Why data is only one piece of the puzzle
In 1855, Walt Whitman’s monumental collection of poems ‘Leaves of Grass’ was first published. Whitman constantly edited and revised the collection throughout his life and, looking at the work as a whole, it’s a voluminous, expansive celebration of self-expression, humanity and our relationship with the natural world.
Within the collection there’s an eight-line poem that powerfully conveys the idea that there is a beauty and power in nature that can evoke wonder in all of us, and this is something that can never be captured by charts, numbers and figures.
When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
I’m very wary of making a cheap comparison here, but the same is true of copywriting and taking a data-driven approach to messaging.
In recent years, an increasing understanding of online behaviour has led to marketing departments and creative agencies adopting a more data-driven approach to better understand target audience behaviours and preferences. Wayfair is no exception.
On the creative team, it’s our mission to get our customers from A to B in a way that makes the journey an enjoyable one, with clear signposts and expectations every step of the way. Our messaging plays a key role in this process and it’s something we’re always looking to refine and improve upon, using data as a guide. But we should be wary of letting it be the sole determinant of how we speak to our customer.
For example, when it comes to calls to action, there are many ways we can speak to our audience — find out more, discover more, click here, sign up now — all of these are phrases you’re more than familiar with if you’ve been online for more than fifteen minutes. A completely data-driven approach might have you believe that one of these is objectively ‘better’ than the other in influencing the behaviour of the viewer and getting them to click, tap or read on, but the proofs and figures only capture one piece of the puzzle and miss the wider context. Fundamentally, the results measure the rate at which customers interact with the call to action, but not how they feel about it.
To use an example of a call to action that’s a little removed from our online lives, if a loved one asked you to ‘shut the window’ or ‘close the window’, the specific phrasing probably won’t make much of an impact on the action you take. No matter which one of these phrases they use, you’re likely to close — or shut — the window, right? Or perhaps not, if it’s a warm day and you’re enjoying the breeze wafting through the room. Either way, the specific verb in the call to action won’t necessarily change your behaviour. Well, it might, but we’d have to test it to be sure.
But what if your loved one shouted it at you in ALL CAPS or told you to ‘shut the damn window’? In that case, even if you were enjoying the fresh air, you might be a little more likely to close the window. So, ‘shut the damn window’ is a more effective call to action in terms of the data, but in terms of the tone and the effect it has on you, it might leave you feeling a little bit off. This is harder for the data to factor in or consider. So if your loved one really wants you to close the window, they’re more likely to get the desired result if they go for the nuclear option and start shouting, but the room might remain a little frosty long after the window has been shut.
Novelty is also a factor. From this day forward, if your loved one always used the phrase to ‘shut the damn window’ and you come to realise that that’s just their thing now, you’d soon become pretty desensitised to it. So something that’s initially attention-grabbing and induces a desired behaviour can quickly become mundane, and in this case, a little over the top.
So at Wayfair, we might spend some of our time trying to work out whether it’s better to politely ask whether our customers would like to find out more or discover more. And ultimately we may learn that asking them to 👉👉👉 FIND OUT MORE 👈👈👈 might be the more attention-grabbing way to go. And, yes, we could have a set of proofs, figures, charts and diagrams all ranged in columns to confirm it, but just like Whitman’s speaker in the poem, we’re also very aware that customers can and will become tired and sick.
This is why, for us, data and consumer insights can help us to realise certain things about how our customer might or might not react to specific messaging, but it’s not the entire story. We need to recognise that shouting at our customer or asking them to ‘shut the damn door’ may lead to a short-term result we’re happy with, but it’s an outcome that can’t or won’t repeat itself. Speaking in a warm, engaging tone, or letting the customer enjoy perfect silence from time to time — this is what wins out in the long run.
