The framing effect and product presentation
Presenting a product feature or an idea in order to make visitors take the action you want them to take is not an obvious thing to do. It requires knowledge about marketing and you will see that cognitive science plays also a big role. What cognitive science does with selling products or ideas online?
As your goal is to make visitors take action you should at least know basic ok knowledge about how the brain works. For that, you have a lot of resources to start with like reading scientists like Lakoff…. One of the basic concepts of cognitive science is the framing effect that defines how emotions can be modified by the way information is presented, framed. This framing effect does such that you are more reassured if you are told that 90% of patients survive after a given surgery than if you were told that 10% die. The negative or positive side of the information or the story plays an important role in the emotions activated. If you want your audience to feel the sentiment of urgency you should tell the story taking the negatives side even if in proportion the positive side is way bigger. For example, for selling SEO service to companies and website owners a platform makes an analysis of a website and tells how fast the web pages of the website are? The SEO agency designed its interface naively showing the information like this.
I advised them to show it like that (ask me if you want to know how at mkrdiop@outlook.fr)
Because….. ask me if you want to know Why at mkrdiop@outlook.fr)
And more I advised them to also integrate competitors' analysis but to show only the positive side of the competitors.
As they were knowledge-driven people they did not just apply my advice instinctively. The AB tested it with what they were doing.
Guess what my advised design outperformed what they were doing and they finally switched their analytics presentation that had only one purpose, selling more website speed optimization. They were great SEO and software engineers but not so interested in marketing and curious enough or having time to go into basic cognitive science knowledge. You may think that I am a liar because I hid information but if analyze well, I gave the necessary information. But I do believe in the core ideas embedded into the book all marketers are liars.
