In a bold move earlier this year, precisely in April, Twitter unveiled a significant transformation of its logo — bidding farewell to the cherished bird that has been synonymous with the brand’s identity.

This iconic bird, which held a special place in the hearts of many, gracefully made way for a minimalist yet assertive ‘X’. This profound shift commenced its gradual integration about three weeks ago, sparking a flurry of reactions from diverse quarters.

The new logo garnered appreciation from those who found its modern simplicity appealing, while others experienced a tinge of sadness, bidding adieu to the feathered companion they had grown accustomed to.

Embracing the Dichotomy: A Designer’s Perspective

As a design enthusiast, I can empathize with both sides of this narrative. The freshly introduced ‘X’ logo exudes a streamlined and contemporary aura that resonates with prevailing design trends.

Its adaptable nature ensures seamless integration across various platforms, regardless of the dimensions or context. However, amidst this admiration, one can’t help but yearn for the vibrant and lively presence of the iconic bird.

This little creature represented more than just a design element; it encapsulated a touch of personality, an emblematic pop of vibrancy amidst the sea of mundane logos. The ‘X’ logo might be sleek, yet the absence of that indescribable ‘je ne sais quoi’ embodied by the blue bird leaves a void.

The Microcosm of a Macro Debate: Design Philosophies at Odds

The transition in Twitter’s logo symbolizes a microcosm of a broader debate entrenched in the world of design.

On one end of the spectrum, we have the proponents of minimalism, advocating for clean and unembellished aesthetics that resonate with contemporary sensibilities.

Conversely, there exists a faction that champions designs that are audacious, possessing the prowess to etch a lasting memory in the minds of the audience.

Balancing these contrasting viewpoints, it is evident that both perspectives offer valid merits.

The simplicity inherent in minimalist designs offers a sense of refinement and focus, but it occasionally borders on appearing sterile. On the flip side, elaborate and eye-catching designs command attention and remain imprinted in memory, but there’s a risk of overwhelming the senses.

Striking a Harmonious Chord: The Essence of Memorable Logos

The paramount objective for any logo is to strike a harmonious chord between simplicity and memorability. An effective logo should be easily etched in memory, accompanied by an element that sets it apart from the crowd.

In my perspective, the erstwhile Twitter bird logo masterfully embodied this equilibrium. It exuded simplicity while exuding an underlying personality akin to a genial wave. Contrastingly, the new ‘X’ logo leans towards stark minimalism, appearing somewhat devoid of the intricate nuances that define Twitter’s essence.

Navigating the Crossroads: A Missed Opportunity?

At this juncture, it’s plausible to entertain the notion that Twitter’s logo transition might have skipped a beat.

The original bird, an iconic symbol, left an indelible imprint in the minds of users. In contrast, the new ‘X’ logo, while embracing minimalism, might fail to encapsulate the dynamic spirit that defines Twitter’s identity.

As the industry anticipates the branding choices of other enterprises, the question that lingers pertains to the trajectory of design evolution.

Will the reign of minimalism persist, dictating the design landscape, or will we witness a resurgence of spirited and expressive logos that truly take flight?

Time holds the answer, and I, for one, will vigilantly observe this evolution.

In Conclusion

The transformation of Twitter’s logo from the iconic bird to the contemporary ‘X’ is emblematic of a broader discourse within the design realm.

As design enthusiasts grapple with the duality of minimalism and memorability, it becomes evident that logos that resonate the most find solace in striking a harmonious balance between the two extremes.

While the ‘X’ logo exemplifies modernity and simplicity, it leaves us reminiscing about the vivacity embodied by its predecessor.

As the design landscape continues to unfold, we eagerly await the evolution of logos across diverse industries, wondering whether the allure of minimalism will persist or if creativity will once again take centre stage.

Don’t forget to like, share, drop a comment and as well subscribe for more.

Life, as we all know could prove dramatic with myriads of unannounced realities. In other words, life happens, but no one desires to get into an unprepared mess. However, most times these messes in varying degrees come knocking at our doors. Of course, they’re unexpected. Regardless, we must plan for them to avoid being stranded.

What are unforeseen expenses?

They are the kind of expenses you don’t see coming, so to say, you didn’t budget for them. Also regarded as whammies, they are unpredictable and most frustrating kind of expenses. They come mostly as financial bad news which varies from sudden realities such as replacing uninsured stolen items, phone replacement, major car repairs, pet surgery, unplanned travels, medical emergencies, home maintenance and repairs fines, amongst many others, as they can present themselves in various other forms.

How to quell their effects

1. Plan ahead

A plan is only as good as those who see it through. Knowing real-life financial jabs are certain, we must see through how these happenings can be cushioned upon eventuality. Planning involves having a deep thought foresight on earnings and spending and how certain substantial amounts could be set aside in dedicated savings accounts for such expenses when they show up.

2. Monitor your fixed expenses

You most times sign up for the free month of some online services and never remembered turning them off, causing a needless financial drain. Furthermore, some of the automated monthly subscription payments you sign up for, increase in amount surcharge without notice, such as internet services, Netflix, Canva and the likes as the case may be, and if these things aren’t monitored, you might not notice. Also, trimming out these monthly subscriptions on a priority basis, together with frequent monitoring makes extra cash available to be saved for emergency expenses.

3. Increase your earnings

After getting your planning right, based on current expenditures, and you’ve probably had an over-arching idea of how much an unforeseen expense might cost, you might want to increase your earnings. Anything is possible in life, so long as you set your mind to it. Therefore, you might want to earn more by working additional hours, changing your job or career to a higher paying one, build your skill-set to get higher pay or rather start a small business while still working your normal job.

4. Seek help from others

Having a resourceful network of association is a plus through life’s journey. When faced with some daunting financial mess, and you’ve weighed what your emergency funds have to offer but isn’t sufficient, reaching out to trusted friends around you can be of great help, however, this shouldn’t be your first port of call, which makes having dedicated savings imperative.

In all, Nomad Money gives you everything you need regarding smart budgeting and planning on your expenses across all accounts you might be owning.

You can further get the latest updates from us by subscribing to our newsletter. We would love to hear from you, let’s get to meet through our various social channels; Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn.

This week on my CXL Institute journey on Digital Psychology and Persuasion, I will be further reviewing modules under people on psychology. They are;

1. Cognitive biases and how we are all affected by them,

2. Emotional and rational decision making,

3. How people view websites.

Without much further ado, let’s dive straight in.

1. Cognitive Biases — We are All Affected By Them.

Cognitive biases are tendencies to think in certain ways. As optimizers, we need to be aware of the kinds of biases that exist, and that we and our target users might be affected by.

However, there is a bias called Bias blind spot: the tendency to see oneself as less biased than other people or to be able to identify more cognitive biases in others than in oneself. In other words, you think you are not affected by any bias or less than other people.

Some of the more common biases faced are:

a. False-Consensus Bias: You think the world is like you

It is the tendency for people to overestimate the degree to which others agree with them. You have your opinions and you think everyone’s on board with you — except they’re probably not.

Consensus such as; “Everyone hates mega menus”, “Who would want to eat that?”, “Nobody clicks on ads”.

People tend to assume that other people have the same opinions and preferences they do. This can be subtle, and it can be extreme, but it puts all small group feedback into question. It can be very subtle, but in general, you need to take individual feedback very delicately. Everyone is going to look at things with their individual biases, and not understand that others see things differently.

This teaches us never to assume that people; especially target users of a website you’re working on.

b. The Curse of Knowledge

You cannot unknow what you know. If you know everything there is to know about family law, you think about the matter way differently than somebody who is uninformed. You cannot put yourself in their shoes anymore, you have the curse of knowledge.

Once you know something, it is impossible for you to unknow it. If you added new buttons or links onto the website, you cannot analyse the site like a user, trying to figure out whether people will see the button or not. You know it is there. Therefore, best practice suggests you ask someone else to look at the page.

c. Anchoring

Anchoring is a cognitive bias that describes the common human tendency to rely too heavily on the first piece of information offered when making decisions. During decision making, anchoring occurs when individuals use an initial piece of information to make subsequent judgments.

You might be obsessed with testing static images against sliders on the home page, or trying tens of versions of the call to action buttons; thinking that’s where the problem is since you saw that mentioned in user testing. Sometimes you can optimize locally, but to increase your conversions more, you need a radical change. If you are anchored, you are limited by that initial piece of data( the local change) and might never try a radical redesign.

d. Egocentric Bias

This bias about recalling the past in a self-serving manner. For example, remembering one’s exam grades as being better than they were, or remembering a caught fish as bigger than it was. Or remembering all the conversions gains from last year.

e. Recency Bias

This cognitive error tricks you into preferring fresh data over older data. An example is searching out a though, however, preferring the new school of thought on the subject matter over old ones. You may or may not have made the best decision. Newer is not always better.

f. Selective Perception

Expectations affect perceptions. This is critical in qualitative research: the way you phrase questions will affect the responses. Leading people rather than leaving them to their perception is not a good practice.

g. Confirmation Bias

People tend to test things that confirm their beliefs.

They have a hypothesis “This form is just too small” so they test making it bigger, and if it is successful by a small bit, they have their feelings confirmed. However, maybe making the form even smaller would increase conversions. Maybe it was not the form size at all, but a much larger factor was the image above the form or the colour of the text.

The confirmation bias makes people try and reinforce their ideas, which is not always the best result.

Best practice suggests you always question the objective in this regard.

h. Congruence Bias

It is the tendency to test hypotheses exclusively through direct testing, instead of testing possible alternative hypotheses.

You research the website and come up with a hypothesis as to how to improve conversions and you test it. By doing that you are not testing an alternative hypothesis that could bring bigger wins.

If you have a hypothesis for what to test, try to come up with multiple alternative hypotheses, as different as possible, and then try and find a way to test BOTH.

i. Clustering Illusion

The clustering illusion is the tendency to erroneously perceive small samples from random distributions to have significant “streaks” or “clusters”, caused by a human tendency to underpredict the amount of variability likely to appear in a small sample of random or semi-random data due to chance.

In other words, you think you spotted a trend — and base all your optimization and hypotheses off that trend. But for a fact, it was not significant at all, but a small sample. Just because there is a similarity, does not mean there is a pattern.

This is critical to be aware of when doing conversion research, especially qualitative — you think you see a trend and start looking for it, ignoring other, often more valuable nuggets of information.

2. Emotional and Rational Decision Making.

People make decisions using both. Emotional side often wins, but people justify their decisions rationally, often without even being aware of it. Businesses who understand biological programming, and can leverage it, possess an enormous advantage.

Decision making is not logical

A few years ago, neuroscientist Antonio Damasio made a groundbreaking discovery. He studied people with damage in the part of the brain where emotions are generated. He found that they seemed normal, except that they were not able to feel emotions. But they all had something peculiar in common: they could not make decisions.

They could describe what they should be doing in logical terms, yet they found it very difficult to make even simple decisions, such as what to eat. Many decisions have pros and cons on both sides — shall I have the chicken or the turkey? With no rational way to decide, these test subjects were unable to arrive at a decision.

So, at the point of decision, emotions are very important for choosing. Even with what we believe are logical decisions, the very point of choice is arguably always based on emotion.

Key learnings:

- People like to think they are rational, but they are not

- Product images can have a huge effect on emotional decision-making

Best Practices

a. Sell to the “old brain”

The old brain is very emotional, and the key to emotional sales is selling to the reptilian brain. You must create a vision for prospects to bring about the decision on their part. In the end, people will decide because they want to. Avoid telling people what to think or what’s best. You help them discover for themselves what feels right and best and most advantageous to them by presenting your case using contrast and simple, tangible language and demonstration.

Their ultimate decision is based on self-interest. That’s emotional. “I want this. This is good for me”. Remember, the old brain is selfish.

b. Serve both emotional and rational

When we are selling a product, we need to make a compelling emotional and rational case. They should be able to fall in love with it emotionally and justify it rationally.

Therefore, it is best to lead with emotional and inspirational content: large images, aspirational headlines. Emotional decision making dominates, so it’s critical to lead with that. Once they have decided that they want it, people want to be able to justify the purchase. Hence, back everything up with specifics, so they can rationalize the decision.

3. How People View Websites

Eye-tracking and research have studied how people look at websites. We would be highlighting below the insights gotten:

a. The top left corner gets the attention first.

When users land on your site, their eye path starts from the upper left corner and moves on from there in a zig-zag manner till it gets to the bottom right corner. According to a Poynter study, these areas get the most attention; the top left and the bottom right corners.

Introducing the Gutenberg diagram. It describes a general pattern the eyes move through when looking at usually text-heavy content. It fits this zoning conclusion pretty well, except for the bottom right area.

The fourth, bottom right terminal area is where you should place your call to action. However, note that this is not some universal truth, but a good starting point.

b. People read in F-patterns

Most people don’t read, but scan. A 2008 study concluded that on average only 28% of the text is read. Eye-tracking visualizations show that users often read website content in an F-shaped pattern: two horizontal stripes followed by a vertical stripe.

This is why you want your value proposition in the top and why your menu should be either top horizontal or on the left, vertical.

Key propositions for yielding results

- Use visibly bigger introductory paragraphs for improved attention

Make introductory paragraphs in boldface or larger font size. When the test subjects encountered a story with a boldface introductory paragraph, 95 per cent of them viewed all or part of it.

Every Smashing Magazine article starts with a quick summary. Keep the paragraph line lengths short and in a single column; that’s how people are used to reading text.

- The font that you use does not matter. Oh, and people like links; the number of clicks on

the links go up as you add more links.

c. People won’t look past the first search results

If you are not in the top 2 or 3 in Google for a keyword, you are losing out. In an eye-tracking study by Google, most users found what they were looking for among the first two results and they never needed to go further down the page.

As it is increasingly harder to get the top spots, using long-tail keyword strategy is very important. The left side of the page gets more attention than the right

With some exceptions, people read from left to right. This is also why the left side of your webpage gets more attention.

Web users spend 69% of their time viewing the left half of the page and 30% viewing the right half. A conventional layout is thus more likely to make sites profitable.

If you have a vertical menu, put it on the left. Navigation placed at the top of a homepage, however, performs best; seen by the highest percentage of test subjects and looked at for the longest duration, but it comes with a size limitation.

Key Propositions

- Use high quality, large images

Image quality is a significant factor in drawing attention. People in pictures facing forward is more inviting and approachable.

Fuzzy, small images are less inviting as are big glamour shots. Nielsen said the eye-tracking study also surfaced a counter-intuitive finding–people who look like models are less likely to draw attention than normal people.

“A call centre ad with a model in it on the phone may be a good picture technically, but it will more likely be ignored,” Nielsen said. Images appearing unneeded, at least peripherally, will be tuned out. Avoid cheesy stock photos.

d. Dominant headlines draw the eye

Big headlines most often draw the eye first upon entering the page; especially when they are in the upper left corner. Present a whole value proposition with the headline. Also, keep in mind that clarity trumps persuasion.

When you list a bunch of headlines on a page, most often it is the left sides of the headlines that get the attention. People typically scan down a list of headlines and often don not view entire headlines. If the first words engage them, they seem likely to read on.

On average, a headline has less than a second of a site visitor’s attention. This means that the first couple of words of the headline need to be real attention-grabbers if you want to draw attention.

Here is where we draw the curtain on this week’s edition of my CXL Institute Scholarship journey. Stay tuned, stay enlightened.

1. Ambiguity Aversion

“We prefer options that are certain”

People tend to select options for which the probability of a favourable outcome is known over an option for which the probability of a favourable outcome is unknown.

The ambiguity effect is relevant when a decision is affected by a lack of information, or “ambiguity”. The effect implies that we tend to select options for which the probability of a favourable outcome is highest. We’re simply reluctant to accept offers that are risky or uncertain.

Two remarks:

• Over an initial range, women require no further compensation for the introduction of ambiguity whereas men do.
• Curiosity increases attention, thus is induced by mild doses of uncertainty.

2. Belonging & Conformity

“We prefer to behave in approval with our social groups”

Belongingness is our innate need to form and maintain strong, stable, interpersonal relationships. More than we’re often consciously aware of, we want to be part of a peer group, community, and society in general.

Once we feel like we belong to a group, we’ll conform to it and internalize the group’s values and norms. We typically conform to both injunctive norms of our groups; implied approved behaviour by the group, and to descriptive norms i.e common behaviour among group members. We may even behave adversely towards groups that we don’t want to be associated with.

Your brand, products, and/or services are social objects that inherently form and play a role within social groups. Therefore, belongingness and conformity have multiple strong, persuasive effects that are relevant to you and available for you to take full advantage of.

3. Paradox of choice

“We love either 3 or 5 options”

If we’re offered just one option, our choice is to either go for it or not. However, if we’re offered two choices, we automatically start choosing between these two, forgetting about the “or not” option existing silently in the background. Not choosing at all becomes a much less obvious option. Therefore, offering more than one option is usually more persuasive.

On the other hand, if we’re offered too many choices we tend not to choose at all. Too many choices are simply too difficult for our simple ratio.

That’s the paradox of choice.

4. Autonomy

“We prefer situations that we have control over”

Autonomy is the innate and universal desire to be causal agents of our own lives. Our perception of our autonomy influences our behaviour. A high level of perceived autonomy comes with feelings of certainty, reduced stress, and a high level of ‘intrinsic motivation’. This increases the likelihood of persistent behaviour. On the other hand, taking away our autonomy undermines our intrinsic motivation as we grow less interested in it.

Situations that give autonomy, as opposed to taking it away also have a similar link to motivation. Studies looking at choice find that increasing a participant’s options and choices increase their intrinsic motivation to said activities. Autonomy is considered one of the three basic, universal, innate, and psychological needs.

5. Visual cueing

“Our focus of attention is highly influenced by visual cues”

A visual cue is a signal that your brain extracts from what you see. It directs your attention and interest to something in your field of perception.

Now, only 1% of what you see enters through your eyes the rest is surprisingly accurately made up by your brain. You can only see well with your ‘fovea’; the area in the dead centre of your retina that’s the size of your thumbnail from an arm-length distance.

6. Endowment effect

“When we own goods, we value them higher than when we don’t”

How does our perceived value of items change depending on whether or not they’re ours? The effect that ownership has on perceived value (also known as ‘divestiture aversion’) shows that, when there are two identical products, we tend to value the one we own more.

In other words: We expect more money when selling a product than what we’re willing to pay when buying it.

7. Self-efficacy

“We are more likely to perform actions when we believe in our competence”

Self-efficacy is a person’s belief in his/her competence. According to Albert Bandura, who defined self-efficacy theory this personalized belief in our ability to succeed significantly affects our behaviour. The more competent we think we are (a high level of perceived self-efficacy), the greater our intrinsic motivation to act is.

There are at least three types of information that enhance our self-efficacy online:

• Our behaviour: When we’re successful at something, we become convinced that we will be successful at that same thing again.
• The behaviour of others: When we see others being successful with certain behaviour, we become convinced that we’ll also be capable of success with that behaviour.
• Rewarding feedback: Positive feedback contributes to the idea that we can achieve our goal by persisting.

8. Base rate neglect & Base rate fallacy

“We’re really bad with numbers”

We tend to base judgments on known specific numbers and percentages, ignoring necessary general statistical information. We often erroneously over-evaluate options with high numbers and percentages because of this, ignoring what subset or base these numbers come from…

9. Self-generation memory effect

“It’s easier to remember when we thought of it ourselves”

We remember information better when it’s generated by our minds than when we read or hear it from someone else. So, if you want your customer to remember something, a highly effective strategy is to have them generate the information themselves.

10. Perceptual incongruence

“We automatically pay attention to things that we did not expect”

Only 1% of what you see enters through your eyes. Your brain itself fills in the rest. Your brain does this by using prior visual information and established assumptions about the real world. 99% of what you see is ‘computed vision’, based on highly advanced algorithms, providing you with a surprisingly accurate visual image.

Perceptual incongruence occurs when the true visual information gathered via the eye doesn’t fit visual algorithms. When this happens, parts of the brain starts asking for more information because it doesn’t necessarily fit the algorithm.

Therefore, incongruence can have large effects in directing attention.

11. Status quo bias

“We tend to do nothing”

We have an irrational preference for the current state of affairs. Even when offered a new option or choice, we tend to stick to the default option.

The status quo bias is closely related to loss aversion and anchoring and adjustments since the default option is taken as a reference point. Any change from that baseline is perceived as a loss.

12. Availability heuristic

“If we can think of it, it must be important”

The more easily we can imagine an event, the more often or more likely we are to believe that this event will occur. So we have a tendency to judge the frequency of an event based on how easy it is to recall similar instances. And since memories are highly biased toward vivid, unusual, and emotionally charged examples, these will also influence how likely we are to consider events.

13. Commitment bias or labour-love effect

“We like something more when we’ve invested more effort into it”

More effort leads to more love but only when we can complete our actions. Customization is about more than individual preferences. It’s also about the amount of effort put into it. Customization effort increases liking.

This effect is also called the ‘Ikea-effect’ since Ikea lets it’s customers assemble their products.

14. Conceptual & Associative Priming

“Subtle cues subconsciously influence our thoughts, feelings and behaviour”

Our brain is fundamentally associative. Each time we have an experience, a huge neural associative representation is activated, for example, moon: reading this word sets off a series of associations like night, white, wolf, and illusion) This neural representation overlaps with related representations

15. Signalling Triggers, Reminders, & Alerts

“Even when highly motivated and able, we need a little reminder to make us act”

For us to act, we must;

1. Be sufficiently motivated,

2. Have the ability to perform the behaviour, and

3. Be triggered to perform the behaviour

These are based on B.J Fogg’s 2009 paper describing his Fogg Behavioral Model. Even when we have both the ability and the motivation to perform the desired behaviour, we need a “signal, reminder, alert, etc.” in other words, a trigger or nudge to act.

When motivation and ability are high, these reminders, signals, and alerts should not try to motivate us more or simplify the task that could even be annoying or condescending. Nor does it matter what form the trigger takes. From alarms, text messages, mobile push messages, or a call-out or pop-up on your website: they simply have to make us consciously aware of the option.

Successful triggers have three characteristics:

• We notice them,
• they bring the desired behaviour into our conscious awareness, and most importantly:
• the triggers happen at a moment when we are both motivated and able to perform the behaviour.

16. Sparking Triggers

“Often our motivation — and thereby actions — can be ignited rather easily”

When something is really easy to do, but our motivation isn’t very high, we tend to do nothing. However, ‘sparking triggers’ can rather easily boost our motivation, and thereby do make us act.

A ‘Sparking Trigger’ will make us act when:

• We notice it,
• it levers one or more relevant motivations, and most importantly,
• the trigger occurs at a moment when we’re both motivated and able to perform that behaviour.

17. Facilitating Triggers

“Often our ability to act — and thereby our acting — can be ignited rather easily”

When we have high motivation but lack ability, a ‘Facilitating Trigger’ can make us act. A facilitator not only triggers us but also makes the intended behaviour easier to do.

18. Repetition & Direct Priming

“Repetition helps us learn and react both quicker and easier”

The more we repeat something, the easier we process, remember, and act on it. Repetition simply smoothens our neural pathways. Repetition is also called ‘direct priming’ since each repetition ‘primes’ later experiences, leading to quicker and more intense reactions.

There are two direct priming effects. First, there is a very brief ‘lexical effect’: Each repetition activates its representation in our brain. Then that activation slowly ‘fades away’. This way, the experience remains ‘primed’ during the fading period, usually a few seconds, leading to quicker reactions when it is repeated.

The second effect is a long-term effect: The neural pathways in our brain are smoothened. This long-term effect works especially well for new ‘stimuli’ since highly familiar ones have already acquired a highway in our brain.

19. Peak-end rule

“The ending and the highest peak of an experience, determine how we remember it”

The peak-end rule is our tendency to judge an experience pleasant or unpleasant almost entirely on how it was at its peak and its ending. Other information, while not lost, is not used in the qualitative memory of the event i.e. extension neglect and duration neglect.

20. Domestic country bias

“We prefer domestic products over imported ones”

We are biased against foreign products and favour domestic ones. This domestic country bias is manifested in our product perceptions, as well as our buying behaviours.

One should be careful though: The domestic country bias doesn’t apply to all product categories. Moreover, this bias is more prevalent when our patriotic feelings are active (e.g. Independence Day in the US, Kingsday in The Netherlands, or when your national team wins the World Cup).

21. Country of Origin-effect

” We prefer products from stereotypical countries”

We tend to stereotype products based on their country of origin. This effect is specific to a product category and particularly relevant for brands with a weak country of origin e.g. countries that we stereotype as producing low-quality goods. Especially quality perception is vulnerable to the Country of Origin-effect and the effect is higher when we’re a novice in the market.

For example — Germany is typically known for building good cars, whereas the French produce the best wine, the Swiss the best watches, and the Japanese are known for good TV sets.

One way to counter our country of origin stereotyping bias is to encourage us to use our imaginations in positive ways.

22. Mimicry

“When others mimic our behaviour, we like them more”

Mimicry refers to the (often subconscious and automatic) imitation of other people’s behaviour. You yawn when I yawn. You smile when I smile. You shake your foot when I shake my foot. We mimic because mimicry has clear benefits for us and it helps us reach our goals. For example, when I mimic you smiling at me during a conversation, you’ll like me more. We will also be more likely to bond together and our conversation will be much more fluent.

There are two paths via which mimicry can be used to persuade us. First, we mimic the consuming behaviour of others (we eat more if we see others eating lots). Second, when our mannerisms are mimicked (such as smiling, shaking feet, fondling hair, etc.) we like the other more, making us more vulnerable to persuasion.

23. Position targeting

“We are easily influenced by which few products attributes we use to make a comparison”

When choosing between competing products, we find it difficult to compare complex aspects. We even find it hard to use more than a few simple comparison attributes. Therefore, we tend to base comparisons between competitors on just a couple of easily comparable criteria.

Being presented with a clear and specific set of attributes focuses our attention on these criteria, causing us to base our subsequent choices primarily on these criteria, ignoring other possibly relevant ones.

24. Hyperbolic Discounting

“We show a preference for rewards that arrive sooner rather than later”

When we consider a choice between two rewards, we tend to prefer the readily available one. We have a stronger preference for more immediate payoffs relative to later payoffs. In other words, the present is incredibly more powerful than the future. Imagine we can choose between one candy bar right now, or two in a month. We might prefer the readily available candy bar instead of waiting a month for an extra bar. However, if we have to wait 12 months to get one candy bar, and 13 months to get two bars, we switch our preference and tend to prefer waiting the extra month.

This effect is explained by hyperbolic discounting models: The longer we have to wait, the more we discount the value of rewards. This discounting is initially strong but then levels off as the wait becomes longer.

Because of this hyperbolic discounting effect, we can switch our preference for ‘waiting for an extra reward’, depending on how far into the future the waiting starts.

There are two types of hyperbolic discounting models: ‘sophisticated’ and ‘naive’. When we’re ‘sophisticated’, we realize that we have hyperbolic preferences and will probably take steps to deal with it. However, when we’re ‘naive’, we will not try to counteract the hyperbolic discounting effect.

25. Equivalence Framing

“The way things are stated or portrayed highly influences our choices”

“Equivalence framing” is the purposeful statement or portrayal of logically equivalent information in such a way that it encourages certain interpretations of the meaningful context, and discourages certain others. These “different, but logically equivalent frames” cause us to alter our preferences. Equivalency frames are often worded in opposite terms. Like “gains” versus “losses”, “full” versus “empty”, “fat” versus “fat-free”, etc.

Unlike emphasis framing (which focuses on different information), equivalence framing focuses on the same information and tries to phrase that information in the most persuasive way.

26. Frontloading

“We prefer to get the conclusion first”

Front-loading content means that you first give away the conclusion. Occasionally it can help to arouse one’s curiosity by not revealing the conclusion at first, but most of the time it works better if you start with the clue. So don’t spend time ‘leading up to your point’.

Our brain is processing huge amounts of information every second. Therefore, our brain prefers to process as little information as possible. Because users generally assess app, social, web, and mobile pages at a glance, you only have a few precious seconds to encourage people to read more, to take action, or to navigate to another one of your pages.

Providing information in such a way that it costs the least cognitive effort is therefore often the most persuasive tactic. By providing the most important information first, your prospect can quickly scan whether you offer something interesting and decide to invest more cognitive effort into judging your offer.

27. Present Focus Bias (or Immediacy Effect)

“We show a preference for rewards that arrive sooner rather than later”

When choosing between two options or rewards, we tend to prefer the most readily available option. In other words, the present and near-future are incredibly powerful. Dan Ariely explains the present focus bias as the ‘Adam and Eve problem’: “You can ask yourself how many of us would sacrifice eternity in the Garden of Eden, for an apple? Well it turns out we do it, and we do it all the time”.

So if we have to choose between an option right now, and a better option in the future, we tend to value the readily available option higher and undermine the long term. The sooner we can get an option, the higher we value it, and the more likely we’ll buy it.

28. Emphasis Framing

“The focus on specific subsets of relevant aspects highly influences our judgments”

To understand and make sense of the world around us, we constantly interpret the meaning of the things and events that we notice. We call this ‘framing’. For example, if you evaluate plans to encourage electrically powered bikes, you might interpret it as environmentally friendly when framed as a moped, but friendly when framed as a bike, and your response will be very different.

Emphasis framing is a persuasion technique where the focus is placed on those specific aspects of a solution that encourage certain interpretations of the meaningful context and discourage certain others. This way the meaningful context in which the choice at hand will be evaluated is influenced. For example, the same car can be presented as ‘low costs’ monetary frame as well as ‘fast and powerful’ social frame. Which frame will be the most persuasive and which one counter-effective, depends on the frames and meanings used by your customer.

This brings us to the end of the big list. Hope you enjoyed the insights. Stay tuned as I would be talking next on Cognitive Biases and how we’re all affected by them. Gracias, Ciao!

This week’s big list covered include:

1. Self-generation Affect Effect

2. Affect Heuristic

3. Facial Distraction

4. Attentional Bias

5. Fear Appeals

6. Reflection Effect

7. Gaze Cueing

8. Forer Effect

9. Cognitive Dissonance

10. Choice Supportive Bias

1. Self-generation affect effect

“If we figured it out ourselves, we like it better”

The self-generation affect effect is the cognitive version of the physical labour-love effect which is also termed the IKEA effect postulates; “We tend to like ideas and information better when they have been generated by our mind”. This beckons on our affinity for either the product or brand as the case may be. It beckons also on the consumer’s trust memory. Who forgets his ideas or who cherishes them less…

In conclusion, as a result of the self-generation affect effect, we become overly committed to our ideas. Therefore, if you want your customer to remember and like your product, an effective strategy might be to have him generate the information himself (or parts of it).

2. Affect Heuristic

“We decide differently depending on our emotional state”

The way we feel influences our decisions and their outcomes made at that moment. When we are happy, for example, we are more likely to try new things out. But if we are worried, we make more conservative choices. Knowing this, it should come as no surprise that our emotional response alters our judgment.

Because of this dependence on our emotional state, we make different decisions based on the same set of facts. Overall, this affect heuristic is involved in nearly every decision we make.

The affect heuristic is typically used while judging the risks and benefits of a choice depending on the positive or negative feelings that people associate with the outcomes. It’s the equivalent of “going with your gut instinct”.

3. Facial distraction

“We can’t resist looking at faces”

When we subconsciously notice faces in our surroundings, we tend to first scan those, before looking at anything else.

Moreover, we cognitively process those faces thoroughly. Facial recognition is distinct from object recognition in terms of visual processing. There are distinctly separate parts of our brain involved and more importantly, our brain puts a lot of complex processing into analyzing faces.

Faces take up a huge amount of cognitive capacity in your brain. Offline, this can be quite persuasive. When someone looks at you, you look back and instantly perceive all their facial expressions. More importantly, you pay more attention to their verbal message as well. Online the same thing happens, but it works counter effectively. A face on the page can detract attention from your message, ultimately decreasing your persuasiveness. However, gaze cue could be used to drive sales in this strategy, as it implies, people tend to focus on the direction of the gazer in the picture.

4. Attentional Bias

“We pay attention to things that touch us emotionally”

The Attentional Bias is our tendency to pay more attention to emotionally dominant stimuli and to neglect other seemingly irrelevant data when making decisions. Therefore, the more something touches us, the more attention we pay to it.

5. Fear Appeals

“We will fight threats, but only if we’re told how to defeat them”

A fear appeal is a persuasive message that scares someone with the intent to motivate him to act against the threat. But since we do not like threats, we tend to deny them or use other defence mechanisms to lower our fear. Therefore, fear appeal or fear evoked persuasion is a technique that should be used rather delicately.

Multiple variables have been found to influence the effectiveness of fear appeals, such as perceived severity, individual characteristics, and more importantly, susceptibility. Also, the intensity of the fear: Weak fear appeals may not attract enough attention, yet strong fear appeals may cause an individual to avoid or ignore a message by employing defence mechanisms.

6. Reflection Effect

“We’re risk-averse when we have something to gain, but risk-seeking when we’ve got something to lose.”

The reflection effect explains that we have opposing ‘risk preferences’ for uncertain choices, determined by whether the possible outcome is a gain or a loss. This effect supports both the Ambiguity and Risk Aversion biases, but only in cases where we can gain something.

Conversely, when we stand to lose something, we strongly prefer to take risks that might mitigate the loss, thereby, exhibiting risk-seeking behaviour. This risk-averse versus risk-seeking behaviour is called the reflection effect.

7. Gaze Cueing

“We automatically focus our orientation to the same object that others are looking at”

When we’re confronted with faces, we can’t help but to intensely process the eyes and their highly expressive surrounding region. Eyes reveal otherwise secret and complex mental states such as emotions, intentions, beliefs, and desires. Research indicates that eye contact accounts for roughly 55% of the information in a face-to-face conversation.

Eyes also have the irresistible power to attract and direct our attention. The perceived gaze direction of a face shifts our visual attention as a powerful magnet in the same direction.

8. Forer effect

“We most easily identify with vague, mostly positive, and general personality descriptions”

The Forer Effect is our tendency to highly rate the accuracy of descriptions of our personality that supposedly are tailored ‘specifically to us’. In actuality, they are vague, mostly positive, and general enough to apply to a wide range of people.

Because the message is positive but also slightly vague, we inject our meaning into it, and thus the statement seems personally relevant.

9. Cognitive dissonance

“When we do something that’s not in line with our beliefs, we change our beliefs”

When there’s a mismatch between our beliefs and behaviour, we experience what Leon Festinger calls ‘cognitive dissonance’. By nature, we humans are strongly motivated to reduce this dissonance.

We can’t rewind time to change our behaviour, but we can change our beliefs and cognitions to align with that behaviour. To reduce dissonance, we simply alter our beliefs, which we do a lot.

This happens in 3 ways;

· we lower the importance of the dissonant elements,

· we add new consonant beliefs to create a consistent belief system, or

· we change an existing cognition.

Cognitive Dissonance is strongly related to ‘self-consistency’ and is sometimes referred to as “adaptive preference formation”.

10. Choice-supportive bias

“I chose this option, therefore its features are the best”

We tend to remember our choices as being better than they were. We over-attribute positive features to the options we choose. On the other hand, we do the opposite for options that we did not choose: We attribute negative features to the non-chosen options.

Further discoveries abound in the big list still, and I would be sharing them in the edition, stay tuned.

Thank you for taking out time to read through.

My utmost discovery on getting to know about CXL Institute sparked in me, the long lingering passion, I never knew existed. It had been sleeping due to lack of awareness and I was numb to its reality: the powers that lie behind a 100% conversion rate. I began thinking in line with all contents placed on the website, as every one of them apiece pointed to one sole business purpose; Conversion. Conversion, I would regard as the life of any business growth, simply put, if you aren’t converting prospects to buyers, even recurrently, how would your business grow? Therefore, the need to understand how your customer thinks, resonating aptly with their pain points, which is the major pivotal skill the Institute offers.

The whole course was timed for approximately 48 hours. My learning hormones were high, however, after diving into the introductory aspects, taking my time to have a full and in-depth grasp of the first module, the reality of my reading pace dawned on me, making it clear it’s not a two-day course.

So far, I’ve been able to cover a few lessons in the first module of the first Chapter of the course; People and Psychology taught by Peep Laja. They include;

- Roberto Cialdini’s seven principles of persuasion.

- Dr B J Fogg behaviour model.

- Lessons from neuromarketing.

- A big list of persuasion techniques.

People and Psychology with Peep Laja

For high converting sales, Persuasion could be regarded as the chief and topmost requirement, however, not a stand-alone as all other ingredients ought to have been put in place. There are various persuasion skill set you could deploy to achieve a very high return on investment on any campaign or better still, to achieve a business goal. Nevertheless, it is essential to note that sparing usage, that is, simplicity in usage gives you a full effect, therefore, it is advised not to go overboard with techniques all at once. Let me take walk you through a bit of the essential I’ve learnt over the past week.

Roberto Cialdini’s 7 Principle of Persuasion

Cialdini’s principles of persuasion are strongly based on influencing the target audience. They are:

1. Reciprocity

2. Commitment and Consistency

3. Social Proof

4. Authority

5. Liking

6. Scarcity and Urgency

7. Unity ( New)

1. Reciprocity

This principle is simply based on generosity play. At the core of every human is not wanting to be indebted. Therefore, giving a little something or doing a little favour compels a payback.

2. Commitment and Consistency

Everyone wants to been seen as true to their professions. Therefore, if I say I’m this, I live up to it and do not want to be perceived as a liar. Its practicality is as basic as giving a grand task in bits, hence, once started, they’re compelled to see it through.

3. Social Proof

This is a principle-based on the idea of human’s core belief system rooted safety in numbers. Nobody wants to feel stupid going a different route out of a thousand. On the contrary, you’d query your buying decision if you’re the only one buying from a brand when all others are struggling for a substitute product from another brand.

4. Authority

People are more likely to take action if told to do so by a trustworthy figure. Most times, celebrities are most times used in this method of persuasion depending on the niche of business.

5. Liking

People are kor likely to believe, trust or buy from people we already like. As a business owner, gaining the likeness of your customer by associating with their major pain point or reason for consulting with you does this magic. A valid example is a pet store owner building the staffs association with various pets to signal a great sense of likeness from pet owners that come by for patronage.

6. Scarcity and Urgency

The human reasoning, when making a buying decision, is more sensitive to exclusive things and that is hard to come by. Moreso, when you’re made to believe something is in short supply, you want more.

7. Unity ( New)

Here’s a new addition to the list which utilizes the inclusion principle with your customer. Being genuine enough, all you need is identify common ground or shared identity with your prospects. According to Cialdini, this principle moves beyond the surficial similarities but can still be having some traits similar to the liking principle.

Dr B J Fogg Behaviour Model

Dr B J Fogg from Persuasive Technology lab at Stanford University based on research on credibility and behavioural design postulates that three elements must be present for a behaviour to occur. They are:

1. Motivation

2. Ability

3. Trigger

1. Motivation

They are subcategorized into three:

- Motivator 1: Pleasure/pain

- Motivator 2: Hope/Fear

- Motivator 3: Social Acceptance/ Rejection

2. Ability

More important that motivation; advised simplicity of the task whatsoever it might be.

3. Trigger

This can be regarded as a proper call to action which won’t occur even if both motivation and ability are high. They are of two types:

- Hot trigger: Direct actions you can take e.g Download now

- Cold trigger: Indirect actions e.g awareness ads on billboards.

Lessons from Neuromarketing

This was majorly centred on the old brain which is responsible for decision making: confirmed age-long research.

The Old Brain is:

1. Self Centered

2. Sensitive to Contrast

3. Values tangibility: Simplicity

4. Values First and Last: Novelty

5. Responds more to Visual

6. Can only be triggered by Emotion

Formula

1. Address the pain

2. Differentiate your claims

3. Show proofs of claims

To deliver the Old brain

- Start with a grabber

Tips

- Don’t be selfish, the old brain is all about what’s in it for me.

- Provide contrasts always

- Use simple communication

- Be clear about your Unique selling points

- Engage visuals

- Deploy empathy (involve emotions)

A Big List of Persuasion Techniques (Part 1)

I couldn’t finish this up, hence the part 1 pointer. It’s a huge list, which I’d continue next week. However, here are the topics

1. Focusing Effect

2. Context-Dependent Memory

1. Focusing Effect

Here’s a technique which thrives on the truth that we can only pay attention to a few things. Therefore, for a highly effective campaign, copies should follow the rule:

- Keep it short

- Keep it simple

- Three’s a charm

2. Context-Dependent Memory

Here’s a technique which thrives on the truth that we tend to forget things when we’re out of context. This technique thrives on using contextual cues across media which helps in facilitating the recall of your brand.

Stay tuned on my learning experience with CXL Institute.