Persuasive Design
Using the principle of social proof to create persuasive designs.
How to leverage your existing users to drive better conversions in your landing page.
If you have built a landing page for your new product, then it’s quite common that you’ll have something of the following as the CTA:
Sign up, Create an account, Join our waitlist, Get early access (and a couple of other variations of the same) to persuade your visitor to just give your product a try — either by signing up, or joining a waitlist.
Have you considered how your visitor reaches your landing page? Via a search engine? This means that she is simultaneously looking at 10 other such landing pages with more or less similar copy and CTA.
Or does she arrive on your page via a social media ad or perhaps an email? In this case, the visitor isn’t very motivated. Unlike the previous case where she was actually searching for a solution, here she has the additional task of figuring out if she actually needs the solution at all.
The challenge for you is to cater to both the use cases.
Now, would she click on that CTA? Would you? Do you stumble upon every landing page and simply signup because you like their value proposition? These days every product brands itself as the best, or the easiest, or the cheapest, or the fastest. When everybody is claiming to be on top, it’s highly likely that visitors are full of doubt, and have very little trust.
The best, the easiest, and the funniest — these strategies might have worked in the past, but they are everywhere nowadays and have become meaningless. Like banner blindness, people have developed value proposition blindness. When everybody claims to be the best, nobody actually is.
What you have to do is design better motivators to influence the visitor into clicking that signup button of yours? Help them answer this lingering question on their mind: “Do I sign up?”
Will changing your CTA to Signup for free be of any help at all? No!
Millions of apps are free. Nearly everything has a free trial. You are still not standing out. The user still has to make a choice: “Do I pick this free product, or the other one which feels more of less the same and is free as well?”
When you design the CTA, or write the copy, you inherently become a choice architect. You have to use different means of persuasion to help your visitor make a choice.
Colleen Szot is a successful infomercial writer. One of her campaigns for a home-shopping channel broke all the company’s previous sales records. In this particular campaign, Szot simply changed three words in a standard infomercial line, keeping everything else similar to what’s usually found in most commercials — overenthusiastic people, funny jingles, and catchy slogans. But this tiny change caused a meteoric increase in the number of people who purchased the products.
Szot just changed the all-too-familiar call-to-action line, Operators are waiting, please call now to If operators are busy, please call again.
On the face of it, the change appears too simple, and almost foolhardy. The message actually conveys that customers would have to put extra effort to get their hands on the products. They’ll have to dial and redial until they can finally reach a sales rep.
This simple surface view underestimates the principle of social proof: When you are uncertain, you determine what is correct by finding out what other people think is correct.
Let me elaborate. In the above example, consider the kind of mental image likely to be generated when you hear operators are waiting: scores of bored phone representatives filing their nails, clipping their coupons, or twiddling their thumbs while they wait by the silent telephones — an image indicative of low demand and poor sales.
Now consider how your perception of the popularity of the products would change when you hear if operators are busy, please call again.
You perceive demand. This line says, “Hey we are really sorry that it would be a bit of a hassle to get your hands on our products, but it’s just that we have been getting so many calls throughout the day — we can’t really help it. Keep trying and we’ll surely get in touch with you.”
That is a powerful statement. People usually dig what others are digging. Those bored, inactive representatives are now going from phone call to phone call without a break. Things are in high demand.
In line with the principle of social proof, home viewers followed their perceptions of others’ actions, even though those others were completely anonymous. “After all, if the phone lines are busy, then other people like me who are also watching this infomercial are calling too.”
The landing page version of the above example would be a bit different. You can’t simply write, “If you can’t signup in the first go, try again.” That’s stupid. But if you happen to have a kickass product, have written excellent copy to communicate its value, and along with the signup button, if you write something like, 3,377 total users have signed up for this, it’ll help you standout.
The number of people signing up for your product exhibits its demand. You can enhance it as well by tweaking a few things, depending on your total number of signups. If it’s a five or six digit number, it might be better to show the total signups straight away. But if you have a good frequency of signups every week (or everyday), then it is advisable to mention that as well. “3,377 total users have signed up for this” along with “861 users signed up this week itself” doubles the impact. You not only have a large number of interested users, more and more are joining in every week. You are most likely trustworthy.
Basecamp is a long running and pretty stable business with great brand recognition. But even Basecamp still implements social proof in its landing page, albeit not as aggressively as you would have to. You are new. You gotta put extra effort.
But what if you don’t have these many signups? Do you fake it? I recommend absolutely not to. As a persuasion artist, there’s a very thin line between intelligent behaviour design and fraudulence. It’s challenging yet more fun to remain on this side of the line.
Now to answer your question, social proof works only when there’s abundance of signups. When you have just launched and there are not many signups, you need other persuasion tactics. In fact, it would be better not to display the numbers at all. Low signup numbers most likely would have the opposite effect.
Not just in online persuasion, this exact example of mentioning number of signups can be used in other contexts as well.
The other day I went to the market to buy some bedsheets. The seller showed me a couple of dull patterned designs, and after I asked if he had more colourful ones, he explained that he stopped getting the colourful ones as they don’t sell very well. Customers seem to prefer these dull grey colours more.
Even though my System 2 was pretty aware of what he was trying to do, my System 1 was kind of convinced and almost overpowered System 2. Had the bedsheets not been so dull in colour, I would have most likely bought them instead of checking out what other stores were offering.
Social Proof works the best when the user is a bit confused. If you know exactly what you want, sticking to your guns can help you dodge it.
Hi, I’m Abhishek.
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