This presentation looks at Psychological technique

1. Pop Psychology
& Conversion
Tricks, Tips and the Dark Side
@OptimiseOrDie
Craig Sullivan
Belron® International

2. Drone, Blah
• Follow me @OptimiseOrDie
• eBusiness Manager for the Belron®
group (Autoglass®)
• Over 20 years of boring meetings
with lots of total timewasters
• Looking after a 400M channel, 35
countries, 6 people
• Ed and I like to do it with crowds
• It’s not our site – it’s theirs

3. "If you go to the men's washrooms at
the Schiphol airport in
Amsterdam, you may notice there's a
fly in the urinals. It’s screen printed .
So what do you think most men do?
That's right, they aim at the fly when
they urinate.
They don't even think about it, and
they don't need to read a user's
manual; it's just an instinctive
reaction that means 80% less
spillage!*
The interesting feature of these
urinals is that they're deliberately
designed to take advantage of this
inherent human male tendency.“
This is my job.
*Also confirmed during trials of London Urinal Gaming

4. Outline
• This is my job
• Why do I love this stuff?
• Psychology of optimisation
• Myths of optimisation
• What skills and props do we use?
• Where do you start?
• What sorts of tests?
• What happened
• Photography
• The dark side of the web
• Questions

6. Why do I love this?
“The human explanation is always going to be more interesting
and eye opening than a psychic one”
“It’s a mixture of magic, suggestion, psychology, showmanship
and misdirection”
“I love the geekiness of magic”
Derren Brown – Midweek, Radio 4, 13 Oct 2010
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from
magic.”
Arthur C. Clarke

7. Old skool and good!

8. More recently…

9. Top reads:

11. So what?
There are 1000 trillion connections in your brain
Processing a HUGE amount of data about sounds, smells,
messages from nerve cells, sensory data, vision
There are 100 million neurons in your retina processing this
room, in high resolution, many times a second
In that same second, 4 million points of data whizz by
You’re only conscious of 40 of these

12. Scarcity principle...
• If there is limited availability of something, we assume it is more
valuable, and we want it even more.

13. Scarcity
• Watch that bowl of sweets at the kids party!
• Limited offers:
• Hurry up – time running out
• Only 2 seats left on that plane
• Exclusive invitation, VIP membership
• Scarcity of time – “Offer ends today”
• Scarcity of access - “Available to members only”
• Scarcity of time to act – “Order by 4:00, wear it tomorrow”
• Threadless.com – limited t-shirt designs
• MVT testing shows this stuff rocks – are you doing it?

14. Social validation…
• The need to fit in and belong is hard-wired into our
brains and biology.

15. Social validation…

16. Social validation…
• Kitty Genovese story – One bystander (85%) Five people (31%)
• The smoking vent – One person (75%) 3 people (38%)
• The fire extinguisher and the burning plane
• We look to others to validate what we should do
• Amazon – 2.7Bn and counting
• Bubbling the best reviews to the top – most helpful
bit.ly/am_zn
• Ratings and reviews affect us powerfully. Split tests:
• Digital camera +20%, Travel review +10%, With picture +20%
• People who bought this also bought…
• Rationalising your decision – the old brain wins

17. Optimisation
The systematic process of identifying
and removing barriers to positive
behaviours, along with tools and testing
techniques to maximise positive
outcomes.

18. Lets put this to work…
Forms
Remote Search
analytics Depth
testing analytics
interviews
Eye Market
tracking research
Customer A/B and
contact MVT
testing
Social
analysis
Insight Unstructured
data
Web
Clicktale
analytics
Usability Competitor
testing Ops and Customer review
CS teams Surveys services

19. Primer on testing
=

20. A/B test
Control Version A Version B

21. Multi variate Pizza
Ingredients Experiment Recipes
=

22. Month 1 - results
+2% +3% +1% +2%
+9% +4% -2% +1%
+5% +13% -7% -9%

23. So what about ingredients?
+20% -2% +5%
+3% +2% +6%
+6% +10% -18%

24. Weed out some losers…
+2% +3%
+9% +4%
+5% +13%

25. The final…
+10% +13%

26. Build phase
• Could be a page, widget, process or site
• Review inputs
• Model the desired outcome backwards
• Design hypothesis
• Kick the tyres
• Create prototype
• Test against hypotheses (UX, MVT)
• User and Split testing is NOT expensive
• You can start with a laptop and webcam
• Even a piece of paper
• You just add people

27. Build
Prototype
or HTML
Hypothesis Testing
Inputs Design Round
Washup
and
Prioritise

31. A B
Get Started
Control +34.9%
Fix My Glass
Click Here
+21.9% +17.4%
C D

32. A
+6.97%
B
Control

33. Social validation…
A
B
-33% CPA

34. Low entry cost
• Visual Website Optimizer
www.visualwebsiteoptimizer.com
• Google Website Optimizer
www.google.com/websiteoptimizer
• Optimizely
www.optimizely.com
If you want to move up from here, try Autonomy Optimost or
Webtrends Optimize.

36. SPAIN
+31% over control
99% confidence

37. FRANCE
+8% over control
99% confidence

38. GERMANY
+12% over control
99% confidence

39. SWEDEN
+14% over control
90% confidence

40. Another example

43. Make sure you use real,
authentic, smiling,
friendly, approachable
people.
Don’t use stock images
for testing or on your
site.
Low Q video and
images are also fine –
they reinforce
authenticity.

44. People images that suck…

45. Image Guidelines – In a Nutshell
• Groups, vans, stores, head office, • Arms with prop instead – hold a
corporate guff = NO clipboard, rag, tool – I’m working for
• Single person – not groups or even *you*
Photo Guidelines
person + customer, especially if
•
they are interacting with each other
Plain backgrounds only
• Female images work best in almost
(ignoring you)
every country – they slay the guys
• Open, Friendly, Natural, Smiling,
• Natural, authentic and not ‘model’ or
Engaged, Alert = YES
‘stock’ image types work best for
• Smile best with eye crinkles people
• Uniform – has huge effect, even • Some of our best performing images
wearing branded hat improves would be rejected by advertisers as
conversion ‘too ugly’
• Look straight at viewer or slightly • Want to know more? Tweet me
towards CTA @OptimiseOrDie or check out the
• No folded arms, arms on hips, @TheBrainLady
pointing, scowling, cheesy smiles, • Oh, and we also know that genital
hands behind back, hanging framing doesn’t work…
useless by the side, clasped by
groin, fiddling with hands

47. The dark side
• Optimisation can be used in bad ways too
• Either by accident (just stupid)
• Or by design, to trick people*
• More reading at:
http://wiki.darkpatterns.org/wiki/Home
* I trick influence people too
but I call it optimisation (displacement technique)

48. Sneaky fold

49. You evil gits

50. Sneaky basket

51. Hidden opt-out

52. Honeypot
Read Black Hat Politics
Online Dirty Tricks
bit.ly/IngLd2

53. Evil genius award?

54. Future stuff
• Expanding our UX and testing work
• Exporting agile and lean tech to the business
• Rapid expansion of testing community
• More skilled copywriting input to tests
• 50-70% of our test lifts comes from copy!
• We use the marvellous Stickycontent.co.uk
• Catherine Toole and Econsultancy
• On hold music / IVR / Phone menus
• EEG neural headsets and FMRI
• Dynamic testing
• Your Perfect Shop

55. Autoglass.co.uk
• User Centred Design + 12.4% conversion
• Multi Variate Testing + 12.5% conversion
• Optimised Mobile Site + 4% conversion
• Higher NPS score + 5.5%
• Total conversion increase = 41% (15% worldwide)
• Reduced call time
• Faster online booking time
• Customer delight. Less worry. Lower friction
• NO additional marketing spend needed
• Web Channel : ROI positive within 2 weeks

57. More reading. Slides and resources on slideshare.net
Email : sullivac@gmail.com
Twitter : @OptimiseOrDie
: linkd.in/pvrg14
Slideshare : slidesha.re/nlCDm6