Cognitive Bias and Web Copy – Flat Packs, Frames and Narratives
Let’s be honest here, the purpose of your web copy is to ‘sell’ something to the people who visit your site. Understanding cognitive bias could well be the boost you need to get the result you want.
It may be that you want a direct purchase from your shop, a donation to a charity, a booking for an appointment, to provide additional information to support a direct sales process or 100 other options, but somewhere, you will ‘sell’ something. Whatever it is that you consider a goal… you want a positive result.
What is a Cognitive Bias?
If you have been to one of my presentations or heard me speak about cognitive bias and content, you will probably recognise some of the material in this article.
Firstly, thanks for coming along to listen last time if you did.
Secondly, I make no apology about the fact that I am re-using it because it is content that people liked and were positive about. I know that because the people who have seen me speak on cognitive bias told me they enjoyed it. To quote one visitor it was ‘Fabulously interesting and fun’.
So, let’s dig in, shall we? And I will continue to try and be fabulously interesting and fun.
In a nutshell then, a cognitive bias is a mental shortcut that helps you, me, and everyone else, make a quick decisions or judgments.
They are the little subconscious decisions we all make without thinking about them and they are incredibly powerful when it comes to your copy and content.
A Common Bias in Action
Despite the negative connotations, a bias can also be very useful. In fact, one bias, the negativity bias, could well save your life because it makes us pay more attention to negative experiences than positive ones.
Imagine you are on an unfamiliar country road at night surrounded by a dark forest. Your car is working fine, you are an experienced driver, and all is good, but you slow down anyway. Why? Because your negativity bias has probably kicked in (masquerading as common sense) and started worrying about what would happen if there was an unexpected bend in the road, or a renegade badger jumped out? It would probably also remember all those ghost stories and zombie films you have digested over the years. After all that forest is as scary looking as an AI generated image (see here for why). You slow down and become more cautious.
In this case, a cognitive bias is working for you. It is keeping you safe and it probably began as a survival instinct developed in the past. When our ancestors saw multiple glowing sets of eyes in the forest at night for example, the negativity bias was probably very useful indeed. Standing around logically thinking through whether the ‘eyes’ were dangerous or not, was probably not a good idea. A negativity bias influenced decision to bugger off at top speed from the potential predator, probably was.
What has all this got to do with selling my stuff? I hear you thinking, along with other thoughts like ‘get on with it’ and ‘stop talking about cavemen and zombies’.
OK then, your wish is my command, here are 3 of my favourite cognitive biases when it comes to selling stuff through your website.
Bias 1 - Narrative Bias Works Because We Love a Good Story
Take a look at the following events.
- He fought many monsters and suffered many perils
- He married the princess, and they lived happily ever after
- There was once a handsome prince
- Finally, he rescued the king's daughter and they fell in love
- He rode out on a quest to find a missing princess.
It’s not right, is it? We all know that events happen in a specific order and stories only work properly if that order is there. We are biased towards a strict narrative. Even when the events are numbered, as they are above, the narrative bias still kicks in and overrides the conflicting information.
Most of you probably already re-arranged it this way:
There was once a handsome prince. He rode out on a quest to find a missing princess. He fought many monsters and suffered many perils. Finally, he rescued the king’s daughter and they fell in love. He married the princess, and they lived happily ever after
How to use narrative bias in your web copy.
Tell a story! More than that, think about how your customers are telling their stories. If you sell stuff to stick on leaking taps, don’t just say ‘it seals leaking taps’, tell the visitor how your clients found terrible leaks, then they contacted you and you showed them the power of your Stickotap adhesive. Now, because of Stickotap they are having a lovely bath whenever they want. Or, to put it another way, once upon a time, a hero had a problem with a leaking tap, he fixed it with Stickotap and lived happily ever after.
In the wider context, imagine your visitor is taking a walk through your site. Would they come in at the start of the story? can they then progress through the story to see the benefits of what you provide? When they reach the ‘lived happily ever after’ point, do they want to take you up on your call to action and press buy, book the appointment, or donate?
Bias 2 - The Ikea (or Effort Justification) Effect
I used to have a piece of Ikea furniture. It was a CD rack thing that was tall, thin, and made of that terrible pressed wood stuff. To make matters worse, it had a tiny base footprint area, and was therefore hugely unstable. It also weighed approximately the same as an average sized megalodon. When I bought it, CDs were starting to die out due to downloads. The bottom line is that it was effectively pointless and, because it would fall over in a slight breeze, it was a danger to the kids and likely to squash the dog at any moment.
I kept that piece of s*** CD rack for 14 years!
Why did I keep it for so long? Well, probably due to effort justification bias. The more effort we put into something, the more we value it. It’s known as the Ikea bias because when we build things from Ikea, we tend to hang on to them longer than pre-built furniture. The reason for this is that we built it, we traded the sweat of our brow and not just money for the finished object.
How to use the Ikea effect on your website
Give your clients the opportunity to be a part of the purchase process. So, for example:
- filling in a questionnaire
- joining a community
- customising the product
- being part of the creation process prior to committing to the order
- Gamify part of their journey so they can win something as a reward
Anything that makes the customer part of the sale without inconveniencing them too much will help them feel a bond with your final call to action.
Bias 3 - The Power of Framing
Framing is incredibly powerful. Probably the most famous example is the ‘sale price’ adjustment. When you see
‘Buy now for £50 (usual price £75)’
you are seeing framing in action. Seeing the higher price frames the lower £50 as a big reduction. Another, and probably less ethical, use of this is to price a product and then frame it by adding something along the lines of
‘Similar products to ours commonly sell for £100, but we can bring you our product for just £50’
Sounds great, but what does it mean in relation to the price? Absolutely nothing! it just implies that you can possibly pay more, somewhere undefined, for something vaguely the same as this product. The price of the product itself hasn’t changed.
Framing becomes even more powerful when combined with another bias such as the Endowment Effect. This is when we increase the perceived value of something because we ‘own’ it.
(CAUTION – POLITICAL SUBJECT FOLLOWS. I am not taking sides in the following: I just think it makes an interesting example of how powerful framing can be.)
So, if you were asked to ‘take control’ of a massively complex system that would require knowledge of everything from international law to local treaties, as well as the detailed negotiation on the development of highly technical subjects you knew nothing about, you would quite rightly be reluctant to do so. After all this is not your problem is it?
However, change that ‘Take Control’ message to
‘Take Back Control’
And arguably you are then asking for the return of something that has been taken away from you. Naturally, if that sense of ownership is taken away, we will resent it. Your response is now about loss, theft, and you feel cheated. The Endowment Effect, where we attribute more value to something because we own it, could well have kicked in. Not to mention the ‘otherness’ bias, where we mistrust difference, the Self Serving bias, where we attribute more success to ourselves than others, and… well, actually, that one word 'back' totally changes the emphasis. It reframes the slogan from 'You need to take on a massive, complex, responsibility and here are some facts' to 'Hey, they stole your stuff and they can't even use it properly'
Many people would say that one of the main reasons the leave campaign was so successful was the way it framed its core message. While Remain focused on the facts, the Leave campaign focused on the emotions of the voters. They may well have at least partly swayed the outcome by playing the cognitive bias card more effectively.
How to Use Framing
Move the focus of the ‘conversation’ with your visitors to where you want it to be. For example, not a single one of the following statements says anything concrete but they frame the thing being offered to enhance it in some way.
- These are the last of our stock at this price (you may miss out)
- Developed and produced in the UK (so it must be good)
- A massive 16 gig of memory so you can multitask all day (ohhhh, good. I mean, I won't do that but, good)
Framing is powerful stuff. Use it wisely!
A Quick Final Word on the Ethics of All This…
Occasionally, someone, (usually while giving me the same look that would accompany the phrase ‘so, you enjoy seal clubbing, do you?) will ask me if I am a some sort of Spin Doctor. Well, OK, look. The purpose of marketing is to build bridges that connect people with the products and services they need. There is nothing wrong with that. An understanding of cognitive bias is just helping you to more effectively communicating a message. Sure, it can be misused, but that is down to the ethics of the business or person. Personally, I never take a job if I don’t believe the message is honest or ethical.
... Oh, and a final, final point. Remember that bit right back at the beginning about how my talk on cognitive bias was described as ‘Fabulously interesting and fun’ by a business owner? Well, that was an example of the social proof bias. If there was ever an example of how these mental shortcuts overwhelm our logic it is in the area of social proof. At the end of the day, most of us would put more faith in a totally unverified testimonial by an unknown person than just about anyone else.
...Annnddd, one final, final point more. Remember that fairy tale? Well, yes, before you start emailing me the hate mail, I did purposely use gender bias to make a point. Want to see that in action? Look at the AI-generated image below (then look at the call to action underneath)... seems AI is prone to gender bias, judging from the difference in armour. Maybe get a human to work on your messaging, eh?
