done really simply click this button if this is what you're interested in go here if this is what
you're interested in maybe here's a pain point for you this is where you'll go and slowly but surely you're building in
that information you're not putting it all onto that home page and saying we can do everything for you
and here's loads and loads of cognitively overloading information it's saying hey we're here to listen
let's get you engaged and we start the process and so simplifying that lots of white space
making it really simple building that momentum i like this idea of you know you you're building that momentum uh with
people i think it's quite quite fascinating so that's the home page how do we how do we
think about behavioral psychology say on a product page
yeah okay so because this is where the rubber hits the road right i mean this
is once they're on the product page are they buying or they're not you know it's a big question yeah well we'll think about it in terms
of pricing if we you've heard the term anchoring bias right exactly anchoring so anchoring is
is really grounded in behavioral science it's saying we don't necessarily look at
absolute values but we base value on a reference point
we base value on a reference point what is we understand whether this is good value
or not by what the alternatives are so many websites will have a you know a
bronze a bronze product a silver product and a gold product which is really priced high the
reason the gold product is there is to make the silver one look best and more people will go for the silver
one so that that will anchor your your process what has been really interesting around the pandemic mat
has been the huge uptake in people engaging in e-commerce people purchasing
online who never did that before going to the shop now is a bit of a drag
let's be fair it is yeah we're used to shopping online there we have uh i i was in i was in uh a deli uh
i don't know if you have them in the uk a deli is like a sandwich bar in a in a central yeah yeah yeah yeah and i was standing in a
queue and there was an old woman she was telling me she's and she's from north dublin and she was saying this whole bloody thing's a pain
in the hole isn't it and she was wearing her mask and she was like can you hear me
and then i was like of course i could hear you she took down the mask these bloody masks i also love going to
the shop and she put it back on and i said well we can chat away here we were both wearing masks
i can't even see it through me bloody glasses because it's all up so it was this thing of the
the effort yeah behavioral effort to go to the shop has increased yeah yeah
it's difficult definitely there are more barriers so what what has happened now is people have registered more often
to get onto e-commerce websites people have had to get the the biggest barrier to people
actually engaging with e-commerce was the hassle of putting in your name putting in your postcode putting in your your setting up your account giving your
email address etc etc etc and that behavioral effort probably has
been removed during the pandemic if somebody signed up to your website and engaged so once you have a consumer in there
that one click model of purchasing is really really important you see the the upsells that come on on
websites being really really useful and again that can feed
into this habit point that that's that's there if you if you think about the i talked to you a little bit about
reference points okay and i'm going to tell you a wee story about that okay so you have
have you ever looked at a podium in the olympics i know we didn't have the olympics this year but if you look at the podium
in the olympics who's the happiest person on the podium it's the gold medalist right yeah top of
the tree who's the second happiest person on the podium bronze guy because their reference point
is saying well actually i could have come forth and not be here at all but i'm happy whereas the silver medalist is thinking
well actually i could have been first i could have been the best in the world so that reference point has a huge
bearing on when a person reaches the sales point you don't want to have any barriers
there and i'm i'm assuming that of the e-commerce websites that you deal
with have membership models that they have people who have signed up they log in
and now they can you have saved their details and they can just that is massive that is hard yeah yeah it's a
big deal it is a big deal can i take a slight tangent you said something earlier
uh just a few seconds ago and i wondered what your opinion is on this now you talked about upsell so i've seen
two different types of systems okay i've seen a system where you you go through the traditional shopping
cart and in my shopping cart is i don't know what have i got here i've got my my water bottle so i've got
a water bottle water bottle and it comes up and it says customers who bought that also bought this like a bag or whatever
and so you kind of go okay well um yes or no i want that so that's the traditional way and i've seen that a lot
and every website sort of does it really should do anyway but then there's
websites whereby you have got to the checkout
okay and just literally by the the final button it you know you've gone through the
checkout you're just about to click the confirm there's a check box which says add to my order
this it's usually pounds it's for this one time only deal it's now
quid but it's literally right at the end of the checkout right so it's not it's it's it's not before like the
customers who bought this also bought that you can see all that before that they only show you this literally just
before you you hit the checkout button and then i've also seen it whereby they
show you that same offer but after you've hit the checkout button the idea being oh we've got your credit card
details you've already purchased and maybe you're thinking about this as now as a second transaction so you're
not adding the the pounds to the five pounds you're seeing them as two separate things so
we're going to show you uh this offer and say this is like valid for the next
seconds click here to we've already got your credit cards um details you don't have to enter those
again just click here and we'll ship it out to you making it super easy and i've seen these three different types of upsells
and so from a behavioral psychology point of view what how do you approach that what do you what do you think to them i'm just kind
of curious yeah it sounds that some of those websites are feeding into
this this human motivation that is driven by loss aversion okay so we are predisposed
we are we've evolved to try and avoid loss as much as possible okay so we have some
sort of we have negativity bias think about cavemen right i'm going to i am going to answer your question
and it's going to come it's not going to be it's going to start with the cavemen first no that's fine
you know what that's a t-shirt slogan right there and if someone's listening and creates that t-shirt i need a copy
of it you know i need one i'm a size large to send it to me so a caveman is sitting down and he's on
his e-commerce website you know no so you have cavemen and we are driven
to be uh wary of of things that could pose a threat to us okay so we pay more attention to those
things that are that would pose a threat to us okay so we would have this negativity bias if somebody gives you negative
feedback matt if we are going to like you have let's say this podcast goes out and a hundred
people say to me that was really really good and one person says that was a p that was a piece of
i'm going to feel more that's going that's not just going to have one percent of the feedback that i got that's going
to have more weight because it's negative feedback so we tend to take negative feedback more loss aversion
feeds into this we don't like losing in fact if i were to there's been lots of
research in behavioral science around this cut this concept of loss aversion that we are
so averse to losing something rather than making it that in order that
for somebody that lots of lots of direct studies have have come together and there was a
meta-analysis that said in order for me to to wrangle pounds off you in a bet i would need
to offer you odds of to okay so what that means is if i say you
matt i'm going to uh there's a chance that you're that that you're going to win i'm going
to toss a coin and if you win i'm going to give you pounds and pence and if you lose you're only going
to get you only have to give me pounds right yeah if i say i give you pounds you're going to say
no no i'm going to lose pounds but there's a chance pounds pounds pounds it goes
typically people won't even engage in that risk until it's over pounds all right because we we are we find
loss so aversive we don't like missing out on opportunities so loss
aversion is what's feeding in there they're saying hold on a second seconds to to buy this
you're going to lose out if you don't get it yeah this is where those you see uh you know infomercials saying
you need to to to purchase we are averse to loss now if it's something that i want to
purchase yeah maybe that that loss aversion that it's so aversive to miss out on that
opportunity that's going to motivate my behavior to purchase i don't have a direct answer to your question
i think that where if we go back to this path of least resistance if we think about the less amount of
steps towards a purchase being made i think that having it before the purchase is probably wisest
because you've already engaged people in a number of different steps to get there
that just before the purchase if somebody is at that that contemplative stage but they have taken action in their plans
to purchase this and they've put in their details well then we've built up some behavior momentum yeah i would put it in beforehand if you
put it in afterwards you're asking somebody who's already got they've got that dopamine release of a purchase we've got we've achieved
our goal and now you're saying oh actually hold on a second revisit this and go and buy again i think you're you're building momentum
by having it just beforehand that's that's i'm only taking as many different pieces of behavioral knowledge
that i can gather and that's what i would do i say that's really interesting because i think that's
for me it's the thing it's one of the things that i've noticed happening more and more
on people's website is this doing the upsell the offer literally right at
this point just you've built up this momentum you're just about to hit the buy now but you don't have to do anything other than
tick this check box so the barriers to entry or low um and it's like yes or no don't want to
click that and then click the checkout button or do i just want to click the checkout button and it's it i see it more and more it's
really really fascinating really fascinating so i'm intrigued by your thoughts on it sorry to throw that
on you there but um it just came out no when you were talking i saw any any opportunity i have
to tell a caveman story man
but that's last version and that's where we we have negativity bias we we are more we were more in tune to
uh to negative feedback because a caveman if they saw something that posed a threat to them that that threatened their survival and
this is fed through our evolution evolutionary behavior to to now where we
if we see feel anything to be a threat to our own self-worth or self-image or self-esteem
that can evoke the exact same fight-or-flight response within us is that why do you think let's take the beauty industry
which is an industry i know very well um so there are two
days yeah yeah you can tell right i'm only yeah um but um but it's the industry that i've
been around in for a while and what you see in the beauty industry i think are two
ways to approach selling beauty products okay so way number one which has been the
traditional way for years which i think people are now sort of rallying against is the i'm
going to show you a picture of perfection which you clearly aren't
um and then i'm going to tell you the product that this person has got to give them that perfection right and
so you can buy that product the idea being that if you want to look like this you have to use this product over
here and so the beauty industry has done this for years i think um whether it's photoshopping images
whether it's using beautiful celebs to market their product whatever it is that's the way it's worked you've then got this sort of
emerging trend um in the beauty industry which i i subscribe to on a mental level
i just don't know if it's got the momentum and this is the dove campaign for real beauty
this is no we will not conform to standards we are our own people we are
fantastic and that message is the exact opposite to what is traditional beauty marketing but
traditional beauty marketing is still strong and so i'm just wondering is that
big have i got this right if i understood you right this is because it's easier to sell on the basis of pain
and loss than maybe this which you know the other side is not about pain and loss is it
this the traditional side is
there's a whole host of different things contributing to that to that change i think matt and and uh
you're looking you're essentially what the beauty campaigns are trying to do is say is trying to boost their their product
profile and trying to sell more products right that's that's the basis of it advertisers don't do that for any other
reason now there's if you go back to to look at this true
behavioral science you will see i mentioned before about our irrational brain
and our our unconscious biases that are present okay now if i were to sit down and say to you
matt i've got this product i've got this product that costs pounds a day to to feed and you're going to say wow
tell me about it i said yeah it's not great for your health in fact it can lead to long-term health
complications you're going to say right um and it's going to make you smell um
it's it's it it's not really going to make you uh feel great about yourself in the
short term or in the long term and it's going to make your teeth yellow et cetera et cetera et cetera right you're going to say buddy
on a rational level i'm totally not going to buy that and then you come to me and you say actually what i want you to do p is i
want you to sell this for me i'm going to say there is no way in hell a first off that i'm going to sell this
product for you right but if i had to you are going to go down the madmen route you are going
to say i'm going to appeal to a person's unconscious biases i'm going to appeal
to what we call pairing in behavioral psychology the power of association that you can't
appeal to any rational person and say yes buy cigarettes these are there is there is some benefit
to them you just can't do that so so what they do instead is they
pair cigarettes up with car racing with sporting events with
models with uh they use nudges in shops by having them behind this is what traditionally
would have happened they would have had attractive packaging all of this is based upon your unconscious
biases it's based upon pairing that up with something pleasurable because ultimately cigarettes aren't
going to be that pleasurable but you see this for particular uh you see this for all of the vices really you
know that they will appeal to that emotional brain on that emotional level now the beauty industry has relied
on that for so long it has said we are going to pair our product up with the best looking model that you can see
it is pairing this product up with the most fantastic views of santropay
it is you know it's it's not to have the likes of me advertising any beauty
products okay but what dover doing is they're appealing to system two and they're saying actually you know what
we credit you with being rational uh beings that you're thinking more about this and there's certainly a movement
towards this people are more conscious you'll hear conscious conscious buyers that people are now
thinking they're not just automatically buying and and lots of fair trade dealers you will see
ethically sourced foods you will see a divestment from fossil fuels you will
see people not just making these purchases upon these unconscious biases but now people are becoming much much more aware
of where their their their food is sourced from where their what their product values are what is the values of the
company that i'm buying for andover saying well if you're interested in that we are going to
to we are aligning ourselves with this on on that and they're they're saying we now
recognize that people are being a lot more conscious so they're not just seeing a stimulus and they're automatically buying it they're not like the person
who's just like me when i'm driving my car now not paying attention to it people are
paying much more attention to these types of things and i think that's where the beauty industry is
trying to to get to and that's what they're doing so do you think that's a more successful
form of advertising so if you were gonna launch your own beauty product for example which which
part of the brain system one or system two would you appeal to or would you would you go after both uh if i was
launching a beauty product matt uh i think i would go towards system two
[Laughter] deodorant for caveman yeah why it's a men's range i tell you we people
queueing up now to buy it caveman yeah but but i think uh
my personal values would say that i would appeal to to system to a conscious brain to say
you are now an ethical conscious buyer um and there's a whole host of personal values why i would say that as well i
don't think making people like my ethical framework in behavioral science is one that's
that doesn't that tries not to use punishment yeah tries not to use a person that we are all we can all be uh
our behavior can be can be changed for the betterment of ourselves that we are actually that behavioral
science isn't designed to manipulate people into purchasing things that they don't want to behavioral science is designed to help
us understand human motivation more and to to make to make their lives
better that's what my day-to-day work is and what you're describing there around the the dove campaign is saying
actually you're motivated by having a healthier more wholesome lifestyle being comfortable in your own
skin this is now more motivating because of the culture we're in and i think that that that's where i
would go with it that's what i was interested in that's really one of the things that we did we
um i remember this really clearly in one of the beauty salons that we had um i i said to the the
staff the team in the beauty salon i'm like listen i want you to go and collect every single piece
of material that we have that has a beautiful person on it and we're fairly sure that that image
has been photoshopped in other words it's not genuine it's not real um and i want you to just
if it's on posters i want you to take them down i want you to bring it if it's in magazines i want you to bring it bring it all to me and we got it all
together and then we just threw it all in the bin right we just said right let's get rid of that
and um and everyone's like well the salon's now empty what did you put in it and i said uh so
what we did was we we went out and i bought um
uh national geographic these sort of photo books they do of just people literally
right just literally from all different tribes you know the the most striking photo of a woman you
know with the elongated neck and all this sort of stuff it was just just people from literally every tribe
and tongue around the world and we're like let's get some of these framed and so we put those books out the national
geographic books and we so we stopped using those images which was very counter cultural but what we
what we were basically saying was actually i think the message was
much more based on our values and it was much more we're much more aligned with say dev than we are with say
links for example uh ironically both owned by the same company but let's not go there and so you're kind of like
um you kind of like which which route do we want to go down the feedback we had from customers after
doing this albeit subtle and everyone came and said this it just
feels a lot lighter around here wow sure i mean it feels like like it's
just a lot happier around here we've done nothing other than change pictures
and magazines and it it just absolutely fascinated me
the the how i saw it unfold in front of me in real terms amazing stuff we we
yeah and and so much of our behavior matt is driven by our values like you have we you've heard the term
cognitive dissonance okay if yeah so it's cognitive dissonance is this discomfort that we
feel when our behavior doesn't match up with our values so we have particular beliefs attitudes
and values so i say i am a punctual person and i turn up late or i and i'm going to
feel this real discomfort or if i say i am a generous person and i haven't
done something i haven't behaved in a way that's generous i'm feeling i'm gonna feel very very uncomfortable
doing this so your your company is saying these are the things that we value even in a very very subtle way and
you're not you're not saying that but you're saying you're suggesting it through nudges that this is what we value and that influences so
much of the employee behavior the organizational behavior and the customer behavior and how they feel and
i think that's what you're hearing in the feedback that you got from the customers yeah no it was it was really interesting
the experiment so what we did after that was we went through our website
and we're like let's take all of those types of images off the website and let's use say photos of the team that haven't
been photoshopped rather than beautiful models and let's see what happens and i i definitely don't have data on
this it's just it's just a fascinating experiment to see hmm how are people buying this
so i'm a listen but i'm just going to say matt on that if you
take the though that time where those types of of um those types of images were used to to
advertise we had so much less information than we have now yeah so we didn't have any other
reference points we didn't have any social communities we just had what was fed to us in magazines because that was
probably the media that we had and that was it yeah we didn't have any other reference points
of the data ever created in mankind has been created in the last two years
the last two years so we can get so many other reference
points to say well actually you know what this influencer who i only saw on tv
is now actually saying here's me when i'm at home and i don't look like this supermodel and it's okay and it's normal
and i think they the wider um i suppose environment the wider uh social online
community that has been created is saying to people it's actually it's okay you're not just being drip-fed
what is in a magazine or what is advertised on tv you have so many other reference points
now that you can base your own self-image on and that's what i think you've tapped into there yeah that's
fantastic pory i it's something that i don't think we talk about enough
in digital market you know you talk about digital marketing how do i do facebook ads how do i do instagram ads what's the latest silver bullet what's
their strategy what's that strategy i don't hear many people coming out and say be clear on what your values are
should i mean and find people that identify with those values and market to them in a way that
connects with them on a value basis but this subtle
difference this subtle change stops you being like everybody else it gives you that point of differentiation um
but it's it's a bit soft isn't it it's a bit fluffy it's it's oh no it gets to the core of what
behavioral science is about matter and the way i see behavioral science behavior is not a series if you're if
you're listening to this podcast and you see behavioral science is a series of ways that i can nudge and
push and manipulate and you know push people towards particular things like
like we are mechanical robots that's not what behavioral science is about even though i've talked about our
unconscious brain we are we're we have so much rational choice there and so much i suppose
with with this knowledge with this science that we have there is such a strong emphasis on a value space
and the values that go with that to help people make the correct decisions that are going to be be right for them and if i i think
you're you hit the nail on the head there when you said that when you are thinking about um
about influencing customer behavior your values base is actually the starting point for that it is saying
this is what our values base is this is what we do and we this is this is what you can expect from
us not a series of manipulations that we can do to get you to buy something that doesn't really matter to
you it's not about that it is saying is is is respecting choices that people
can make and having your values base align with that of the customer
so the customer goes actually you know what matt edwardson's beauty company is something that i really relate to and i'm not just a passive consumer i'm an
active tribe member here yeah because now this is this is a group that i identify with
this is somebody who whose values align with me and once we have aligned values what's
really interesting is that you don't need to start going into the minute of behavioral detail so many things start to to to line up
much more macro level of looking at behavioral science is that values based that's really interesting because i
would i would look at um a beauty company and i would i would say we have a disproportionately
high um when i compare it to the industry it's disproportionately high of our turnover that comes from repeat
customers and that's a long-term repeat customers because it's this connection on a values
level where they've gone we're just like jersey jersey is not the cheapest but we just
like jersey jeez it's cool do i mean it's and i'm the same way i i i don't know if i can say this live but
i i really struggle if i have to buy something off amazon because amazon's value and my values
well i hear you i mean they're just yeah and i'm like is there nowhere else i can buy
this from please jeremy that can give it to me it doesn't even have to be cheaper if it's in the same vicinity i'm
i'm jeremy i'm more than happy to go and look for it um because it's a it is a values-based
thing like you say and when you find those kind of companies that you can connect with
well i buy from them time and time again you know and and i'd much rather do that listen yeah
it's it's been an absolutely fascinating conversation i'm more than aware of time and i don't want to take up your whole evening
um i have one final question for you um yes uh which is completely off-piste if
that's all right uh have you seen um on netflix
the documentary called the social dilemma no right okay i want you to do me a
favor when you have watched this let's do another call and talk about it because i am fascinated to know what you would think
about uh what they say in this documentary to give you a bit of a heads up
it's a documentary about facebook and google and snapchat the big companies are big internet companies
and the effects that it's having on society and what's driving it the good things
and also the bad things i mean i think we need to bring a bit of balance to that documentary you can
almost come away from it feeling like i am really scared right now but some of the stuff they talk about some of the
stuff that you mentioned about behavioral psychology i mean they i i would
be really intrigued to know how what you think about it i recently i recently uh contributed an
article to an irish publication called the journal dot ie on groupthink and why fake news was
spreading during the pandemic because the who the world health organization called
this an information pandemic that there was so much so much being i suppose so much fake
news being shared and people were why do people share it not necessarily why they create it
sometimes that's just different but the actual sharing of it really comes down to to behavioral
science as well but what's interesting about when i read looked into it and i was researching
for it was how much of an influence those funnels that that social media sites put us into
to reinforce our existing um our existing biases our existing so this
is and this feeds into polarizing our viewpoint and giving us information to support our existing
um our existing viewpoint so if i have a particular viewpoint on the on a conspiracy theory if i have
a particular viewpoint or a particular political leaning that social media company is going to
feed me more information you might like this you might like this this reinforces my viewpoint that's what i was thinking
that's really good i'm going to tell you matt you should watch this video that i saw online about exactly what i was telling you
about there and there like i said of the world's data has been created in the last two
years so you can literally google anything and get information you want if i google why why is g causing my spots
in the morning i'm sure there will be there will be a google answer for me on this somebody will have
written an article on it yeah and and i can get i can get that answer but it was it's really
really interesting and i i'm not even sure if that's what the documentary is about but that's exactly what they talk about and how
he's created these polarized societies because what happens now is you only get to see
information because um what was it they said like facebook facebook's whole premise is to get you
to stay on facebook right they want you to stay on the app as long as possible so the way they're going to do that is
to feed you data and information which resonates with you and there are very complicated
machine learning algorithms in the background figuring out what it is that you like and they're going to repeat and show you
that information and so what happens is it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy so if you're
a republican guess what's going to happen you are going to see republican data republican propaganda
republican news fake real or not right if you're a democrat you're going to see the same thing and
so in the states especially we see this sort of polarizing view now where um it's sort of rising up that actually
the more i see the more convinced i'm right the more i'm convinced you're wrong and so
where there used to be debate there's now polarization and it's like i'm not even willing to talk to you anymore
yeah matt i just i i'm gonna i'm not gonna it's not gonna inspire you with confidence but there's research
recently done we're looking at when somebody's polarized uh
viewpoint has become so solidified that even when you present with them
with counter evidence of their particular viewpoint actually that
when it once it's hit that point to being really solidified it actually reinforces their original viewpoint when they hear
counter end okay how up is that man yeah so that's that's the kind of level that
we're getting now where people's critical thinking um capacities are starting to be eroded
away by this spoon feeding and spoon feeding of information
and and like you mentioned facebook's uh facebook is designed to keep us on facebook they
have done so many things based upon behavioral science they have they have behavioral scientists coming
out of their ears designing their web books on it haven't they cheese they absolutely have and you
see so many other social media platforms copying that exact format and it's based upon that system le
system one level of i don't need to think i'm just here and i'm scrolling through and being spoon information um i will watch that
the social media it's called the social dilemma and it's one of the most fascinating things that i've watched in recent times
i have to be honest with you sadaf who um sort of works behind the scenes on this podcast she's the voice
behind the you're tuning into the e-commerce the canadian voice at the start um and the the lady that you've been in
touch with an email and back and forth she was the one that actually put me in touch with this and said she just said
watch this we're going to have a conversation i want to know what you think and i was like okay and i've had a few weeks off and
watched it i've watched it like three times now because wow i was like this is this
answers so many questions for me about did yeah it's just did netflix suggest you
watch it again have netflix now we've seen you watch this and say you should watch this as well that started no no you can't do it it
does have they no no they haven't which surprises me actually they i netflix have gone matt's now they
should they'll know matt's now watched this three or four times but what i have noticed is a lot more documentaries like that are starting to
come up in my feed
listen how do um how do people connect with you they've listened to the show they've got involved in it uh
and they want to get in touch what's the best way for them to reach and connect with you so the best way to reach and connect
with me matt is through linkedin my name is podrick walsh p-a-d-r-e-i-g walsh um i think it's behavior support
specialist is is what is linkedin.com for slash behavior support specialist and we i do
i mentioned to you i do a podcast called the behavioral vaccine with kate feeny that's on itunes and across all podcast networks and that's released
weekly um i run an e-commerce website for continued professional development
that's i run that with a neuroscientist and a clinical psychologist that's called the actualize academy
actualizeacademy.com and i'm in the process of setting up my own uh we're rejuvenating actualize academy but i'm
also setting up my own website at changeable.ie so it's all our behavior is changeable
it's changeable and that won't be launched until so get in touch via linkedin that's my
favorite way to connect with people um and and that's that's how we connected that's how so many
people every day i i get in touch with them so yeah i'd only be delighted to to hear from people on on that that'd be
great so we'll put the link to your linkedin profile and to all your websites in the show notes as well so
uh if you if you're driving and you're like i just can't remember any of that just go check out the show notes at
medminson.com and all the links will be there i reckon everybody who's listening to
the show is going to go check out your website and go hmm right why has he done that
it's really rudimentary but it will be much better in a month's time i hope
uh so that's that's where we're at tips coming on board listen uh it's been absolutely fantastic
for me i've really enjoyed the conversation and um i'd love it if you actually come on the show again and we'll
carry on the conversation because there's so much we didn't get into on my little list here of questions it's like oh goodness uh it
is so fascinating and so practical listen i really really appreciate uh you being with us
thanks so much for taking the time to be here thank you very much matt thanks a lot
well wasn't that absolutely fantastic a really really great guy isn't he really
really enjoyed that so as i said if you want to check out uh poor information if you want to
connect with him if you want to know what his websites are if you want to see more of what he is up to and why would you not then check out the
show notes at matt edmondson.com and i am gonna be one of the first
subscribers to his podcast the behavioral vaccine because i'm sure it's not only informative but it'll be very very funny so there's
an entertainment value here which is important so check that out as well and again we'll put all the links to that in the show notes so you've got
that but um yeah he was awesome and thanks again for being on the show listen i just want to say a big shout
out and thanks to all of you who are listening to the show make sure you subscribe wherever you get your podcast from and if you
know you fancy joining us on one of these facebook lives and jordan in the comments like warren did tonight
why not come along enjoy and have a good time with us it'd be great to see you there
that's all for me uh right now so i am uh i'm gonna get ready to sign out
thanks so much for joining in thanks so much for listening and we'll be back again very very soon
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