First, a little ego-boost: I started my career in Conversion Optimization two years ago by traveling to the world’s first conference on Conversion Optimization in San Francisco. Now I was back at the third edition – As a speaker! A personal goal achieved!
1. Ability first then motivation
The first keynote was BJ Fogg – One of the world’s leading behavioral scientists from Stanford.
He showed his Behavior Model:
B = mat
A change in (B)ehavior will happen when there is (m)otivation, (a)bility and a (t)rigger, at the same time.
One of his conclusions is that the order must be the Trigger first, then the Ability and lastly Motivation. This means that, unless there is the Ability to perform a behavior, it doesn’t matter how much Motivation you try to apply – the sought Behavior will not happen anyway. I thought it was interesting because I think I see many examples of the reverse.
Since I am a detail nerd, I often obsess on how you should write a form label , how to create positive error messages, how to simplify forms, etc. I often find that there is plenty to improve just to make it easier for the user to finish what he or she came for. But such details get management bored and they jump directly to “Motivation”. Bigger Button! Steeper Discount! Free shipping! Try for free! I think many would benefit from looking at BJ Fogg’s ideas and start thinking about “Ability”.
You’ll find his Behavior model here »
2. From Tech to Features to Experience
Jared Spool of User Interface Engineering is a UX heawy-weighter (in more ways than one). He talked about the three general stages in the evolution of a new technology: Technology-Features-Experience. He gave an example of how word processing evolved:
T: Wang Word Processor. A 100-pound thing that required a week of training
Q: WordPerfect with 1700 features
E: Microsoft Word launched with only 70 features. But they had picked the 70 most needed ones from WordPerfect.
If we apply this to the web, a good example would be weather sites:
Technology: How on earth are we supposed to take all of our met-data, and publish it on the web at all?
Features:Now we can – How do we make the most complete and detailed forecast – Yr.no
Experience: Umbrellatoday.com answers the question: Do I need to bring my umbrella today or not? Yes or no?
Yr & UmbrellaToday - Vhich one is Features and which one is Experience?
3. Users lie
Sandra Nieahaus from Closed loop marketing had a great presentation. As usual. The one thing I I brought home from her preso was her statement – “Users lie”. If you ask a user at the end of a user test – “What happened?”, they say – “Well, it went ok”. But if you look at the video you’ll see how they scratch their heads, roll their eyes, hammer on the keyboard and show general signs of despair and frustration Therefore it is necessary that the tests capture Non-verbal communication.
It also confirms what I always preach – That you can throw web surveys in the trash bin and start testing instead.
4.The most important component in optimization – The Brain
I'm getting my own copy of Brainfluence from Roger Dooley
I was fascinated by how much the focus of this conference had shifted towards “Neuro Marketing” and “Behavioural Economics”.
The first editions of the conference were mostly focused on A / B testing case studies, test tools and similar.But now the focus is more on understanding the underlying factors of why people choose one option over another. Or why they choose not to choose at all.
I would guess that 1/3 of the presentations had at least one iamge of a brain. This confirms that I’m heading in the right direction with my work. On the other hand it shows that I’m not unique in this approach either
Here are some must-reads for the Neuromarketer:
Brainfluence by Roger Dooley
(buy here)
Influence by Robert Cialdini
(buy here)
Go there next year!
That’s all. If you didn’t go this year, schedule it for next year.
*Photos are from the Conversion Conference Facebook page by kind permission.
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