ExperienceBlogger

Before I get started, I have to apologize for not updating this blog for so long.  Things have been crazy (in a good way) lately and I’ll be able to fill everyone in on why within the next few weeks.  All good things.

With that being said, let’s dive right into the final “bonus” post on Cialdini’s 6 Weapons of Influence.

As I said in the inaugural post to this series,  I’d go over each of Cialdini’s 6 Weapons and include a bonus weapon: Contrast.

Basically, when you’re asking someone to buy your product or service, you’ll increase your odds of converting them if you can show the product’s price compared to another price.  This “comparison price”, if you will, could be:

• What an upgraded version of the same product would cost
• The same product at full price (i.e. discounting)
• The price for a different product of similar quality

Here are a few landing pages that successfully employ the Contrast principle:

This is the 37 Signals Basecamp Plans & Pricing Page.

As you can see, they not only display all of the plans and pricing right next to one another along with a feature list but they also emphasize one pricing plan above the others. 

This gives the prospect a point of reference for each pricing package and a clear idea of the relationship between price-to-value.  It also provides some guidance on which package offers the best price-to-value relationship, thus further removing anxiety from the decision (while maximizing revenue for the company..notice how they didn’t emphasize the low-cost or free plan).

We use a similar tactic on our offer pages where we’ll break the offers down between “Best Deal”, “Great Deal” and “Good Deal”.

Discounted Pricing

As I’m sure you can tell, this is an offer page for a group buying site (Groupon, to be exact).

These sites all successfully use the same “Contrast” tactic as they try to entice prospects to take advantage of the daily deal.  While I don’t have hard data to support this, I’d bet that when there’s a deeper discount (or a better price-to-value relationship) they get higher conversion rates.

Similar Product Pricing

And for my final example in this series, I’m going to jump out of the landing page realm and use a television commercial to illustrate how the power of Contrast was leveraged in this Microsoft Windows/PC ad:

Microsoft is comparing what you get from a PC versus buying a much higher priced Mac, drawing a very clear relationship between price and value.

I’m not sure how successful these campaigns were, but the tactic itself could be very effective if your strategy is to be the low-cost provider in a marketplace.

Hope You Enjoyed This Series

I really hope you enjoyed this entire series and got something out of it.

I’ll be compiling all of the posts into one large post soon (like I did with my Wireframing and Rapid Prototyping Process Series). 

As always, please let me know what you think - all feedback, criticism, hate mail, etc. is welcome and appreciated!

“The grass is always greener”

“We always want what we can’t have”

…and a thousand other cliches sum up the Scarcity principle fairly well.

We tend to want items that are difficult to attain - the more rare or unavailable they are, the more we must have them!

But just like many of Cialdini’s weapons of influence, the Scarcity principle becomes more effective under certain conditions:

1.  Competition — We tend to want items even more when we think we’re in competition for those items with other people.

You ever watch the Home Shopping Network?

You know how during a presentation they’ll show a counter for the number of items left?

That’s an attempt to exploit this condition (which also leverages Social Proof) and it works pretty damn well!

2.  New — The scarcity principle becomes even more effective when an item is newly scarce.

For example, do you remember that girl in your 8th grade math class that you didn’t pay much attention to…that is, until she got a boyfriend?  Same deal.

Now let’s take a look at how clever marketers employ this strategy…

Limited Time Only - Google AdWords

Thus far, we’ve only gone over landing pages, but I wanted to take a step back and look at some of the ads that actually drive traffic to those landing pages.

Sometimes, the ad is so powerful, it does all the work upfront and people are primed and ready to buy as soon as they hit the landing page.  Check out some of these AdWords campaigns to see what I mean:

Not the sexiest thing in the world, but the Macy’s Towel ad implies that their offer for “Free Shipping” ends today.  Same with the iPhone auction - “Blowout Auctions Today.” — this creates a sense of urgency in the advertisement.

Now let’s take a look at what you actually see when you click through on the iPhone ad — even more scarcity and competition thrown right in your face:

Look at the countdown clock on this page — it’s rapidly ticking down, showing you that your shot at scoring an iPhone for $9.16 is rapidly coming to an end!

Scarcity Through Competition - eBay

eBay is amazing for a whole slew of reasons, but just take a look at the inherent level of scarcity through competition that’s built into their auction model.

You have a couple of different elements on this page that scream: “YOU NEED TO HURRY UP AND BUY THIS NOW!” — limited time left to buy, 25 bids from other people, live countdown clock, etc.

All of these contribute to that sense of urgency that’s allowed eBay to become an eCommerce powerhouse.

Having an e-mail address becomes “exclusive”?

One of the best examples of a taking a commodity-like service and building in scarcity to make it successful was the original GMail launch campaign.

Think about it…who didn’t have a web-based email account at the time?  After Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail, it wasn’t difficult to get setup with an account for free.

So when GMail first launched, they had an invitation-only system and each member only had a limited number of invites. 

All of a sudden, e-mail became that girl in your 8th grade math class that just got a boyfriend!

Granted, GMail was appealing for other reasons (LOTS of free storage, great interface, etc.), but it almost became a badge of honor to be one of the lucky few with a GMail address (and those coveted invites!).

Bonus Weapon

As I said in the first part of this series, Cialdini only goes over 6 Weapons of Influence in his book.  However, there’s one more very important weapon that can and should be used to enhance your landing pages: Contrast.

So in my next and final post, I’ll go over this weapon, under what conditions it’s most effective and some examples of how it’s used.

According to Cialdini, a person wearing a lab coat or a police uniform, or someone that goes by the title, “CEO” or “Professor”, or even someone who drives a nice car and wears a nice suit, can command a great deal of influence over other people.

He cites numerous examples of studies done where requests were made by people who were “perceived” to be in a position of authority (e.g. a “fake” doctor, a regular person wearing a police uniform, etc.).  The requests were almost always followed without any attempt to verify the person’s actual level of authority.

One of my favorite examples from the book, is the Sanka coffee commercial, where an actor who played a Doctor on a television series, touts the health benefits of the caffeine free beverage.  The commercial was a wild success…and this wasn’t some obscure actor that people might have mistaken for a real doctor.  This was a well known guy and he was giving out health advice that people actually followed!  Amazing!

I’m sure we’ve all seen countless examples like this in other advertisements.  Let’s take a look at how it’s used on a few landing pages to help bump up conversions:

Authority by Association - BaseCamp - 37 Signals

You’ve gotta forgive me for using this example so many times, but the folks over at 37 Signals really understand landing page design!

So take a look at the screen grab below:

Take a look at what they did here.

They combined, social proof, the law of liking and authority into the same section of the landing page.

As we previously discussed, the social proof comes from the headline and the statistics box on the right.  The law of liking is employed through the pictures and descriptions of those who use the software.  And Authority comes into play with the clever use of logos of major brands who are 37 Signals users at the bottom.

Testimonials - ZenDesk

Let’s take a look at our friends at ZenDesk again.

Not only is ZenDesk showcasing their clients in an attempt at social proof, but these are also marquee clients (other web companies a potential customer would want to emulate), thus employing the concept of Authority as well.  Which makes the whole design much more effective!

As Seen In - Wikinvest

A very popular technique used to boost credibility by using Authority, is to tout the sites, blogs and periodicals that have written about a product or company.

For example, check out sign-up form for Wikinvest.com (a portfolio aggregation and equity research service):

It’s pretty simple:  headline + email form + quote from recent news coverage in Barron’s.

If you’re a regular investor and you see this page for the first time, knowing that Barron’s gave these guys a great review will make you much more comfortable entering your email address.

In the next post, we’ll go over Cialdini’s 6th and final weapon for increasing conversions: Scarcity — “The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost” - G.K. Chesterson.

The 4th weapon Cialdini introduces us to is the principle of “Liking”. 

This is a pretty simple concept: we’ll generally want to do things for someone we like versus someone we don’t like - duh!

The real question is, how do you get someone to like you, your brand, your product, etc., on a landing page?

Well, here are some examples of “offline” marketing funnels that capitalize on the Liking principle:

1.  Do You Like Your Friends? — I’m sure your mother (or someone she knows) has thrown a Tupperware party before.  Essentially, the host of the party brings in a Tupperware saleswoman, solicits some friends to come to the house for a “party” where the Tupperware sales rep proceeds to schmooze and pitch everyone in the room to buy these kitchen storage containers.  Everyone knows that the host of the party will get rewards and free products if they buy a lot of stuff.  Because this person is their friend, most folks tend to buy things they normally wouldn’t. 

2.  Association — Michael Jordan puts his name on a pair of sneakers and now everyone thinks they can be like Mike.  Elliot Spitzer puts his name on a…well, nevermind, you get the point.

This is known as “association”, and it’s extremely powerful.  Furthermore, it doesn’t just apply to celebrity endorsements either.

The more closely a prospective customer can associate with others who use or endorse a product, the more likely they are to “like” it and buy it.  This includes taking a recommendation from a friend, seeing an endorsement from a complete stranger that happens to be in the same field you work in, etc.

3.  Looks Matter - Cialdini even goes on to show that we tend to like people that we find attractive.  Physical appearance plays a big role in everything; from who we choose as a mate, to how we choose which dish soap to buy.

As a side note, this is why visual design plays an important role in how well a landing page converts — attractive pages help convert for a number of reasons (e.g. conspicuous consumption, credibility, etc.) but the simple psychological principle of Liking explains a great deal about why they do so well.

Let’s take a look at a couple of landing pages that use the Liking principle to help boost conversions:

Basecamp - 37 Signals

Remember the examples of Social Proof we went included in the last post?

These endorsements could’ve easily been a simple text-based testimonial with a name next to it (ex: “I love Basecamp - Joe Shmo”).  But instead, they show the person, they show the type of company this person works at, they let you hear what the person has to say first hand, etc.

The idea being that if you show cool, attractive and creative people (notice how none of them are wearing a ripped t-shirt, have unkempt hair or work in a field that requires manual labor like construction) using this software - other people that view themselves as cool, attractive and creative will want to use it as well.

Special Guest Appearance - YOUR FRIENDS!

You can visit almost any large website these days and chances are you’ll see something that you didn’t see a couple of years ago: pictures of your friends looking back at you.

Thanks to Facebook, every time I click on a Groupon or a Living Social ad, I can now see which of my friends have visited or joined these sites already:

The hope is that by showing you how many of your friends have also joined the site, you’ll be more inclined to join because if you’re going to identify with anyone, it will be your friends.

Virality & the Law of Liking

I don’t think I’ve ever joined a social network because I was psyched to meet “new people.”

And I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Facebook ad saying, “Hey join Facebook now!”

Facebook (and many other social networks) have generated a MASSIVE amount of new users all by banking on the principle of Liking.

If you’re one of the 500 million people on Facebook, then you know how this works.  They get you to send invitations to all of your friends

These friends are then unwittingly becoming victims of the Liking principle — because they’re your friends and they like you (combined with a little curiosity)  they’re convinced to register for Facebook and the cycle continues:

In the next article, we’ll touch on the principle of Authority.  I’ll go back to some examples we’ve already used and show how Authority, Liking and Social Proof work together to help landing pages boost conversions.

Cialdini’s 3rd Weapon of Influence is one that many people can relate to: Social Proof — Simply put, people tend to do what they see other people doing.

However, there are a couple of conditions that should be met if you hope for this weapon to be as effective as possible:

1.  We’re most susceptible to being influenced when the people we’re copying are similar to us (e.g. teenagers tend to try smoking because they see other teenagers doing it)

2.  Social Proof works best when uncertainty is high — reason being, we’re hardwired to “go with the crowd” when we’re unsure of what to do as it’s an evolved survival instinct.

So let’s take a look at how Social Proof can be designed into different landing pages:

37 Signals - Basecamp

I really love these guys — not only do they manage to create some extremely elegant marketing and landing pages, they actually TELL YOU how they do it.

The Signal vs. Noise blog is chock full of goodies on how the 37 Signals team goes about creating their landing pages and marketing sites.  The one we’re going to look at today is the Basecamp Marketing Site.

This page is loaded with various elements of social proof.

First, let’s take a look at the primary headline and sub-headline:

Right away you’ll notice the read underline directly beneath the “Millions of people use Basecamp,…” sub-head.

Next, just below the main splash image, you’ll see another sub-headline along with a number of graphical items:

This sub-head is particularly interesting as it attempts to get the reader to identify with one of the various job titles they list.  Remember, the law of social proof works best when the reader/user can identify closely with the person or people they’re copying.

Now take a look at the graphical elements beneath the sub-headline.  These are all people from different industries and with different job titles.  Once again, the folks at Basecamp are trying to get their reader to identify with one of the people they have in their testimonials.

And if all that didn’t do the trick, take a look at the call-out box on the right side of the page.  It provides a staggering number of actions taken by a very large amount of people on the Basecamp system.  This is an attempt to really drive home the concept of social proof and thus, the credibility and reliability of the Basecamp system.

ZenDesk

The folks at ZenDesk go for a much simpler form of social proof: text-based testimonials.

As you can see, just beneath their carousel, you can see a scrolling ticker of testimonials from their most well-known customers:

And remember, testimonials can be used anywhere!

I wrote a post a few months back on the redesign of our shopping cart page.

On the right side of that page, we included testimonials from our customers:

This was one of the many elements we included on the page to bring our abandonment rate down to 50% (from 75% - 80%).

Just like with our first Weapon (Reciprocity), the concept of Social Proof works best when coupled with other Weapons, especially “Authority” (which we’ll examine in a bit).

In our next post, we’ll take a look at Cialdini’s psychological law of “Liking”.