Now, I didn’t need that pair of jeans matching my new shirt.  But I bought it anyway.
As a busy man I tend to shop online or keep the physical shopping to a minimum, say once every three months. And when that happens, I always are open to all kinds of persuasion attempts. So as I walked the “Herestraat” in Groningen in search of a new shirt, a big display caught my eye, telling me that there was massive final sale (uitverkoop) going on.  Being a good Dutchman, the opportunity to save a good buck drove me into the shop. Typical for a sale, it seems that the right sizes and colors are always sold out, but that didn’t stop me to find that perfect shirt. Which, obviously, is a illusion.

So I dove into those immense piles of shirts which were either too big, too small or in a color that would, well, not be my first pick. Finally I found a shirt that would fit, but in a off color and I obviously stood in doubt. Then this saleswoman approached me. “If you buy that shirt together witch another item before 12:00AM, you’ll only be paying the most expensive one”.Now, call me Dutch, but that is a pretty good deal.

To make things short, instead of paying  €40 for a non-sale shirt, in my preferred color and one that would actually fit, I ended up with a shirt that was too big and a pair of jeans I didn’t need for a total sum of €65. But wait a minute, what is going on here?

Persuasion is all around us

Since the dawn of mankind people, are trying to influence or persuade people to perform a specific behavior.The saleswoman trying to sell as many jeans and shirts as possible obviously wants me to buy them

Politicians are trying to influence our opions towards a range of subjects in order to gain our support. So, when we are in the booth making that choice between politician A or B, the result of the induced influence comes into play.

The same goes for advertising or branding. In the current medialandscape we are bombared with commercial messages trying to influence our choice to buy product X or Y. So if you are in your local supermarket buying some Cola, which choice do you make? Pepsi or Coca Cola?

Thinking of it, even my lovely toddlers are trying to get me to give more chocolate. And I am trying to be a responsible parent and get them to eat apples…..

But what is persuasion?

The field of persuasion is getting more and more attention the last couple of years through the excellent books of Cialdini, Ariely, Fogg and O’Keefe. After reading their books and reflecting on them for my own personal and professional use, my first definition of persuasion would be:

“Persuasion is every attempt to influence somebody’s attittude or/and behavior”.

Yes, it’s a pretty common definition and probably being used by the most practitioners. Persuasion is, like O’Keefe said, a ubiquitous function of human communication, pursued in a variety of settings from face-to-face interaction to mass media. And this is true, persuasion is most commonly pursued through advertising—for consumer products and services, for political candidates, for prosocial causes (e.g., encouraging exercise or recycling), and so forth (O’Keefe, Persuasion: theory and research).

But is persuasion therefore limited to personal or mass-media communication? To specific offers being made by the saleswoman or the massive “Drink Coke” advertisements on TV? Not really. Persuasion is about changing attitude and behavior and this is not restricted to any type of medium. Thus persuasion is a more generic term which can be applied to other systems like the web.

Still a little broad, isnt’t it?

As a designer in the interactive field I am interested in every factor that makes up and has an effect on the experience users have, while using digital platforms like the web. But how do persuasion and the web come together? And what kind of attempts are we talking about? Basically, exerting influence in order to change ones attitude and or behavior can be done through multiple channels: through a personal one-on-one with your children or through a add in a newspaper.  And yes, also through the web.

But the context of this exertion and the location where the action should be taken, is crucial.

As mediaconsumers we are continiously are confronted with many different messages and organisations while using different channels like radio, tv or the web. Therefore it is almost impossible to isolate one channel to exert influence. Take for example the carefully created brandimages of CocaCola and Pepsi, which consists of different kinds of submessages which are communicated through different channels. When you stand in front of the storeshelves watching the supply of Coke and Pepsi bottles, which do you choose and why? Because of that viral marketingwebsite Pepsi came up with some weeks ago? Probably not. For these kinds of brands and organisations, context of persuasion is crucial and dictates the multi-channel effort of persuasion. As a result, the correlation of the exertion and the desired behavior or action is never straightforward, as the behavior is almost always  shown in a physical place like a shop or a votingbooth.

But on the web, there are countless examples of websites who only use the web as a channel to influence our attitude and to peform the desired behavior.  Take, for example Amazon, Mint.com or the Hotels.nl website. Their efforts to persuade us to buy online on their site are endless; and here in lies the very nature of webpersuasion: influencing our attitudes towards performing a specic behavior, online.

How do they do it?

Single channel sites are typically more persuasive, because they are explicitly designed to persuade us within this channel. Say, for example, I design a typical webshop where people can search, order and pay for specifc products like books. Apparently, when the orders come in, I’ve obviously influenced some behavior right?

Not really. Designing a userflow or interface with which a user can order a book online, is more about findablilty and usability then persuasion.  Because I still might not be tempted to order that book, even when ordering looks really simple.
 In fact, findability and usability are preconditions which must be met before we can even talk about persuasion.

So, then what makes a website persuasive? That’s where the attempt comes into play. A website starts being persuasive if it intentionally tries to get me to behave in a desired way, after the preconditions of findability and usability are met. Then well designed and positioned persuasive triggers or cues are used to influence my attitude towards specific actions online. Cues like copy, visual design, interactions and the flow users follow towards a specific actions, preferrably based on the merits of MBTI. For more on MBTI see the blogs of Henk Wijnholds and Raymond Klompsma.

It is on this point, that people start deciding to buy or not buy, to sign-up or not sign-up and it is only THEN possible, if have a general positive attitude towards the action or website. So, a formal definition of persuasion applied to the web might be:

“Persuasion is every designed and positioned piece of copy, visual design, interaction or userflow, aimed to influence the attitude towards a specific action online and enabling users to perform that action, after the preconditions of findability and usability are met.”

On the web, people perform a number of different actions, like checking email, reading news or buying a product. And as we talk about influencing these online, we tend to talk about conversion. Conversion can be divided into a hard and softconversion. Basically if we want to convert visitors to consumers who, for example, buy a product online, we call it a hard conversion. But if we want visitors to signup for a newsletter or to download some PDF-file, this is called a soft-conversion.

But is conversion persuasion? I think so.

In the next article, I’l be discussing the individual elements that make up this definition of webpersuasion and the role of motivation.