ESSAYS
WEB PSYCHOLOGIST NATHALIE NAHAI, AUTHOR OF WEBS OF INFLUENCE
them successfully,” says Nahai. “That can be done through content, copy, layout, your use of video and language – making sure all your messages are congruent. Most people have fairly standardised websites so, all other things being equal, it’s your copy and content that set you apart.” As consumers, says Nahai, we tend to
look for cues in our environment which tell us what’s important information and what isn’t. Psychological insight can play an important role in directing users to the information you want them to take note of. “A picture of a person
Facebook ‘Like’ distils those desires down to a single button but it’s an impulsive, binary response. Either you ‘Like’ something or you don’t. A ‘Like’ can’t possibly fulfil or represent the multiplicity of emotions or the nuance that you have in a real-life relationship, so the danger is that it doesn’t have much qualitative meaning.”
looking at the text you want consumers to look at is very standard practice,” she says. “To take another example, the process of payment tends to be slightly painful. It triggers the same part of the brain that becomes active when we’re in physical pain. Using more permissive language in your check-out process – ‘upgrade’; ‘try it for free’ – can have a dramatic effect.”
WE HAVE A UNIVERSAL DESIRE FOR SOCIAL VALIDATION AND THE ONLINE ENVIRONMENT EXPLOITS THIS”
CHASING THE DOPAMINE SPIKE In some respects, says Nahai, the internet is still a playground and the mix of intimacy and anonymity that characterises our online environment allows users to behave in ways they wouldn’t offline. Think of the disinhibition associated with online bullying and trolling. With so much technological development happening so quickly, what other changes is Nahai observing in the way consumers interact? “Things like ‘Likes’ and Retweets are
very hard to quantify or recreate offline,” she says. “We have a hardwired, universal desire for social validation – to be admired and liked by our peers, and the online environment exploits this. The
Push notifications like emails and Tweets, explains Nahai, generate a small, brief spike in dopamine – the chemical in the brain associated with risk and reward. It’s that dopamine spike that makes us want to react or respond to those stimuli. Frequently, however, there is no reward. “So you end up scrolling down the page trying to get more of a ‘hit’,” says Nahai. “The danger is we end up seeking online connections that never satiate that desire or take us out of the dopamine loop.”
SOCIAL PROOF With so many brands desperate to provide consumers with more relevant, engaging content, who does Nahai see as implementing some of the issues she discusses in her book? “One is Betabrand in the States. They
sell ‘cordurounds’ – corduroy trousers in which the mesh is horizontal rather than vertical. They’ve created a very humorous site that features something they call the ‘Crotch Heat Index’ (CHI), inspired by the fact that horizontal corduroy creates less friction. Though the brand’s target group is quite niche, they’ve created a relationship on social media which is very joyful. They inherently understand what’s driving their customer behaviour and they’ve taken that insight into their marketing by creating messages with a very unique
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tone of voice. “Another is Nasty Gal, a female
clothing brand in the US that targets women aged 16 to 25. They’ve teamed up with a visual commerce platform called Olapic which allows customers to upload pictures of themselves wearing the Nasty Gal clothes. The brand then decides who they want to act as models. So, you’ve got the principle of social proof right there: if enough of my peers are doing something I’ll want to do it too. And you’ve got the principle of social validation: if they pick me I can put it on Facebook and people will think I’m cool. Those are two companies who’ve used marketing based in psychology, whether they know it or not.”
IS THERE A ‘BUY’ BUTTON? Discussion of the incentives brands put in place to prompt and facilitate purchase leads to modern marketing’s $64,000 question: is there such a thing as a ‘buy’ button in the brain? “The ideas of neuroscience and
neuromarketing are very sexy at the moment and play to our general scientism. But brain scanning technologies are very much in their infancy. Neuroscientists are coming up with extraordinary discoveries, but the brain is so complex that it’s very difficult to say which part represents the ‘buying’ button. I’m very sceptical of neuromarketing in that sense. However, as a tool that allows us to measure brain activity in response to cues and stimuli which we otherwise wouldn’t be able to investigate, it does have a role. The difficulty - and the source of my scepticism - is that we tend to look for a silver bullet which simply doesn’t exist in psychology. You have to use it as one tool within a spectrum of tools which will provide insights into certain aspects of the situation you’re studying.”
thewebpsychologist.com
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