DIGITAL PSYCHOLOGY AND PERSUASION LESSON 9, COURSE 2 LESSON 1, 2, 3, AND 4
This is my fifth article for my mini degree in DIGITAL PSYCHOLOGY AND PERSUASION from CXL Institute, and I’m Olamilekan Olajubu, a copywriter.
LESSON 9: COGNITIVE FLUENCY
Last week, I wrote on Emotional And Rational Decision Making where I discussed how decision-making wasn’t logical as we liked to think (we’re actually rationalizers, not rational). We also looked at How People View Website and learned that the top left corner is the spot where the eyesight first falls on the viewing path of a web page. Also, we looked at an E-Commerce Product Page Study. Here, we were able to see that smaller images had a higher perceived value for experience products.
This week, we’ll be looking at a couple of lessons, of which the first is COGNITIVE FLUENCY.
Let’s dive right in;
Cognitive fluency is the human tendency to prefer things that are familiar and easy to understand. This ultimately means the easier your website, copy, page, etc., is to understand, the higher chance of people buying your product.
NOTE: Your brand name should also be simple and easy to pronounce.
WHY PEOPLE PREFER UNLIMITED PLANS
Everyone, including you and me, don’t want to waste time and energy comparing different plans. Instead, we go with the unlimited plan because it’s easy to understand.
SUGGESTION: Make your offer and pricing as easy as possible.
HARD TO READ, HARD TO BUY
Always ensure the font on your website, product page, copy, etc., is easy to read. When people feel that your font is hard to read, they automatically transfer that difficulty onto what it is they’re reading about.
PREVIOUS POSITIVE EXPERIENCES MATTER
Cognitive fluency also explains why people always come back to the same website, buyer, technician, brand, etc. This is mainly because they have made an initial purchase that was easy to understand.
SUGGESTION: Deliver value on your first purchase, as well as ease and clarity for your customer.
Fluency guides our thinking in situations where we have no idea that it is work, and it affects us in situations where we weigh information.
Cognitive fluency generally stems from another area of behavior known as “The Mere Exposure Effect”, which states that the more time you’re exposed to a stimulus, the more you prefer it.
SUGGESTION: The more “typical” a website layout, the easier it is for the brain to process it.
That brings us to the end of the first COURSE!🎉
COURSE 2: ATTENTION BASICS
Lesson 1: Visual Cue Case Study: Lead Gen Form On A Landing Page
Garnering the audience’s attention is a prerequisite for selling as when it doesn’t grab attention, then our copy, image, website, etc., is useless.
This course aims to teach on this topic of gaining attention.
Let’s dive right into the first lesson;
Visual cues are strategically placed graphics that web designers use to guide user experience and attention on a website.
Some examples of visual cues include; arrows, lines, people photos, borders, pointing fingers, checkmarks, exclamation points, etc.
ARE SOME VISUAL CUES MORE EFFECTIVE THAN OTHERS?
A test was carried out on a lead gen page with different visual cues to see if some were more effective than others. The results to be observed included initial look time, and the largest time spent looking out of all.
RESULT: The arrow best out of the several visual cues tested, and the human-looking away perform less than others.
SUGGESTION: Use a visual cue leading towards your form.
That brings us to the end of the first lesson!
LESSON 2: EYE GAZE PATTERN
“A user’s eyes do not always remain on a task”- This is true most especially for easy tasks. For harder tasks, we tend to pay more attention to it.
Eye gaze provides a valuable source of information on the difficulty of the task and what area of the screen the user is focusing their attention on.
This can help to effectively guide the design of the visual layout of a task on a webpage. Related controls can be grouped together for better performance so that users don’t have to search too far to locate their desired controls or required info.
TIP: Go through design prototypes so you can change and alter the site.
DIRECTIONAL CUES
Humans have a natural tendency to follow the gaze of others.
Now that you know that visual cues matter, use visual cues to prime your reader to your goal.
That brings us to the end of the second lesson!
LESSON 3: Understanding Online Reading Patterns
F-Pattern:
Here the reader reads in an F-shaped pattern according to heat maps viewed on a website. To get your content in the line of this reading pattern, make the words you use very appealingly, or else readers won’t read it.
Note: The goal of a reader affects how they read content online.
Layer Cake Pattern:
Here, the reader reads horizontal lines quickly to see if the section they’re on spikes their interest.
Spotted Pattern:
If after a reader reads a website or copy using the layer cake pattern and shows an interest, they’ll proceed to a spotted pattern looking for the main ideas in an article or copy.
SUGGESTION:
- Use scannable texts
- Break your texts into shorter paragraphs
- Put your most important subject on the path of the F-Pattern
- Start each line with a catchy word
USE THE RECOMMENDATIONS BELOW FOR A BETTER SCANNING
Use;
- Bolded words
- Underlined text
- Words in colors
- Trademarked words
- 8 instead of eight i.e digits instead of alphabets
- Words in capital letters
- Long words
- Quoted words.
That brings us to the end of this lesson!
LESSON 4: CASE STUDY: ONLINE READING PATTERNS
“Readers read 28% of an article’s copy during average site visit”- Nielsen Norman Group, 2008.
In this lesson, we’ll be observing the difference in the reading patterns between an older group and a younger group while reading a 100-word article from Natgeo.
Result: There was a mild difference between both groups’ reading patterns. Both the older group and the younger group spent a similar time frame reading the copy, with a few exceptions in their reading patterns.
While the older group spent more time reading the summary part of the article more, the younger group spent time reading the second paragraph of the article.
That brings us to the end of the lesson!
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